SHORT  HISTORY  OF  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 


•Tlg?>^o- 


A    SHORT    HISTORY 


OF 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 


BY 


GEORGE   SAINTSBURY 

PROFESSOR   OF   RHETORIC   AND   ENGLISH    LITERATURE  IN  THE 
UNIVERSITY   OF  EDINBURGH 


'  But  it  needs  happy  moments  /or  this  skill."  —  The  Scholar  Gipst 


Neto  gark 
THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY  . 

LONDON:    MACMILLAN   &  CO.,  Ltd. 
I9IO 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1898, 
Bv  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped  September,  1898.     Reprinted  August, 
1900;  September,  1905;   November,  1907  ;  January,  1910. 


STortoooli  53«ss 

J.  S.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith 

Norwood  Mass.  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

The  object  of  this  book,  which  was  undertaken  more  than  four 
years  ago,  is  to  give,  from  the  literary  point  of  view  only,  and 
from  direct  reading  of  the  literature  itself,  as  full,  as  well  sup- 
plied, and  as  conveniently  arranged  a  storehouse  of  facts  as  the 
writer  could  provide.  The  substitution  of  bird's-eye  views  and 
sweeping  generalisations  for  positive  knowledge  has  been  very 
sedulously  avoided ;  but  it  is  hoped  that  the  system  of  Inter- 
chapters  will  provide  a  sufficient  chain  of  historical  summary  as  to 
general  points,  such  as,  for  instance,  the  nature  and  progress  of 
English  prosody  and  the  periods  of  prose  style.  No  part  of  the 
book  has  been  delivered  as  lectures ;  and  the  sections  of  it  con- 
cerning the  EHzabethan  period  and  the  Nineteenth  Century  are 
not  replicas  of  previous  work  on  those  subjects. 

None  but  a  charlatan  will  pretend  that  he  has  himself  written, 
and  none  but  a  very  unreasonable  person  will  expect  any  one 
else  to  write,  a  history  of  the  kind  free  from  blunders.  The 
sincerest  thanks  are  owed  to  Mr.  W.  P.  Ker,  Fellow  of  All  Souls 
and  Quain  Professor  of  English  Literature  in  University  College, 
London,  and  to  Mr.  G.  Gregory  Smith,  Lecturer  in  English  in 
the  University  of  Edinburgh,  for  their  great  kindness  in  reading 
the  proofs  of  the  book,  and  for  their  most  valuable  suggestions. 
But  the  author  is  wholly  responsible,  not  merely  for  all  the  errors 

▼ 


VI  A   SHORT   HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

of  fact  that  may  have  escaped  their  scrutiny,  but  for  all  the  critical 
opinions  put  forward  in  the  volume.  Nor  has  his  object  been  to 
make  these  opinions  prominent,  but  rather  to  supply  something 
approaching  that  solid  platform,  or  at  least  framework,  of  critical 
learning  without  which  all  critical  opinion  is  worthless,  and  upon 
which  such  opinion  can  be  more  easily  built  or  hung  afterwards. 
Reading  of  the  books  themselves  is  the  only  justification  pre- 
cedent in  such  a  case  on  the  part  of  the  writer;  and  his  only 
object  should  be  to  provoke  and  facilitate  reading  of  the  books 
themselves  on  the  part  of  his  readers. 

Edinburgh,  z^th  July,  1898. 


CONTENTS 
BOOK  I 

THE   PRELIMINARIES   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

CHAPTER   I 

THE   EARLIEST  ANGLO-SAXON   POETRY 

PAGE 

IVidsith  —  Beoivulf —  Waldhere  znd  i\\c  Fight  at  Finnsburg — Deor    ,         i 

CHAPTER   II 

r 

C.EDMON,   CYNEWULF,  AND  THOSE  ABOUT  THEM 

Anglo-Saxon  poetry  mostly  sacred  —  MSS.  —  Csedmon  and  Cynewulf  — 
The  Scriptural  poems  —  Csedmon — Judith — The  Christ  —  The 
Lives  of  Saints  —  Other  sacred  poems  —  Secular  poems  — The  Huin 

—  The  Wanderer  and  Seafarer       ...         .         .         .         .         .         9 

CHAPTER   III 

ANGLO-SAXON   PROSE 

The  works  of  King  Alfred — The  Boethius  —  The  Orosius  —  The  Bede 

—  The    Pastoral   Care  —  The  Anglo-Saxon   Chronicle  —  Elfric  — 
Wulfstan 19 

CHAPTER   IV 
t;ie  decadence  of  anglo-saxon 29 

INTERCHAPTER   I 32 

vii 


Viu  A   SHORT   HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

BOOK    II 

THE   MAKING   OF    ENGLISH    LITERATURE 
CHAPTER  I 

THE  TRANSITION 


FACE 


The  sleep  of  English  —  Awakening  influences  —  Latin  —  French  influ- 
ence —  Geofi"rey  of  Monmouth  —  Latin  prosody  in  the  Early  Middle 
Ages — The  Hymns  —  Alliteration  and  rhyme  —  Rhythm  and  metre 

—  French  prosody  —  Syllabic  equivalence  in  English  —  Helped  by 
Anglo-Saxon  —  Law  of  pause  in  English 39 

CHAPTER    II 

FIRST   MIDDLE   ENGLISH   PERIOD 
1 200-1250 

Layamon's  Brut  —  The  Ortnulum  —  Its  spelling  —  Its  metre  —  The 
Ancren  Riwle  —  The  Moral  Ode — Genesis  and  Exodus  —  The 
Bestiary  —  The  Orison  of  our  Lady  —  Proverbs  of  Alfred  and 
Hetidyng  —  The  Owl  and  the  Nightingale        .....       48 

CHAPTER   III 

SECOND  MIDDLE  ENGLISH  PERIOD 
1300- I 360 

Robert  of  Gloucester  —  Robert  Manning  —  Lyrics  —  The  Ayenbite  of 
Inwyt  —  The  Northern  Psalter —  Manning  —  WilUam  of  Shoreham 

—  The     Cursor    Mimdi  —  Hampole  —  Adam    Davy  —  Laurence 
Minot  —  Cleanness  and  Patience  —  The  Pearl        ....       62 

CHAPTER   IV 

EARLY    ROMANCES  —  METRICAL 

Sir  Tristretn  —  Havelok  the  Dane  —  King  Horn  —  King  Alisaunder 
• — Arthour  and  Aferlin  —  Richard  Cceur  de  Lion — The  Seven 
Sages  —  Bevis   of  Hampton  —  Guy   of   Warwick  —  Ywain   and 


CONTENTS  IX 


Gawain  —  Lybeaus  Desconus  —  The  King  of  Tars  —  Emare  — 
Sir  Orpheo  —  Flore^ice  of  Rome  —  The  Earl  of  Toulouse  —  The 
Squire  of  Low  Degree  —  Sir  Cleges  and  Le  Fraine  —  Ipomydon  — 
Amis  and  Amiloun  —  Sir  Amadas —  Sir  Trianiour  —  King Athel- 
sione,  etc.  —  The  Thornton  Romances  —  Charlemagne  Romances  .       82 

CHAPTER   V 

EARLY   ROMANCES  —  ALLITERATIVE 

Gawain  and  Ike  Green  Knight —  The  Awti/yrs  of  Arthur —  William 
of  Palerne — Joseph  of  Arimathea  — The  Thornton  Morte  d'Arthure 
—  Th^  Destruction  of  Troy — lihe  Pistyl  of  Susan  .         .         .102 

INTERCHAPTER   II 109 


BOOK   III 

CHAUCER   AND    HIS   CONTEMPORARIES 
CHAPTER   I 

CHAUCER'S   LIFE  AND   POEMS 

Life  —  Probably  spurious  Tales  —  Other  questioned  work  —  The  argu- 
ments for  and  against  it  —  Admittedly  genuine  work  —  The  three 
periods  —  The  Romaiint  of  the  Rose  —  The  Minor  Poems —  Troiliis 
and  Cressid —  The  House  of  Fame  —  The  Legend  of  Good  IVonien 
—  The  Canterbury  Tales         ■         .         .         .         .         .         .         •     I'S 

CHAPTER   II 

LANGLAND  AND   GOWER 

Piers  Plo7uwan  —  Argument  of  the  B  Poem  —  Gower  —  The  Confessio 

Amantis  —  Gower's  reputation         .......     131 

CHAPTER    III 

Chaucer's  prose  —  wyci.ik,  tkkvisa,  mandeville 

Turning-point  in  prose  —  Chaucer's  prose  tales  —  His  Boethius  —  The 
Astrolabe — •  Wyclif  —  John  of  Trevisa  —  Sir  John  Mandeville  — 
The  first  prose  style  .........     143 

INTERCHAPTER   III 152 


X  A   SHORT   HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

BOOK   IV 

THE   FIFTEENTH    CENTURY 
CHAPTER   I 

THE  ENGLISH  CHAUCERIANS  —  LYDGATE  TO  SKELTON 


PAGE 


Contempt  for  fifteenth-century  literature  —  Lydgate  —  Occleve  —  Boke- 
nam  —  Audelay  and  Minors — Hawes  —  The  Pastime  of  Pleasure 
—  The  Example  of  Viriue  —  Barclay  —  The  Ship  of  Fools  —  The 
Eclogues — Skelton  —  His  life  —  His  poems  .....     157 


CHAPTER   II 

THE   SCOTTISH   POETS  —  HISTORICAL,   POLITICAL,  AND   MINOR 

Lateness  of  Scottish  Literature  —  Barbour  —  Wyntoun  —  Blind  Harry 
—  Minors  —  Lyndsay  —  His  life  —  His  works  —  The  Satire  of  the 
Three  Estates  —  Minor  poems lyi 

CHAPTER   III 

THE   FOUR   GREAT   SCOTTISH   POETS 

The  King^s  Quair — Henryson — The  Testament  and  Complaint  of 
Creseide  —  The  Fables  —  Kobene  and  Makyne — Minor  poems  — 
Dunbar  —  The  Twa  Maryit  IVemen  and  the  Wedo  —  Other  large 
poems  —  Gawain  Douglas  —  His  life — His  original  poems  —  His 
Aeneid 180 

CHAPTER    IV 

LATER   ROMANCES   IN   PROSE  AND  VERSE 

Sir  Generydes,  etc. —  Sir  Launfal — The  verse  Morte  Arthur —  Gola- 
gros  and  Gawane  and  Rauf  Coilyear  —  Malory  —  Lord  Berners  — 
Caxton's  translated  romances  , 193 


CONTENTS  XI 


CHAPTER   V 

MINOR  POETRY  AND  BALLADS 

PAGE 

Date  of  Ballads — The  Nut-browne  Mayde  —  "  I  sing  of  a  maiden"  — 

The  Percy  Folio  —  Graysteel 200 

CHAPTER   VI 

MISCELLANEOUS   PROSE 

Importance  of  fifteenth-century  prose  —  Pecock  —  His  style  and  vocab- 
ulary —  Fortescue,  Capgrave,  Fabyan  —  Caxton  —  Fisher  —  His 
advances  in  style  —  More  —  Latimer  —  Coverdale  —  Cranmer  .     205 

INTERCHAPTER   IV 215 


BOOK  V 

.  ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE   TO   THE   DEATH 

OF   SPENSER 

CHAPTER   I 

PRELIMINARIES  —  DRAMA 

Unbroken  development  of  Drama  from  Miracle  Plays  —  Origin  of  these 

—  The  Miracle-Play  cycles,  etc.  —  Non-sacred  episodes — Morali- 
ties—  The  Four  Elements  —  Other  Interludes  —  John  Heywood 
and  The  Four  PP —  Thcrsites  —  Other  Interludes — Their  drift  — 
Bale's  King  John  —  Ralph  Roister  Doister  —  Gammer  Gurton's 
Needle —  Gorhoduc  —  Other  early  attempts  —  The  demand  and  the 
supply  —  Early  plays  by  Gascoigne  and  others  —  Disputes  as  to  plays 

—  Difficulties  in  their  way 219 

CHAPTER  II 

PRELIMINARIES  — PROSE 

Elyot  —  The  Governour  —  Cavendish  —  Lcland  —  Cheke  —  Wilson  — 
Ascham  —  II is  Letters  —  Toxophilus  —  The  Schoolmaster  —  Their 
characteristics  ...........     234 


xil  A   SHORT   HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE 


CHAPTER   III 

PRELIMINARIES VERSE 

PAGB 

The  state  of  poetry  c.  1530  —  Good  effect  of  Italian  —  Wyatt's  life  — 
Surrey's  —  Wyatt's  forms  and  subjects — Those  of  Surrey  —  The 
main  characteristics  of  the  pair  —  Wyatt's  rhyme  and  rhythm  — 
Surrey's  metrical  advance —  ToiiePs  Uliscellany — Other  miscella- 
nies —  Verse  translations  —  Churchyard  —  Whetstone  —  Tusser  — 
Turberville  —  Googe  —  Gascoigne  —  His  Ittstruciions  —  His  poems 
■~'Y\\Q  Alirror  for  Magistrates  —  Sackville's  part  in  it     .         .         .     242 

CHAPTER   IV 

SPENSER  AND   HIS  CONTEMPORARIES 

The  Leicester  House  circle  —  Sidney — His  life  —  The  sonnets — The 
Defence  of  Poesy  —  The  Arcadia  —  Spenser  —  The  "  classical 
metre  "  craze  —  Other  poets  of  Sidney's  circle  —  Watson  —  Greville 
—  Warner  —  The  sonneteers  of  1 592-96  —  Constable  —  The  satirists     260 

CHAPTER    V 

THE   UNIVERSITY  WITS 

The  general  drama  of  1570-90  —  The  University  Wits — Lyly  —  His 
plays  —  Peele  —  Greene  —  Marlowe  —  Kyd  —  Lodge  —  Nash  — 
Their  vi'ork  —  Its  kind  in  drama  —  Its  vehicle  in  blank  verse  — 
Peek's  plays  —  Those  of  Greene,  Lodge,  Nash,  and  Kyd  —  The 
lyrics  of  the  group  —  Marlowe's  plays 280 

CHAPTER   VI 

LYLY  AND   HOOKER  —  THE  TRANSLATORS,  PAMPHLETEERS, 
AND   CRITICS 

Ascham's  prose  —  Defects  of  the  type — The  ebb  and  flow  of  style  — 
Euphuism  —  Eiiphues  —  Euphues,  the  Anatomy  of  Wit —  Euphues 
and  his  England — Their  style  —  Its  ancient  instances  —  Its  ver- 
nacularity  —  Its  unnatural  history  —  Hooker  —  Contemporaries  of 
Lyly  and  Hooker  —  The  translators  —  Their  characteristics  —  The 
pamphleteers  —  Martin  Marprelate  —  The  critics    ....     294 

INTERCHAPTER   V 307 


CONTENTS  xni 


I 


BOOK   VI 

LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE 

CHAPTER  I 

SHAKESPEARE 


PAGE 


The  luck  of  Jacobean  literature — Concentration  of  the  great  drama  in 
it  —  Shakespearian  chronology  —  The  life  —  The  work  —  The 
■  poems  —  The  Sonnets — Their  formal  and  spiritual  supremacy  — 
Probable  divisions  of  plays:  the  earlier — Their  verse  and  phrase  — 
Their  construction  —  Their  characters  —  The  middle  division  : 
the  A/c'rry  Wives  —  The  Romantic  comedies  —  The  great  tragedies, 
Roman  and  Romantic  —  Last  plays  —  Doubtful  plays     .         .         .     313 


CHAPTER   II 

SHAKESPEARE'S   CONTEMPORARIES   IN   DRAMA 

Disposition  of  the  subject  —  Chronological  and  biographical  cautions  — 
Ben  Jonson  —  His  and  other  "  humour  "  —  His  plays  —  His  verse 

—  The  three  masterpieces  —  Later  plays  —  The  Mas(jues — Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher — Their  lives — Their  characteristics — And 
merits  —  Specimen  plays  —  Shadowy  personality  of  other  dramatists 

—  SulTiciency  of  their  work  — Chapman  —  Marston  —  Dekker  — 
Middleton  —  Hey  wood  —  Webster  —  His  two  great  plays  —  Day  — 
Tourneur  —  Rowley 33° 

CHAPTER   III 

THE  SCHOOLS   OF  JACOBEAN   POETRY 

Drayton  —  The  PolyoIMon  —  Other  poems  —  Daniel  —  Sylvester  —  Sir 
John  Davies  —  Minor  poets  —  Chapman  —  Fairfax  —  Campion  — 
The  Spcnserians  :  minor  poets  —  The  Fletchers  —  Giles  —  Phineas 

—  W.  Browne  — Wither  —  Basse  — The  lyrical  impulse  —  Jonson's 
poems  —  Donne 350 


XIV  A   SHORT   HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

CHAPTER   IV 

JACOBEAN  PROSE  —  SECULAR 


PAGE 


Bacon  —  His  life  —  His  writings  —  His  style  —  His  use  of  figures  — 
His  rhetorical  quality  —  Jonson's  prose  — The  Discoveries  — Their 
essay-nature  —  Protean  appearances  of  essay  —  Overbury's  Charac- 
ters—  The  Character  generally  —  Burton — The  Anatomy  —  His 
"  melancholy  "  —  His  style  —  Selden  — The  Authorised  Version  — 
Minors 369 

CHAPTER   V 

THE  GOLDEN  AGE  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PULPIT — I 

Great  pulpit  oratory  necessarily  late  —  Function  of  sermons,  1600-1800 

—  Andrewes  —  Ussher  —  Hall  —  Donne 382 

INTERCHAPTER  VI 387 


BOOK    VII 

CAROLINE    LITERATURE 
CHAPTER   I 

BLANK  VERSE  AND  THE  NEW   COUPLET 

The  central  period  of  English  prosody  —  Distribution  of  Caroline  poetry 

—  Milton  —  His  life  —  The  earlier  poems — Camus  —  The  blank 
verse  —  Lycidas  —  Sonnets  —  The  longer  poems  —  The  blank  verse 

—  Their  matter — Milton's  place  in  English  prosody  —  Cowley  — 
His  couplets  —  The  lyrics  —  The  Pindarics  —  Denham  —  Waller 

—  The  "  reform  of  our  numbers  " 39I 

CHAPTER   II 

THE  METAPHVSICALS — THE   LYRIC    POETS — THE   MISCELLANISTS,   ETC. 

Meaning  of  the  term  "  metaphysical  "  —  Crashaw  —  George  Herbert  — 
Vaughan  —  Herrick  —  Carew  —  Randolph  —  Habington  —  Cart- 
wright  —  Corbet  —  Suckling  —  Lovelace  —  Cleveland   and    others 

—  Marvell  —  Bishop  King —  Sherburne,  Godolphin,  Stanley,  Cot- 
ton, Brome  —  Quarles,  More,  Beaumont  —  Davenant  —  Chamber- 
layne  —  Miscellanies 411 


CONTENTS  XV 


CHAPTER    III 

THE   DRAMA   TILL  THE   CLOSING   OF  THE   THEATRES 

PAGE 

Massinger  —  Ford  —  Shirley  —  Randolph  —  Suckling  —  Davenant  — 

Brome  —  Nabbes  and  Davenport  —  Glapthorne       ....     432 

CHAPTER    IV 

THE   GOLDEN    AGE   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PULPIT II 

Jeremy  Taylor  —  Fuller  —  South  —  Barrow  —  Baxter,    Chillingworth, 

Hall,  and  others 439 

CHAPTER   V 

MISCELLANEOUS    PROSE 

Milton's  prose  —  Its  faults  and  beauties  —  Sir  Thomas  Browne  —  Religio 
Medici —  Vulgar  Errors —  Urn  Burial —  The  Garden  of  Cyrus 
—  Clarendon  —  Hobbes  —  Felltham  —  Howell  —  Walton       .         .     447 

CHAPTER   VI 

SCOTS   POETRY   AND    PROSE 

Reformation  verse — Alexander  Scott  —  Montgomerie  —  Sir  Robert  Ay- 
ton  —  The  Earl  of  Stirling  —  Drummond  —  Prose  —  The  Complaint 
of  Scotland —  Knox  and  Buchanan  —  King  James  —  Sir  Thomas 
Urquhart ' 458 

INTERCHAPTER  VII 467 


BOOK  vin 

THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES 
CHAPTER  I 

THE   AGE   OF    DRYDEN  —  POETRY 

The  term  "Augustan"  —  Its  use  here  —  Dryden  —  His  life  —  His 
earlier  poems —  The  satires,  etc.  — The  I-'al'lrs  —  His  verse  —  But- 
ler—  Restoration  lyric  —  Satires  of  Marvell  and  Oldham         .         -47' 


xvi  A   SHORT   HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE 


CHAPTER    II 

THE  AGE  OF  DRYDEN  —  DRAMA 

PAGE 
The  stage  at  the  Restoration  —  The  Heroic  play  —  Dryden's  comedies 

—  Etherege  —  Shadvvell  —  Sedley  —  Mrs.  Behn  —  Wycherley  — 
The  Rehearsal  —  The  great  artificial  comedy  —  Congreve  —  Van- 
brugh  —  Farquhar  —  Gibber  —  Mrs.  Gentlivre  —  Restoration  tragedy 

—  Dryden's  Heroic  plays  —  His  blank-verse  plays  —  His  play-songs 
and  prologues  —  Growne  and  Settle  —  Otway  —  Lee  —  Southerne 

and  Rowe         ...........     483 

CHAPTER   III 

THE  AGE  OF  DRYDEN  —  PROSE 

Tendency  of  Restoration  prose  —  Its  pioneers  —  Cowley's  prose  —  Dry- 
den  —  Temple  — Tillotson  —  Halifax  —  Sprat  — The  Royal  Society 
and  style  —  Bunyan  —  His  four  chief  things  —  The  English  Rogue 

—  Thomas  Burnet — Glanvill  —  The  Diarists  —  Evelyn  —  Pepys  — 
Roger  North —  Minors  —  Locke  —  Degradation  of  style  at  the  close 

of  the  century — L'Estrange  —  Collier  —  Tom  Brown  —  Dunton      .     506 

CHAPTER    IV 

QUEEN  ANNE  PROSE  i 

Swift  —  His  life  —  His  verse  —  His  prose  —  His  quality  and  achieve- 
ment —  The  Essayists —  Steele  —  His  plays —  Addison's  life  —  His 
miscellaneous  work  —  His  and  Steele's  Essays  —  Bentley  —  Middle- 
ton —  Arbuthnot  —  Atterbury — Bolingbroke  —  Butler  and  other 
divines —  Shaftesbury  —  Mandeville  —  Berkeley —  Excellence  of  his 
style  —  Defoe 528 

CHAPTER   V 

POPE  AND   HIS   ELDER   CONTEMPORARIES   IN   VERSE 

Divisions  of  eighteenth-century  verse  —  Pope  :  his  life  —  His  work  — 
His  character  —  His  poetry  —  His  couplet  and  paragraph  —  His 
phrase  —  His  subjects  —  Garth  —  Blackmore  —  Congreve,  etc.  — 
Prior  —  His  metrical  importance  —  Gay  —  Young  —  Parnell  —  Lady 
Winchelsea 549 

INTERCHAPTER  VIII 564 


CONTENTS  xvii 


BOOK   IX 

MIDDLE   AND   LATER   EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY 
LITERATURE 

CHAPTER   1 

THE   POETS   FROM   THOMSON   TO   CRABBE 

PAGE 

Thomson —  His  life —  His  minor  poems —  The  Seasons —  The  CasHe  of 
Indolence  —  Dyer  —  Blair  and  Green  —  Shenstone  —  Collins  —  Gray 
—  Byrom,  Savage,  and  others  —  Akenside  —  Resurrection  of  the 
Ballad  :  Percy  and  others  —  Dodsley's  Miscellany  —  Smart  — 
Mason  —  Falconer  —  The  Wartons  —  Churchill  —  Chatterton  — 
Beattie  —  Langhorne  and  Mickle  —  Cowper  —  Crabbe  —  Blake  — 
Burns  —  His  predecessors  from  Ramsay  to  Fergusson  —  His  poetic 
quality 567 

CHAPTER   II 

THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY   NOVEL 

Richardson  —  Fielding  —  Smollett  —  Sterne  —  Minor  novelists  —  Wal- 

pole  —  Beckford  —  Mrs.  Radcliffe  —  Lewis 598 

CHAPTER   III 

JOHNSON,   GOLDSMITH,    AND   THE    LATER   ESSAYISTS 

Writers-of-all-work  —  Johnson's   life  —  His    reputation  —  Work  —  And 

style  —  Goldsmith  —  His  verse  —  His  prose  —  Other  essayists         .     613 

CHAPTER    IV 

THE   GRAVER   PROSE 

Lateness  of  history  in  English  —  Hume  —  Roljertson  —  Minors  —  Gib- 
bon —  The  Atttolnography —  The  Decline  and  Tall —  His  style  — 
iiurke  —  His  rhetorical  supremacy  —  Qualities  of  his  style  and 
method  —  Theology  and  Philosophy  —  Warhurton  —  Paley  —  Adam 
Smith  —  Godwin  —  I  lis  importance  and  position      ....     622 


xviii        A  SHORT   HISTORY   OF  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

CHAPTER   V 

EIGHTEENTH-CENTUKV    DRAMA 


PAGE 


The  conundrum  of  the  drama  —  Fading  of  eighteenth-century  tragedy  — 
Minor  comic  writers :  the  domestic  play  —  Goldsmith  —  Sheridan  — 
His  three  great  pieces 636 

CHAPTER   VI 

MISCELLANEOUS   WRITERS 

The   letter-writers  —  Lady   Mary  —  Chesterfield  —  Horace    Walpole  — 

"  Junius "  —  Boswell 642 

INTERCHAPTER  IX 649 


BOOK    X 

THE   TRIUMPH    OF   ROMANCE 
CHAPTER   I 

THE  POETS   FROM   COLERIDGE  TO   KEATS 

The  turning-point  —  Coleridge  —  His  criticism  —  Wordsworth  —  His 
inequality  —  His  theories  —  His  genius  and  its  limitations  —  Southey 
—  Scott  —  His  poetical  quality  —  Byron  —  His  reputation  —  And 
contribution  to  English  poetry  —  Shelley — His  poems  and  his 
poetry  —  Keats  —  Landor  —  Moore  —  Campbell     ....     653 

CHAPTER    II 

THE   NOVEL  —  SCOTT  AND   MISS   AUSTEN 

The  novel,  c.  1800-1814  —  Scott's  adoption  of  it —  IVaverley  and  its 
successors  —  His  general  achievement  —  Miss  Austen  —  Miss  Edge- 
worth —  Miss  Ferrier  —  Gait  —  Ainsworth  and  James  —  Lord 
Beaconsfield  —  Bulwer-Lytton  —  Others :  Lockhart  —  Peacock  — 
Lever  —  Marryat  —  Michael  Scott  —  Hook  and  others    .         .         .     677 


CONTENTS  XIX 


CHAPTER   III 

THE    NEW    ESSAY 

PAGE 

Progress  and  defects  of  the  earlier  essay — Magazines  and  Reviews  — 
The  Edinburgh:  Jeffrey — Its  contributors:  Scott's  criticism  — 
Brougham  —  Sydney  Smith  —  The  Quarterly  —  The  new  Maga- 
zine —  Black-wood' s  :  "  Christopher  North  "  —  Lockhart  • —  The  Lon- 
don—  Lamb  —  Leigh  Hunt — Hazlitt  —  De  Quincey  —  Landor's 
prose  —  Cobbett       ..........     691 

CHAPTER    IV 

THE    LAST   GEORGIAN    PROSE 

Southey's  prose — Historical  writing:  Mitford,  Roscoe,  and  others  — 
Hallam  —  Milman  —  Arnold,  Grote,  and  Thirlwall  —  Mackintosh 
and  Bentham  —  Macaulay         ........     706 

CHAPTER  V 

THE   MINOR    POETS   OF    180O-183O 

Rogers  —  Leigh  Hunt  and  Hogg  —  A  group  of  minors — Elliott,  Mrs. 
Hemans,  and  "  L.  E.  L."  —  Hood  —  Praed  —  Macaulay — Hawker 
and  Barnes  —  Hartley  Coleridge — Sir  H.Taylor — Home  —  Bar- 
ley—  Beddoes 715 

INTERCHAPTER  X 724 


BOOK   XI 

VICTORIAN    LITERATURE 
CHAPTER    I 

TENNYSON   AND   BROWNING 

Tennyson:  his  early  work  and  its  character  —  The  volumes  of  1842  — 
His  later  life  and  worlds  —  The  Princess  —  In  M^ernorio/n  —  Maud 
—  The  Idylls  of  the  King,  etc.  —  Robert  Browning  —  Periods  of  his 
work  —  His  favourite  method  —  His  real  poetical  appeal  —  Edward 
FitzGerald  —  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning         .....     727 


XX  A   SHORT   HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE 


CHAPTER    II 

THE  VICTORIAN   NOVEL 

PAGE 

Dickens  —  Thackeray  —  His  early  work  —  Charlotte  Bronte  —  Mrs. 
Gaskell  —  Charles  Reade  —  Anthony  TroUope — George  Eliot  — 
Charles  Kingsley  —  Others — R.L.Stevenson  ....     740 

CHAPTER   III 

HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM 

Carlyle  —  His  life  and  works  —  His  genius  —  His  style — Kinglake  — 
Buckle  —  Freeman  —  Green  —  Froude  —  Matthew  Arnold  —  Mr. 
Ruskin  —  Art  in  English  literature  —  Symonds  —  Pater.         .         .     758 

CHAPTER    IV 

POETRY   SINCE  THE   MIDDLE  OF  THE  CENTURY 

Matthew  Arnold  —  The  "  Spasmodics  "  —  Clough  —  Locker  —  The  Earl 
of  Lytton  —  The  Pre-Raphaelites  —  Their  preparation — Dante  and 
Christina  Rossetti  —  William  Morris  —  O'Shaughnessy  —  Others      .     774 

CHAPTER    V 

MISCELLANEOUS 

J.  S.  Mill  —  Mansel  —  John  Austin  —  Others  —  Newman  —  Borrow  — 
Others  —  Science  —  Darwin  —  The  Ves/iges  —  Hugh  Miller  —  Hux- 
ley    787 

CONCLUSION 795 

INDEX 799 


• 


BOOK   I 


THE  PRELIMINARIES  OF  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 


O^-^  '"^ '' 


CHAPTER  ^ 

THE  EARLIEST  ANGLO-SAXON  POETRY 

WidsM  —  Beowulf —  Waldkere  and  the  Fight  at  Finnsburg — Dear 

The  oldest  document  which  has  a  possibly  authentic  claim  to  be 
English  Literature,^  if  but  English  Literature  in  the  making  and  far  off 
completion,  is  the  poem  commonly  called  Widsith,  from  its  opening 
word,  which  some  take  to  be  a  proper  name.'-  Others 
simply  see  in  it  the  designation  of  a  "  far-travelled  "  singer, 
who  here  recounts  his  journeyings  in  143  lines  of  no  great  literary 
beauty,  and  only  interesting  as  sketching  the  gainful  and  varied  life  of 
a  minstrel  in  the  Dark  Ages,  were  it  not  for  the  proper  names  which 

1  Fuller  English  treatments  of  this  matter  will  be  found  in  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke's 
History  of  Early  English  Literature ;  in  Mr.  H.  Morley's  English  Writers,  vols.  i. 
and  ii.;  in  Professor  Earle's  Anglo-Saxon  Literature;  and  in  the  translation  of 
Ten  Brink's  English  Literature,  vol.  i.  The  texts  discussed  in  this  chapter  form 
the  first  five  numbers  of  Grein-Wul(c)ker's  Dibliothek  der  angels&chsischen  Poesie, 
vol.  i.,  pp.  1-277,  which  gives  two  texts  oi  Beowulf.  This  latter  has  been  frequently 
edited  and  translated ;  Professor  Earle's  Deeds  of  Beowulf  is  a  good  translation 
without  text. 

2  Some  high  authorities,  looking  upon  Widsith  as  a  "  made-up  "  thing,  hold  it 
to  be  later,  and  would  assign  the  priority  to  the  Finnsburg  fragment  or  others.  No 
opinion  one  way  or  the  other  is  expressed  here ;  indeed,  the  writer  holds  that 
the  evidence  is  insufficient  for  adopting  any.  But  it  may  be  convenient  to  make 
the  point  an  occasion  in  limine  for  a  respectful  request  to  readers  not  to  take 
absence  of  mention  of  theories  of  this  kind,  or  statements  in  the  text  apparently 
antagonistic  to  them,  as  proof  of  ignorance  on  the  writer's  part.  This  book 
attempts  to  be  a  history,  not  of  the  latest  or  any  opinions  about  literature,  but  of 
that  literature  itself.  The  practically  endless  questions  of  authenticity,  integrity, 
date,  and  so  forth  must  be,  as  a  rule,  left  to  special  study. 

B  I 


2  PRELIMINARIES   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE        book  i 

bestrew  the  piece.  Not  a  few  of  these  occur,  or  seem  to  occur,  in 
other  early  verse,  and  have  the  interest  of  the  "parallel  passage."  But 
three  are,  or  seem  to  be,  those  of  persons  well  known  to  history  — 
Eormanric  or  Hermanric,^  King  of  the  Goths ;  A^tla.  or  Attila,  the 
Scourge  of  God  and  the  King  of  the  Huns ;  and,  lastly,  a  certain 
^Ifwine,  whom  some  think  identical  with  Alboin  or  Albovine,  King 
of  the  Lombards,  the  husband,  the  insulter,  and  the  victim  of 
Rosmunda.  It  is,  of  course,  obvious  at  once  that  though  it  is  not 
impossible  for  the  same  man  to  have  been  contemporary  with  Her- 
manric,  who  died  in  375,  and  Attila.  who  died  in  433,  no  con- 
temporary of  either  could  have  seen  the  days  of  Alboin,  who  felt  his 
wife's  revenge  in  572.  Therefore  either  ^Ifwine  must  be  somebody 
else  or  the  poem  is  doubtful.  Into  such  discussiofts  this  book  will 
never  enter,  unless  there  is  the  strongest  reason  of  a  purely  literary 
character  for  them,  and  there  is  none  such  here.  It  is  sufficient  to 
say  that  (f  Eormanric  is  the  Hermanric  known  to  history,  and  z/" 
''  Widsith  "  saw  his  day,  this  document  dates  within  the  confines  of 
the  fourth  century,  at  a  time  when  no  other  modern  language  can 
show  proofs  of  having  had  even  a  rudimentary  existence. 

The  MS.,  the  famous  Exeter  Book'^  of  gehwilciim  \>ingu7n 
("  things  of  sorts  "),  which  Bishop  Leofric  gave  to  his  Cathedral  some 
700  years  later  than  Hermanric's  day,  and  which  still  remains  there, 
could,  of  course,  not  be  expected  to  give  us  the  original  form  of  the 
"  word-hoard,"  of  which  in  his  first  line  ^  the  Far-Traveller  declares  the 
unlocking.  Yet  it  shows  us  a  language  very  remote  indeed  from  English 
in  appearance  (though  this  same  word  "  word-hoard,"  which  appears 
with  the  omission  of  a  single  letter,  shows  the  remoteness  to  be  more 
apparent  than  real),  but  also  different  from  Continental  Old-Saxon, 
and  from  Icelandic,  its  nearest  relations,  neighbours,  and  contempo- 
raries. This  language — a  point  more  important  to  literature  —  is 
arranged,  or  can  be  arranged,  in  lines  of  not  strictly  regular  length, 
and  obeying  no  law  of  rhythm  that  apparently  resembles  those  of  any 
modern  or  classical  prosody,  except  that  there  is  a  sort  of  far-off  echo  of 
trochaic  cadence,  and  that  the  lines  approach  the  ordinary  octosyllable 
or  dimeter  more  than  any  other  form.  There  is  no  rhyme,  for  though 
it  is  by  no  means  uncommon  for  two  or  more  adjacent  lines  to  end  in 
the  same  syllable,  this  syllable  is  one  on  which  the  voice  would  lay  no 
stress.      Neither  is  there  assonance  or  vowel-rhyme,  the  preliminary 

1  See  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall,  chap.  xxvi. 

2  Ed.  Thorpe  (London,  1842)  ;  in  course  of  re-editing  for  the  Early  English 
Text  Society  by  I.  Gollancz  (vol.  i.  London,  1895),  in  both  cases  with  translations. 
Its  contents  will  be  noted  later. 

3  Widsith  matholade :  word-hord  onleac  =  "  Widsith  spoke,  (he)  unlocked  (hisj 
word-hoard." 


CHAP.  I  EARLIEST    ANGLO-SAXON   POETRY  3 

to  rhyme  itself  in  most  of  the  Romance  tongues.  But  there  is  a  very 
curious,  though,  in  Widsith,  elusive  and  irregular,  system  of  allitera- 
tion, by  which  certain  words,  often,  though  far  from  always,  two  in  the 
earlier  half  of  the  line  and  one  in  the  later,  begin  either  with  the  same 
consonant  or  with  a  vowel.  And  it  is  further  usually  arranged  that  the 
stress,  accent,  length,  or  whatever  word  be  preferred,  shall  fall  on  these 
alliterated  syllables  whether  it  falls  on  others  or  not.^  As  for  the 
purely  literary  characteristics,  the  nature  of  the  piece,  which,  as 
has  been  said,  is  little  more  than  a  catalogue  of  names,  gives  very 
small  scope.  Imaginative  critics  have,  however,  discovered  in  it  that 
specially  English  delight  in  roving  which  has  distinguished  many  of 
our  race  —  as  well  as,  for  instance,  such  hardly  English  persons  as 
Ulysses  and  Sindbad. 

There  are  names  in  Widsith  —  Heorot,  Hrothgar,  and  others  — 
which  connect  the  poem,  so  far  as  they  go,  with  one  of  much  greater 
extent,  interest,  and  merit,  though,  if  the  furthest  age  which  each  can 
reasonably  claim  be  assigned,  decidedly  younger.  This 
is  the  famous  Beowulf ,  according  to  some  the  first  on  the 
beadroll  of  substantive  and  noteworthy  poems  in  English,  using  that 
word  in  the  most  elastic  sense,  and  according  to  all  who  have  given 
themselves  the  trouble  (now  minimised  by  scholarly  assistance,  if  the 
help  of  the  scholars  be  taken  and  their  snares  resisted)  to  acquaint 
themselves  with  it,  a  saga  of  undoubted  age,  originality,  and  interest. 
Adopting  the  same  system  which  we  adopted  in  the  case  of  Widsith, 
that  of  selecting  the  earliest  dated  name  that  can  be  reasonably 
identified  with  one  mentioned  in  the  poem,  Beowulf ,  so  far  as  subject 
goes,  would  be  as  old  as  the  second  decade  of  the  sixth  century,  520 
or  a  little  earlier,  when  a  certain  fairly  historical  Chochilaicus  raided 
the  Frisian  coast,  according  to  Gregory  of  Tours.  This  Chochilaicus 
is  plausibly  conjectured  to  be  the  Hygelac  of  the  poem.  But  beyond 
this  it  will  not  be  safe  to  go.  for  scholarly  conjecture,  or  perhaps  it 
were  better  to  say  conjectural  scholarship,  has  for  the  better  part  of  a 
century  let  itself  loose  over  the  date,  scene,  meaning,  and  composition 
of  the  piece.  Whether  it  was  brought  from  Jutland  by  the  Saxon 
invaders  and  Anglicised  or  was  composed  in  Erkgland  itself;  whether 
the  scenery  is  that  of  the  east  or  the  west  coasts  of  the  North  Sea ; 
whether  it  is  an  entire  poem  or  a  congeries  of  ballads ;  whether  it  is 
a   literal    history   embellished    poetically,  a    deliberate    romance,   or  a 

iThis  account  of  prosody  is  based  in  the  first  place  on  Widsith,  and  is  not 
intenrled  as  controversial  against  those  who,  with  Dr.  Sievers,  insist  on  the  exact 
character  of  the  .Anglo-Saxon  scheme  such  as  it  was.  It  acquired,  no  doubt,  a  good 
deal  of  such  exactness  in  time ;  though  any  one  who  will  reflect  on  the  conse- 
quences of  tlic  fact  that  the  texis  exist  almost  invariably  in  single  MSS.,  will  be 
slow  to  accept  any  but  wide  conclusions. 


PRELIMINARIES   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE  book  i 


myth  — -all  these  questions  have  been  asked  with  the  pains,  answered 
with  the  confidence,  and  the  answers  all  poohpoohed  with  the  disdain 
usual,  if  not  invariable,  in  such  cases.  We  shall  only  say  here  that  the 
date,  admittedly  uncertain,  is  somewhat  unimportant ;  that  the  ques- 
tion "History,  fiction,  or  myth?''  is  not  of  the  kind  here  dealt  with; 
and  that  while  some  have  been  hardy  enough  to  pronounce  with 
confidence  that  the  scenery  must  be  Northumbrian  and  no  other,  ^  the 
present  writer  would  undertake  to  find  twenty  coast  districts  in  Eng- 
land, and  feels  certain  that  there  are  twenty  times  twenty  and  more 
i.!so  out  of  it,  which  would  perfectly  fit. 

To  the  student  of  literature  who  can  be  content  to  pretermit  the 
unnecessary,  Beowulf  presents  itself  in  a  manner  which  may  be  sum- 
marised as  follows :  It  is  a  poem,  in  rather  less  than  3200  lines, 
which  must  of  necessity  be  very  old,  and  which,  for  reasons  to 
be  mentioned  presently,  is  in  its  original  form  very  likely  as  old  as, 
or  older  than,  all  but  the  first  invasion  of  Britain  by  the  Saxons 
The  history  of  its  unique  MS.,^  though  too  long  to  be  given  in 
detail  here,  adds  to  its  interest.  This  is  part  of  one  (Vitellius  A. 
XV.)  of  those  famous  treasures  of  Sir  Robert  Cotton's  which  form 
almost  the  most  precious  part  of  the  British  Museum  Library,  and 
one  of  those  which  were  only  saved  so  as  by  fire  in  1731.  It  is 
not  known  where  it  came  from,  and  though  it  was  catalogued  by 
Humphrey  Wanley  a  quarter  of  a  century  before  the  fire,  he  unfort- 
unately mistook  its  subject,  and  the  interest  which  then  still  pre- 
vailed as  to  Anglo-Saxon  literature  (though  it  afterwards  waned  for 
the  greater  part  of  the  century)  was  not  immediately  directed  to 
it.  Its  supposed  connection  with  Denmark,  in  Wanley's  description, 
attracted  the  learned  Icelander  Thorkelin  to  it,  and,  after  vicissi- 
tudes, his  version  appeared  in  181 5,  since  which  it  has  been  con- 
stantly re-edited  and  translated.  Meanwhile  the  MS.  hjid  been  going 
from  worse  to  worse  ever  since  the  fire,  and  the  superstructure  of  com- 
mentatorial  editing  has  been  constantly  adding  more  and  more  super- 
fluous matter.  One  of  the  few  if  not  facts  yet  opinions  which  seem  worth 
holding  fast  is  that  in  its  present  form  the  MS.  is  probably  not  older 
than  the  tenth  century,  and  that  the  poem  had  by  that  time  under- 
gone divers  changes  in  shape  and  dialect.  Another  fact  of  the  first 
literary  value  is  that  the  chief  incidents  of  its  first  part  reproduce 
themselves  in  the  most  curious  way  in  one  of  the  five  great  Icelandic 
sagas,  that  oiGrettir  the  Strong.  ^ 

1  For  is  there  not  a  Bowlby  Cliff  close  to  Staithes  in  Yorkshire?  and  is  it  not 
the  tallest  on  the  English  and  Scottish  mainland?  and  does  not  Bowlby  =  Bow- 
wowlby  =  Beowulfby?  And  did  not  Caedmon  live  at  Whitby,  a  few  miles  oflf? 
Indeed,  for  a  commentatorial  sorites  the  logic  is  rnther  unusually  perfect, 

2  Which  also  contains  Judith  ;  see  next  chapter. 

3  Englished  by  Morris  and  Magnusson,  London,  1869. 


CHAP.  I  EARLIEST   ANGLO-SAXON   POETRY  5 

As  for  its  subject,  there  is,  as  is  very  usual  in  poems  of  its  class,  a 
sort  of  genealogical  prologue  wherein  there  is  a  confusion  of  Beowulfs. 
The  proper  action  does  not  begin  for  a  hundred  lines  or  so,  when  we 
hear  of  the  happiness  of  Hrothgar,  a  king  whose  court  is  at  Heorot, 
and  its  marring  by  a  monster  named  Grendel  who  enters  the  hall  by 
night  and  slaughters  the  thanes.  This  continues  for  twelve  years,  till 
Beowulf,  our  Beowulf,  a  thane  of  King  Hygelac's,  who  dwells  over  the 
sea,  hears  of  the  nuisance  and  determines  to  end  it.  He  journeys 
towards  Heorot,  and,  after  some  demurs  by  the  coastguard  thereof, 
arrives  and  is  hospitably  received  by  Hrothgar  and  his  queen, 
though  there  is  some  jealousy  among  the  nobility.  The  adventure  is 
committed  to  Beowulf,  and  Grendel  does  not  fail  to  come  at  night. 
Indeed,  he  has  seized  one  warrior  before  Beowulf  grips  him.  Then 
begins  the  first  and  not  one  of  the  worst  of  the  fights  of  English 
poetry  —  which  has  good  fights.  The  monster  is  not  vulnerable  by 
steel,  so  that  Beowulf's  men  cannot  help  him  ;  but  the  chief  tears  off 
the  fiend's  arm,  shoulder  and  all,  and  he  flies  to  die  in  the  mere  where 
his  den  is,  making  it  boil  with  his  blood.  There  is  much  triumph, 
feasting,  singing,  gift-giving,  and  the  like. 

But  after  all  Something  renews  the  attacks  on  Heorot,  and  an 
etheling  of  high  blood  is  carried  off".  Beowulf  is  not  in  the  hall, 
having  been  guested  elsewhere,  but  he  soon  hears  from  the  King  that 
his  adventure  is  not  done,  and  determines  to  finish  it  in  the  mere 
itself.  He  dives  fearlessly  in,  and  on  reaching  the  bottom  is  caught 
by  a  water-hag,  Grendel's  mother,  who  has  killed  the  etheling. 
The  fight  is  fiercer  than  that  with  her  son ;  the  hero's  earthly 
weapons  are  useless  against  the  hag,  and  he  is  actually  beaten  by  her 
in  wrestling  and  for  a  moment  at  her  mercy.  But  his  byrnie  (mail- 
shirt)  is  better  as  a  defence  than  his  sword  in  offence,  and  hard  by 
him,  on  the  cave  floor  where  the  fight  takes  place,  he  sees  a  mighty 
falchion  within  reach.  He  gains  it,  draws  it,  and  cuts  the  hag's 
head  off,  doing  the  same  afterwards  to  the  dead  body  of  C/rendcl, 
which  he  finds  near  by ;  but  the  blood  of  the  fiends  is  so  venomous 
that  the  sword  itself,  though  it  had  strength  to  slay,  melts  in  the 
poison. 

Meanwhile  Beowulfs  men  above  on  the  bank  have  given  liim  up 
for  lost,  and  Hrothgar's  men  have  gone  away.  But  his  own  comrades 
remain,  welcome  him  as  he  swims  up  triumpliantlv  with  Grendel's 
head,  and  escort  him  m  triumph  to  court  with  the  head  and  the  hilt 
of  the  sword.  The  most  interesting  part  of  the  poem  is  over,  but 
only  just  half  its  length  is  exhausted.  Proper  ceremonies  at  Heorot 
follow,  and  a  long  report  of  Beowulf  to  Hygelac.  This  king  falls 
\n  battle  (perhaps,  as  said  above,  historically),  and  Beowulf  succeeds 
him,  to  be  plagued  in  his  turn   not  by  a  water  fiend   l)Ut    by  a  land 


6  PRELIMINARIES   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  i 

dragon,  whose  hoard  has  been  rifled,  and  who  in  revenge  lays  waste 
the  country,  burning  all  houses,  even  the  palace,  with  his  fiery  breath. 
Beowulf  determines  to  meet  him  single-handed  and  does  so,  all  his 
men  but  one  flying  in  terror.  He  slays  the  dragon,  but  is  mortally 
injured  by  the  teeth  and  fire-jets  of  the  enemy.  The  poem  finishes 
with  laments,  condemnation  of  the  cowardly  fliers,  and  the  rummag- 
ing of  the  dragon's  hoard. 

The  vehicle  of  it  is  a  line  of  the  same  kind  (with  minor  variations) 
as  that  described  under  IVidsith,  but  the  different  nature  of  the  sub- 
ject (and,  no  doubt,  also  the  greater  genius  of  the  author,  and  the 
wider  scope  afforded)  raises  it  much  above  that  composition  as  poetry. 
As  is  the  case  with  all  the  pieces  in  this  section,  it  has  been  rather 
wildly  and  unreservedly  praised,  and  has  been  made  to  bear  all  sorts 
of  meanings  and  messages  which  the  unilluminated  may  fail  to  dis- 
cover. But  it  is  a  good  verse-saga,  spirited  in  incident,  not  destitute 
of  character,  and  showing,  though  an  early  and  rudimentary,  yet  a  by 
no  means  clumsy  or  puerile  system  of  poetic  phrase,  composition,  and 
thought.  The  fights  are  good  fights ;  Beowulf,  though,  as  we  should 
expect,  something  of  a  boaster,  is  a  gentleman  and  a  tall  man  of  his 
hands.  Hunferth,  Hrothgar's  jealous  courtier  and  "orator,"  is,  after 
his  fashion,  a  gentleman  too  —  it  is  he  who  lends  Beowulf  a  sword 
for  the  second  encounter;  the  appearance  of  Hrothgar's  queen  is 
gracious ;  the  pictures  of  the  sea  and  the  mere  (its  waters  over- 
shrouded  by  trees  with  writhen  roots),  and  the  spear-stalks  in  the 
hall,  ash-staved  and  gray-steel-tipped,  are  not  to  be  despised. 

This  is  the  verdict  of  the  strictest  criticism  of  intrinsic  merit, 
putting  'the  historic  estimate  aside  altogether.  And  if,  as  we  are 
surely  entitled  to  do  in  a  history,  we  do  not  put  the  historic  estimate 
aside  —  if  we  take  into  consideration  the  fact,  which  is  all  but  a  certain 
fact,  that  Beowulf  is  the  very  oldest  poem  of  any  size  and  scope  in 
any  modern  language,  that  it  has  no  known  predecessors,^  and  has 
the  whole  literature  of  romance  for  successors  —  then  without  attribut- 
ing to  it  merits  which  it  cannot  claim,  or  muddling  it  up  with  myths 
which  simply  minish  its  interest,  we  shall  see  that  it  is  a  very 
venerable  document  indeed,  well  worth  the  envy  of  the  nations  to 
whom  it  does  not  belong.  Even  if  it  were  no  older  than  its  MS., 
Beowulf  would  be  the  senior  of  the  Chanson  de  Roland  by  nearly  a 
century,  the  senior  of  the  Poema  del  Cid  by  two,  the  senior  of  the 
Nibelungen  Lied  by  two  or  three.  In  reality  it  is  possibly  the  elder 
of  the  eldest  of  these  by  half  a  millennium.     Some  of  those  who  love 

1  There  are,  of  course,  those  who  say  that  it  had  many.  But,  if  so,  these  many 
"have  the  defect  of  being  lost,"  and  perhaps  it  may  be  said  also  that  of  not  being 
known  ever  to  have  existed.  The  text  speaks  only  of  known  and  existing  work  oi 
epical  form. 


CHAP.  I  EARLIEST  ANGLO-SAXON   POETRY  7 

England  least  have  been  fain  to  admit  that  we  have  the  best  poetry  in 
Europe ;  it  is  thanks  mainly  to  Beowulf  that  our  poetry  can  claim  the 
oldest  lineage,  and  poetical  coat-armour  from  the  very  first. 

The  other  remains  which  certainly  or  probably  belong  to  the  same 
class  chronologically  with  Widsith  and  Beowulf  are  of  much  shorter 
length,  and,  with  one  exception,  of  less  interest.  The  fragment 
(about  sixty  lines)  called  W'aldherc  ("Walter")  would  seem  to  belong 
to  an  old,  if  not  oldest,  edition,  so  to  speak,  of  that  cycle  of  Burgun- 
dian  sagas  of  which  the  Nibeluneen  Lied  presents  us  with 

,         11-  1  11-  •      1  r  1  IValdhere 

a   later   handhng,   though    this    particular    fragment    has     and  the 
nothing  to  do  with   that   poem.      So,  too,  the  Fight  at   p^-fJl^^^' 
Finnsburg  (fifty  lines),  another  fragment,  has  for  its  main, 
if  not  its  sole,  English  interest,  besides  the  language,  the  fact  that 
the  subject  is  mentioned  in  Beoiuulf  as  the  theme  of  song,  though, 
of  course,  not  necessarily  of  this  song.     But  the  third,  the  fifth  of  the 
whole  group  as  usually  arranged,  has  greater  attractions.     This  is  the 
so-called    Cotnplaint  of  Deor,  which  in  the  first  place    is,  though  a 
short,  a   complete   piece ;  in  the  second,  has   not  merely  unity  as  a 
composition,  but  individual  spirit  and  interest  as  a  poem ; 
and  in  the  third,  shows  us  an  immense  advance  in  poetical 
form.     Deor  is  a  minstrel  who  has  fallen  out  of  favour  with  his  lord, 
his  supplanter  being  a  certain  Heorrenda,  skilled  in  song.     The  fifty- 
two  verses  of  the  poem  are  individually  like  those  already  noticed, 
but  they  are  arranged  in  a  different  fashion,  being  divided  into  stanzas 
of  irregular  length  by  a  refrain  — 

Thses  ofereode :  thisses  swa  mseg. 
That  was  got  over  :  so  may  this  be. 

The  instances  which  he  alleges  to  confirm  himself  in  his  hoc  olitn 
meminisse  juvabity  the  trials  of  VVayland  the  great  smith,  the  betrayal 
of  Beadohild,  with  other  woes  of  Geat,  of  Theodoric,  of  Hermanric, 
have  some  attraction  of  curiosity,  and  the  general  tone  of  pluck  facing 
luck  is  manly  and  interesting.  But  the  advance  in  form  is  the  real 
charm  of  the  poem.  If  Deor  is  really  very  old,  its  author  had 
attained,  though  only  in  a  rough  and  rudimentary  fashion,  to  some  of 
those  secrets  of  lyrical  poetry  which  were  as  a  rule  hidden  from 
Anglo-Saxon  bards  even  of  a  much  later  day.  He  had  grasped  the 
stanza,  the  great  machine  for  impressing  form  upon  the  almost  form- 
less void ;  ^  and  he  had  grasped  the  refrain,  which  is  not  only  a 
mighty  set-off  to  poetry  in  itself,  but  has  the  inestimable  property  of 
naturally  suggesting  rhyme,  the  greatest  and  most  precious  of  all 
poetical   accidents.     When   tho   ear    has   once   caught    the   charm   of 

1  There  is  a  theory  that  the  stanza  came  first;  but  here  again   all    the    other 
examples  are  lost,  and  none  arc  known  to  have  existed. 


8  PRELIMINARIES   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE  book  i 

repeated  sound  in  this  way,  the  brain  ahnost  inevitably  suggests  the 
multiplication  of  it  without  damage  to  sense,  by  repeating  not  the 
whole  line  but  part  of  the  line  only.  We  have  not  in  Deor  reached 
really  exquisite  poetry,  but  we  are  safely  on  the  way  towards  it.  We 
have  the  passionate  interpretation  of  things  felt  and  seen ;  we  have 
the  couching  of  that  interpretation  in  rhythmical  utterances  subjected 
to  and  equipped  with  arrangements  and  ornaments  beyond  those  of 
the  mere  integral  line ;  and  we  have  the  confinement  of  the  utterance 
within  a  reasonable  length.  When  you  have  these  things  in  poetry, 
you  have  not  yet  everything,  but  you  are  on  the  way  to  have  it. 

The  reserved  point,  in  reference  to  this  batch  of  poems,  which  has 
been  more  than  once  mentioned  above  is  this :  that  in  no  one  of  them 
is  there  the  slightest  evidence,  apart  from  their  existence  in  more  or 
less  antique  forms  of  Anglo-Saxon,  of  any  connection  with  England. 
The  supposed  indications  of  scenery  are,  as  has  been  said  above,  and 
must  be  very  seriously  repeated,  the  shadow  of  a  shade,  the  dream  of 
a  dream ;  no  one  who  has  had  any  share  of  training  in  the  apprecia- 
tion of  evidence  will  attach  the  slightest  importance  to  them.  There 
are  passages  in  Widsiih,  in  Beowulf,  in  Deor,  which  seem  to  argue  a 
knowledge  of  Christianity ;  but  all  of  these  may  be  interpolations,  and 
none  of  them  is  decisive  to  a  balanced  judgment.  And  such  historical 
or  quasi-historical  references  ( the  more  important  noted  above)  as  we 
do  find  seem  to  carry  us  back  to  periods  about  the  fourth  and  fifth 
centuries ;  while  there  is  nothing  in  any  of  them,  except  the  quite 
indecisive  Alboin  identification,  which  suggests  a  date  later  than  500, 
and  nothing,  even  this,  that  goes  later  than  600. 

Therefore  it  has  seemed  to  no  bad  wits  not  impossible,  or  even 
improbable,  that  this  group  may  represent  the  documents,  certainly 
not  "fifty  volumes  long,"  or  at  least  the  traditions,  which  the  Anglo- 
Saxon-Jutes  carried  with  them  as  "  cabin-furniture"  in  their  invasion  of 
the  Greater  England,  and  may  actually  be  the  workings  up  of  such 
documents,  or  at  least  such  traditions,  not  so  very  much  later.  We 
cannot  prove  this,  and  we  should  very  carefully  abstain  from  the  large 
generalisations  from  supposed  characteristics  in  these  poems  which 
have  sometimes  been  made  as  to  the  English  spirit.  Indeed,  we 
should  rather  say  that  ascertained  or  imagined  characteristics  of  the 
English  spirit  are  in  these  exercitations  carried  back  to  the  poems, 
and  discovered  there  after  having  been  carried.  But  we  cannot  dis- 
prove either  the  antiquity  or  the  relationship,  and  it  would  be  a  great 
pity  if  we  could. 


CHAPTER   II 

CiEDMON,   CVNEWULF,   AND   THOSE   ABOUT   THEM 

Anglo-Saxon  poetry  mostly  sacred  — MSS.  —  Caedmon  and  Cynewulf  — The 
Scriptural  poems  —  Casdmon  —  Judith  —  The  Christ  —  The  Lives  of  Saints  — 
Other  sacred  poems  —  Secular  poems — The  Ruin  —  The  Wanderer  s^v^A  Sea- 
farer. 

It  would  seem  likely  that  the  whole  of  the  work  mentioned  in  the 
last  chapter,  though  it  may  have  been  here  and  there  rehandled  in  a 
Christian  sense,  is  heathen  in  origin.  But  the  bulk  of  Anglo-Saxon 
poetry,'  a  bulk  which  is  not  itself  very  large,  is  entirely    ,     ,    „ 

^,     .     .  .  ,     .         ,     -     .     ,  ,.    .  .  ,  .  Anglo-Saxon 

Christian  in  tone,  and  is  definitely  religious  in  subject,  poetry  mostly 
Probably  not  a  twentieth  part  of  the  Corpus  Poetiaan  sacred. 
in  oldest  English,  putting  Beowulf  aside,  has  for  subject  anything  but 
paraphrases  of  the  Bible  and  Lives  of  Saints,  which  in  their  turn  are 
paraphrased  or  translated  from  Latin  originals.  Although  the  texts 
are  handled  in  some  cases  with  sufficient  freedom,  it  is  undeniable 
that  this  fact  communicates  to  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  not  merely  a  cer- 
tain monotony,  but  also  a  very  distinct  want  of  first-hand  interest  — 
a  want  which  extends  over  its  whole  period,  and  to  prose  as  well  as 
to  verse. 

Yet  it  would  have  been  extremely  surprising  if  anything  else  had 
l)een  the  case.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  always  necessary  to  remember  — 
especially  in  face  of  the  extravagant  eulogies  of  which  it  has  been  the 
subject,  as  a  revulsion  from  the  equally  extravagant,  and  because 
more  simply  ignorant  much  more  discreditable,  contempt  which  it 
had  undergone  before  —  that  this  literature  is,  after  all,  the  literature 
of  a  childhood,  the  lispings  of  a  people.  No  vernacular  writings 
other  than  their  own  can  have  been  before  these  ancestors  of  ours, 
for  none  existed.  Although,  after  the  welter  of  the  Saxon  Conquests 
had  a  little  subsided,  culture  of  no  such  beggarly  kind  was  to  be  found 
in  England,  it  was  necessarily,  if  not  confined  to,  yet  centred  in,  the 

1  Most  of  the  texts  referred  to  in  this  chapter  will  be  found  in  Grein-Wul(c)ker 
or  the  Exeter  Book,  or  both;  where  to  fiiul  the  others  will  be  noted. 

y 


10  PRELIMINARIES   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  i 

clergy  and  the  monasteries.  More  classical  knowledge,  not  merely 
in  Latin  but  in  Greek,  undoubtedly  survived  during  the  darkest  of  the 
Dark  Ages  than  the  sciolism  of  the  eighteenth  century  used  to  allow ; 
but  there  is  also  no  doubt  that  the  tide  —  the  incalculable,  inexplicable 
tide  of  knowledge  and  thought  —  receded  steadily  all  over  Europe 
from  the  fifth  century  to  the  tenth'.  In  the  first  years  (which  in  such 
an  age  are  the  first  centuries)  of  conversion  to  a  new  faith  religious 
zeal  thinks  no  subject  but  religion  worthy  of  attention,  and  in  the 
contented  reaction  therefrom  professional  guardians  of  religion  think 
nothing  but  religious  matter  worthy  of  preservation.  It  is  more 
wonderful  that  we  have  any  profane  poetry  at  all  —  not  for  the  present 
to  mention  prose  —  from  this  time,  than  that  we  have  so  little. 

The  verse,  profane  in  small  proportion,  sacred  in  large,  which 
dates  from  the  period  succeeding  the  comparative  settlement  of  the 
Saxon  realms,  and  which,  though  almost  the  whole,  if  not  the  whole, 
of  it  is  West  Saxon  in  its  present  form,  seems  by  pretty  common  consent 
to  have  been  originally  composed  in  Northumbria,  survives  to  us  for 
the  most  part  in  four  unique  MSS.  Of  these  three  are 
the  aforesaid  Cottonian,  which,  besides  giving  us  Beowidf, 
contains  an  incomplete  poem  on  Judith  ;  the  so-called  Junian  Manu- 
script, now  at  Oxford,  which  contains  the  poems  attributed  to  Caed- 
mon,  four  in  number,  three  of  which  are  paraphrases  of  the  books  of 
Genesis,  Exodus,  and  Daniel,  while  the  fourth  is  a  composite  piece 
to  which  the  title  of  Christ  and  Satan  has  been  given ;  and  the  Exeter 
Book,  containing,  besides  IVidsith  and  Deor,  a  poem  or  poems  on 
Christ,  others  on  Azariah  (one  of  the  Three  Children),  St.  Guthlac, 
and  St.  Jidiana,  a  large  collection  of  verse-riddles,  and  not  a  few 
smaller  poems,  sacred  and  profane,  the  complete  list  being  given  in  a 
note.^  The  fourth,  called  the  Vercelli  Book,  from  its  rather  unex- 
pected place  of  discovery  sixty  years  ago,  gives  among  Homilies  a 
variant  of  one  of  the  poems  (the  Address  of  the  Soul  to  the  Body)  in 
the  Exeter  Book,  two  very  interesting  Lives  of  Saints,  St.  Andrew  and 
St.  Helena,  the  Dream  of  the  Rood,  which  is  at  least  of  the  highest 
interest  as  a  puzzle,  a  short  poem  on  the  Fates  of  the  Apostles,  and 
a  fragment  on  Human  Falsehood. 

Some  notice  of  the  more  remarkable  contents  and  characteristics 
of  these  poems  will  be  given  presently.  As  to  their  authorship, 
which  has  been  much  discussed,  we  practically  know  nothing  whatever 

i  First  come  a  score  of  pieces  arranged  by  the  Germans  and  Mr.  Gollancz,  as 
Christ;  then  Guthlac,  Azarias,  The  Fhcenix,  Juliana,  The  Wanderer,  The  Endow- 
vients  of  Men,  A  Father's  Instruction,  The  Seafarer,  A  Monitory  Poem,  IVidsith 
("TheSc&p"),  The  Fortunes  of  Men,  Gnomic  Verses,  Wonders  of  Creation,  The 
Rhyming  Poem,  The  Panther,  The  Whale,  The  Soul  to  the  Body,  Dear,  Riddles 
(in  three  batches),  The  Exile's  Complaint,  A  Fragment  (sometimes  interpreted 
differently),    'J he  Ruin,  and  a  few  minor  pieces. 


CHAP.  II  C^DMON,   CYNEWULF,   ETC.  Ii 

about  it  in  any  case.     But  the  Venerable  Bede,  in  a  charmingly  told 
and  commonly  known  story,  has  related  how  a  certain  Caedmon,  who 
towards  the  end   of  the  seventh  century  was    a   servant 
of  the  monastery  of  Whitby,  under  the  great  abbess  Hilda,  and 

having  had  to  leave  festive  meetings  owing  to  his  inability  Cynewulf. 
to  use  and  accompany  with  song  the  harp  which  was  handed  round, 
was  miraculously  inspired  to  write  sacred  poetry.  And  the  contents 
of  the  Junian  MS.  were,  from  the  first  attention  paid  to  it  in  Milton's 
days,  identified  with  this,  while  much  later  the  discovery  on  the 
Ruthwell  Cross,  some  miles  from  Dumfries,  of  the  words  "  Casdmon 
made  me,"  forming  part  of  a  Runic  inscription  (the  rest  of  which 
coincided  pretty  closely  with  part  of  the  Dream  of  the  Rood  above 
mentioned),  was  for  a  time  thought  to  confirm  the  idea.  Again, 
examiners  of  the  poetry  of  the  Exeter  and  Vercelli  Books  found  in 
some  of  them  Runic  charades  or  acrostics  which  compose  the  name 
'*  Cynewulf ;  and  out  of  these  dead  runes  a  great  poet  who  wrote 
not  merely  the  poems  in  which  they  appear  but  others  has  been 
resolutely  manufactured  and  equipped  with  a  life,  sentiments,  and 
experiences  extracted  by  critical  imagination  from  the  poems  in  ques- 
tion. Further,  the  work  formerly  attributed  to  Ctcdmon  has  been 
taken  to  pieces  with  the  usual  industry  and  dexterity  of  the  Sepa- 
ratists, and  a  considerable  portion  of  it  heaped  upon  Cynewulf,  with 
the  corresponding  industry  and  dexterity  of  the  Agglomerators ; 
the  Dreatn  of  the  Hood  has  been  confidently  assigned  to  the  new 
favourite ;  and  the  poems  in  general  have  been  divided  into  A's  and 
B's,  credited  or  debited  with  interpolations,  dated,  redated,  and 
undated.  In  particular,  much  stress  has  been  laid  on  the  recent  dis- 
covery of  corresponding  Old-Saxon  fragments  of  a  Genesis  version  in 
the  Vatican. 

But  with  these  things  we  do  not  busy  ourselves.  The  testimony 
of  so  trustworthy  a  historian  as  Bede  establishes  the  existence  of  a 
Whitby  poet  named  Caedmon,  who,  miraculously  or  otherwise,  dis- 
played sudden  and  unexpected  faculties  for  song,  and  composed  poems 
on  the  Creation  and  several  other  Biblical  subjects  before  the  end  of 
the  seventh  century.  The  Ruthwell  Cross  ^  and  a  leliquary  preserved 
at  Brussels  show  phrases  and  passages  taken,  or  very  slightly  altered, 
from  the  Dream  of  the  Rood.    From  the  well-ascertained  historical  facts 

iThis  extremely  interesting  monument  is  now  well  ca\ed  for  and  enshrined 
conveniently  for  inspection  in  an  apse  built  for  it  in  Ruthwell  Parish  Church.  It 
was  ordered  for  destruction  in  the  evil  days  of  the  seventeerah  century  (1642),  but 
only  broken  into  three  pieces  and  left  in  the  churchyard,  where  it  remained  till 
1802.  It  was  then  set  up  in  the  manse  garden,  and  in  1887  put  in  its  present 
place.  There  is  a  facsimile  of  the  cross  (which  is  nearly  18  feet  high,  and  may 
date  from  the  end  of  the  seventh  century)  in  the  Museum  of  Science  and  Art, 
Edinburgh. 


12  PRELIMINARIES   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  i 

of  the  superiority  of  Nortliern  to  Southern  culture,  and  of  the  complete, 
or  almost  complete,  destruction  of  both,  but  especially  the  former, 
by  the  Danish  fury  at  the  end  of  the  eighth  century  and  later,  it  is 
reasonable  to  conclude  that  these  poems  were  written  in  Northumbria, 
and  before  800.  But  of  the  exact  date  and  the  exact  authorship  of 
no  one  of  them  can  anything  be  said  to  be  certainly  known ;  and  if 
the  rune-charade  of  Cynewulf  is  correctly  deciphered,  this  signature 
cannot  be  accepted  as  going  more  than  a  very  little  way  to  establish 
even  the  most  shadowy  personality.  As  for  their  autobiographic 
character,  it  will  be  time  to  take  this  seriously  when  it  is  shown 
that  the  author  of  Maud,  who,  it  may  be  pointed  out,  certainly  did 
visit  Brittany  like  its  hero,  also  shot  his  beloved's  brother  in  a  duel, 
and  passed  some  time  in  a  madhouse  afterwards. 

We  are  therefore  left  with  the  poems  themselves,  and  they  will 
afford  us  quite  sufficiently  interesting  study.  In  the  all-important 
point  of  prosodic  form  they  resemble  those  mentioned  in  the  last 
chapter,  except  that  in  some  at  least  the  alliteration  is  still  more 
precisely  managed ;  while  in  others,  especially  in  the  poems  first 
attributed  to  Csedmon,  the  line  is  almost  indefinitely  extended  at 
times  by  the  admission  of  unaccented  syllables,  so  that  it  becomes 
more  impossible  than  ever  to  adjust  the  whole  to  any  rhythmical 
swing  tunable  to  modern  ears.  Even  the  comparatively  rudimentary 
metrical  nisus  of  Deor  does  not  seem  to  have  agitated  any  of  these 
singers,  and  if  it  were  not  for  the  accented  and  alliterative  syllables, 
the  whole  would  bear  the  appearance  of  embryonic  rhythraed  prose, 
for  which  it  was  actually  taken  until  the  scheme  of  Anglo-Saxon 
prosody  was  discovered. 

Of  their  subjects,  and  of  the  extent  to  which  they  display  such 
non-metrical  properties  of  poetry  as  phrase,  arrangement,  and  poetic 
spirit,  there  is  naturally  more  to  be  said.  In  regard  to  subject,  they 
may  be  divided  into  three  groups,  —  the  directly  sacred  poems  with  a 
fringe  of  allegorical  verse,  in  which  the  fantastic  zoology  of  the  Dark 
and  Middle  Ages  is  adjusted  not  unhapjaily  to  religious  use ;  a  very 
small  but  very  precious  body  of  poetry  without  a  purpose,  or  with 
only  a  subordinate  one ;  and  a  miscellaneous  collection  of  riddles, 
charms,  gnomic  verses,  and  "  oddments "  of  different  kinds.  The 
last  group  is  chiefly,  if  not  wholly,  interesting  to  the  philologist  and 
the  student  of  manners  and  civilisation,  though  some  of  the  riddles 
have  not  a  little  poetical  merit ;  the  others  are  of  wider  appeal. ^ 

1  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  in  translation  is  best  represented  by  a  very  close  render- 
ing, stave  for  stave,  with  the  words  kept  as  far  as  possible  and  their  order  like- 
wise. Straightforward  modern  prose  may  come  next;  any  modern  English  verse- 
form  last,  the  resemblances  and  the  differences  of  language  and  rhythm  ahke 
making  it  dangerously  misrepresentative. 


CHAP.  II  C^DMON,   CYNEWULF,   ETC.  13 

The  sacred  poems  may  again  be  subdivided  into  three  classes, — 
paraphrases  from  the  Scriptures  or  poems  directly  based  on  them, 
Lives  of  Saints,  and  miscellaneous  devotional  work. 

Of  the  first  subdivision,  the  chief  interest,  if  not  the  chief  merit, 
belongs  to  the  Csdmonian  Genesis  and  Exodus,  especially  to  the 
passages  in  the  former  which  respectively  bring  to  mind  the 
Bede  story,  and  the  supposed  indebtedness  of  Milton  in  'pj,g  Scriptural 
Paradise  Lost  to  the  eldest  of  his  poetical  forefathers,  poems. 
with  whose  work  he  might  actually  have  been  acquainted 
through  his  friend  Junius  the  editor.  With  regard  to  the  first 
point,  no  actual  English  equivalent  of  Bede's  Latin  abstract  or 
paraphrase  (he  warns  us  that  it  is  only  this)  occurs  in  Caedmon ; 
but  there  is  in  one  MS.  of  the  History  a  very  old  and  possibly 
original  Northumbrian  version,  transHterated  into  West  Saxon  in 
King  Alfred's  English  Bede.  Neither  of  these  agrees  in  wording 
with  the  opening  of  the  so-called  Genesis  A,  but  the  meaning  is 
sufficiently  near  to  suggest  different  wordings  of  the  same  original 
draft.  As  for  the  Miltonic  parallels,  some  of  which  are  extraor- 
dinarily close,  they  come  chiefly  but  not  wholly  from  the  other 
part  or  Genesis  B,  where  the  paraphrast  is  drawing  on  apocryphal 
or  mediaeval  legend  (and  himself)  for  a  description  of  the  sufferings 
of  the  Fallen  Angels.  Both  parts  of  Genesis  and  Exodus  have,  when 
the  subject  gives  opportunities,  bursts  of  poetry  by  no  means  con- 
temptible, and  by  no  means  wholly  due  to  the  original ;  and  the  first 
named  is  a  poem  very  considerable  in  bulk.  It  runs,  taking  it  as  a 
whole,  to  nearly  3000  lines,  of  which  not  a  few  are  of  enormous  length. 
Exodus  (the  best  part  of  which  is  naturally  the  crossing  of  the  Red 
Sea)  has  not  quite  600.  Of  the  others,  Daniel  has  seldom  been 
praised ;  Christ  and  Satan,  which  includes  a  fine  description  of  that 
very  favourite  subject  the  Harrowing  of  Hell  (interesting  as  possibly 
the  first  to  compare  with  Langland's,  certainly  the  best  in  any  like 
poetic  dress),  is  much  better. 

About  Judith   doctors   differ   much,  and    its   authorship   is   sheer 
guess.     We  have  only  the  end  of  it,  but   that,  giving  in   some   350 
lines  the  slaughter  of  Holofernes  and  the  triumph  of  the 
Jews,  is  the  most  interesting  part   of  a   story  wliich    has 
generally  inspired  both  pen  and  pencil  well,  and  which  certainly  does 
not  fail  to  do  so  here. 

The   Cynewulfian   poem,   or  group   of    poems,   which    opens    the 
Exeter  Book,  and  which  it  is  for  the  present  the  fashion  to  call  Christ, 
certainly  contains  fine  passages,  the  finest  being  inspired 
by  that   fruitful  parent  of  mediaeval  poetry  the  adoration        '^     "^"  " 
of  the   Cross.     In   Mr.    Gollancz's   arrangement   it   has    nearly    1700 
lines. 


14  PRELIMINARIES  OF  ENGLISH   LITERATURfe        book  i 


Of  the  four  important  Lives  of  Saints,  —  Andreas,  Elene,  Guthlac, 
Juliana,  —  all  ascribed  by  some  to  Cynewulf,  the  palm  may  lie  between 
the  first  and  the  third.  Andreas  is  a  legend  of  St. 
Saint"  °  Andrew,  tellino;  how  he  was  miraculously  inspired  and 
miraculously  helped  to  cross  the  sea  in  order  to  release 
St.  Matthew  from  prison  in  "  Mermedonia "  ;  how  he  succeeded,  and 
how  he  punished  the  violence  of  the  heathen  to  himself.  The  stormy 
voyage,  always  a  favourite  subject  with  Anglo-Saxon  bards,  and  the 
rage  of  the  elements  on  the  doomed  heathen  city  are  fine  passages. 
St.  Guthlac  has  perhaps  fewer  lines  of  the  "  show "  variety ;  but  the 
description  of  Guthlac's  conflict  in  his  loneliness  with  the  powers  of 
evil,  and  that  of  his  death,  are  curiously  fascinating,  and  worth  com- 
paring with  Si.  Simeon  Stylites.  Elene  (the  English  saint  St.  Helena, 
mother  of  Constantine  and  finder  of  the  Cross)  has  admirers  ;  Juliana 
fewer,  owing  to  a  long  and  rather  tedious  wrangle  between  the  saint 
and  a  fiend  who  is  sent  to  temjjt  her.  But  the  recurrence  of  the 
name  "Juliana"  as  a  hemistich  by  itself,  and  in  apposition  rather 
than  as  direct  object  or  subject,  has  almost  a  refrain  effect,  and  soothes 
the  ear  marvellously.  Indeed,  though  only  occurring  now  and  then, 
and  on  no  system,  it  produces  an  effect  not  unlike  that  of  the  similar 
word  "  Oriana "  in  Tennyson's  poem.  The  short  Fates  oj  the 
Apostles  has  little  merit,  but,  as  it  is  signed,  some  have  wished  to 
tack  it  on  to  the  imsigned  Andreas  —  a  process  slightly  suggestive  of 
what  is  said  to  be  occasionally  practised  on  violins. 

In  so  far  as  positive  poetic  beauty  goes,  the  third  subdivision, 
small  as  it  is  in  bulk,  has  no  reason  to  fear  comparison  with  either 
of  the  others.  The  Dream  oJ  the  Rood  has,  like  Genesis,  the  adven- 
titious interest  of  its  connection  with  the  Ruthwell  Cross 
°'poems"^'^  inscription,  but  could  do  without  it.  The  Rood  itself 
speaks,  and  speaks  to  the  purpose.  The  Address  of  the 
Soul  to  the  Body,  existing  in  two  parts, ^  the  speakers  being  respec- 
tively a  cursed  soul  and  a  blessed  one,  is  the  earliest  of  a  long  line ;  - 
and  the  speech  of  the  reprobate  has  that  peculiar  grimness  which 
is  one  of  the  most  unquestionable  gifts  of  Anglo-Saxon  verse.  The 
Phoenix,  the  Panther,  and  the  IVhalc,  adaptations  of  Latin  verse  or 
prose  in  the  allegorical  "  bestiary "  kind,  are  all  fine,  and  the  first 
has  a  famous  and  really  exquisite  passage,  one  of  the  few  in  this 
poetry  to  which  the  word  can  be  applied,  describing,  after  Lactantius, 
the  beauties  of  paradise.  "The  Phoenix"  itself,  of  course,  is  Christ; 
as    is    the    "  Panther,"    the    sweet-breathed,   lonely,    harmless    beast ; 

1  The  first  occurs  in  the  Exeter  and  in  the  Vercelli  Books ;  the  second  only  in 
the  latter. 

2  See  the  interesting  collection  in  the  Appendix  of  T.  Wright's  Poems  of  Walter 
Mapes  (Camden  Society,  1841). 


CHAP,  n  C.^DMON,   CYNEWULF,    ETC.  15 

while  the  "  Whale  "  (based  upon  the  well-known  Greek-Eastern  story 
of  sailors  landing  on  the  whale's  back)  is  the  Devil  or  Hell.  These, 
as  well  as  a  mere  fragment  believed  to  be  part  of  a  similar  poem  on 
the  Partridge,  evidently  came  from  some  earlier  Greek  or  Latin 
Physiologus  or  collection  of  zoological  allegories ;  of  the  P/icenix,  the 
original,  by  or  attributed  to  Lactantius,  is,  as  has  been  said,  known. 
It  is  quite  a  long  poem  of  nearly  700  lines ;  th^  others  are  much 
shorter. 

The  small  group  of  secular  poems  above  referred  to  is  of  much 
greater  interest,  not  at  all  because  of  any  general  or  necessary 
superiority  of  profane  to  secular  poetry  —  a  point  upon  which  two 
such  great  and  dissimilar  critics  as  Dr.  Johnson  and 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  seem  to  have  been  led  wrong  by  Secular 
different  but  equally  fatal  fallacies  —  but  because,  the 
poems  being  in  all  probability  original  instead  of  pretty  certainly 
translated  or  paraphrased,  we  can  see  much  better  what  the  real 
strength  of  the  poets  was.  The  Ruin,  the  Wanderer,  the  Seafarer, 
the  (so-called)  Wife's  Complaint,  the  (so-called)  Husband's  Message, 
make  a  very  small  bundle  of  verse.  Even  in  the  Grein-Wiil(c)ker 
edition,  with  editorial  apparatus,  corrected  versions  of  te.xt,  and  the 
like,  they  do  not  fill  thirty  pages ;  yet,  for  these  thirty,  one  could 
cheerfully  resign  almost  all  but  the  few  just  named  passages  of  the 
sacred  books  (with  perhaps  a  riddle  or  two)  of  the  poetry  mentioned 
in  this  chapter.  For  they  are  real  documents ;  it  is  excessively 
unlikely  that  they  had  any  originals  in  another  language,  and  if  they 
had,  we  at  least  do  not  possess  these  originals.  Even  "common 
form "  was  not,  so  far  as  we  know,  furnished  to  them  by  any  prede- 
cessors, as  it  inevitably  was  to  homilists  and  hagiographers,  practi- 
tioners of  sacred  allegory,  and  paraphrasers  of  the  Scriptures.  Here, 
and  perhaps  here  only,  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  shows  what  it  could  do 
with  a  commonplace  —  the  best  subjects  of  poetry  are  all  common- 
places—  but  without  a  common  form;  and  it  comes  out  of  the  test 
with  no  small  credit. 

The  best  of  the  five  is  in  my  judgment  beyond  all  question  the 
Ruin.  Indeed,  I  do  not  know  any  other  Anglo-Saxon  poem  which 
in  conception,  composition,  and  expression  so  nearly  deserves  the 
name  of  a  masterpiece.  As  we  have  it,  it  is  in  a  state 
which  strangely  corresponds  to  its  title  and  subject  —  a  ^  """' 
broken  mass  of  some  five  and  thirty  lines,  which  the  painful 
ingenuity  of  editors  has  got  into  about  five  and  forty,  rather  more 
regular  in  some  parts,  but  much  wounded  in  others.  Conjecture 
thinks  that  it  may  have  been  originally  intended  for  the  wreck,  after 
Saxon  devastation,  of  no  less  a  Roman  colony  tlian  Bath  ;  there  is, 
at  least,  nothing  contrary  to  reason  in  accepting  it  as  relating  to  one 


i6  PRELIMINARIES   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE        book  i 

or  other  of  the  many  stately  creations  of  the  first  invaders  which  were 
reduced  to  ruin  by  the  second.  The  corruption  of  the  text  makes  a 
certain  rendering  practically  impossible.  But  nothing  can  obscure 
the  genuineness  of  its  poetry,  or  (as  it  seems  to  me)  its  enormous 
superiority  to  the  possibly  contemporary  Welsh  lament  over  the 
destruction  of  Uriconium  with  which  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  rather 
unfavourably  compares  it.  The  Welsh  piece  shows  a  further  advance 
in  poetical  form,  more  cliches  ready  for  use,  more  tricks  of  trade  and 
manners  of  behaviour.  The  English  shows  actual  poetry.  Perhaps 
the  deepest  and  noblest  of  all  emotions,  not  merely  personal  and 
sensual,  the  feeling  for  the  things  that  are  long  enough  ago,  finds 
expression,  and  worthy  expression,  as  the  poet  looks  on  the  masonry 
shattered  by  fate,  the  crumbling  mortar  gemmed  with  hoar-frost,  as 
he  imagines  the  once  stately  heights  reduced  to  ruinous  heaps,  the 
warriors,  high  of  heart  and  bloody  of  hand  (for  though  Shakespeare 
never  knew  the  Ruin,  we  may  borrow  his  phrase),  who  sat  there  long 
ago,  the  hot  baths  (this  is  the  ground  for  the  identification  with  Bath) 
boiling  in  their  lake-like  cistern,  the  busy  market-place  silent,  the 
merry  mead-halls  overwhelmed  by  the  fiat  of  Destiny.  He  could  see, 
this  poet  of  the  Ruin,  and  he  could  tell  what  he  saw.  We  shall 
hardly  come  to  any  one  like  him  for  several  hundred  years  in 
England. 

The    majority    of    critics,    I    believe,   assign   higher   rank   to   the 

Wanderer  and  the  Seafarer.     The  Wanderer  also  contains  a  passage 

of  merit  about  a  ruin,  but  is  chiefly  a  study  of  "  Weird "   (Fate  or 

Destiny),  and  the  way  in  which  a  man  is  "  hurled   from 

Wanderer    change    to    change   unceasingly,   his    souPs    wings  never 

and  furled"  —  as  the  most  Saxon  of  nineteenth-century  Eng- 

Seajarer.  ■  ,  ,  ,         ,  ./  o 

lish  poets  has  it  —  his  comradeships  incessantly  broken, 
and  only  the  Weird  constant  in  its  inconstancy.  The  idea  of  the 
poem  is  undoubtedly  fine,  and  its  lines  give  fair  scope ;  but  that 
poetic  imagery  which  is  so  great  a  part  of  poetry  seems  to  me 
not  so  well  managed  as  in  the  Ruin.  The  Seafarer,  longer  still, 
and  perhaps  composite,  is  a  much  more  difficult  poem,  as  may  be 
guessed  from  the  fact  that  the  critics  are  not  agreed  whether  it  is  a 
monological  reflection  upon  its  subject  or  a  dialogue  between  an 
old  sailor  and  a  young  sailor,  or  only  colourably  occupied  with  sea- 
faring at  all,  its  real  purport  being  an  allegory  of  human  life.  It 
may  be  observed  that  this  last  interpretation,  which  seems  to  me 
much  the  most  probable,  is  only  to  be  avoided  by  the  device,  at 
once  easy  and  violent,  of  supposing  the  close  of  the  poem  to  be  a 
Christian  forgery,  or  at  least  addition.  The  chief  literary  merit  of 
the  piece  is  to  be  found  in  the  earlier  part,  where  the  description 
of  a  wintry  storm  at  sea,  attributed  by  some  to  the  old  sailor,  has 


CHAP.  II  C^DMON,   CYNEWULF,   ETC.  17 

much  of  the  merit  already  noted  in  Anglo-Saxon  handlings  of  this 
subject. 

The  remaining  pair,  the  so-called  Wife's  Complaint  and  Husband^s 
or  Lover^'s  Message,  have  a  more  personal  note  than  the  others.  The 
first  appears  ^  to  some  to  be  the  utterance,  real  or  dramatic,  of  a 
woman  who  has  been  falsely  accused  and  banished  from  her  hus- 
band's presence.  The  second  is  an  agreeable  piece,  in  which,  with 
a  pleasant  seventeenth-century  touch,  the  wooden  tablet  bearing  the 
lines  of  the  message  is  made  (like  the  "  book "  addressed  by  later 
singers)  itself  to  carry  the  tale  to  the  beloved  (or  at  least  addressed) 
one.  Neither  is  long,  but  both  have  an  unpretentious  and  sincere 
feeling,  if  not  exactly  passion,  and  both  stand  interestingly  at  the 
head  of  a  class  of  similar  poems,  in  which  English  has  since  been 
richer  than  all  other  languages  put  together.  They  date  too  from  a 
period  long  antecedent  to  that  of  either  troubadour  or  minnesinger. 

The  arrest  of  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  by  the  Danish  fury  seems  to 
have  been  very  nearly  total.  The  verse,  other  than  mere  sacred 
paraphrases,  w-hirh  we  have  of  a  later  date  than  Alfred  is  but  scanty 
even  in  total  bulk,  and  only  four  pieces  of  it  can  be  said  to  have  much 
literary  attraction,  though,  curiously  enough,  two  of  these  are  much 
better  known  than  any  of  the  older  and  better  work.  These  are  the 
short  poem  inserted  in  the  Chronicle  (rude  infra),  on  the  triumph  of 
Athelstan  at  Brunanburgh  over  the  Scots  and  Danes,  and  the  very  late, 
gloomy,  but  fine  Grave  Poem  familiar  to  almost  every  Englishman 
who  cares  for  poetry,  with  its  beginning,  "  For  thee  was  a  house 
built."  ■•^  In  this  latter  the  idea  and  the  grim,  direct  uncompromis- 
ing delivery  of  it  are  the  chief  merits.  The  Brunanburgh  poem, 
though  a  spirited  war-song,  perhaps  attracted  more  attention  by  its 
setting  of  the  stock  Anglo-Saxon  reference  to  the  raven,  eagle,  and 
wolf,  "  that  grey  beast  the  wolf  of  the  weald,"  as  spoilers  of  the  dead, 
than  would  have  been  the  case  if  the  earlier  examples  from  Beowulf 
and  the  Finnsburg  poem  downwards  had  been  known. 

Of  the  two  remaining  pieces,  one  has  the  attraction  of  subject,  the 
other  that  of  form.  The  Battle  of  Maldon  or  the  Death  of  Byrhtnoth 
has  a  less  happy  subject  (a  defeat  not  a  victory)  than  the  Brunanburgh 
piece,  but   it    is    more   genuine,  contemporary,  and   fresh.     The    pro- 

1  It  ought  perhaps  to  be  said  that  the  usual  interpretations  of  these  pieces  are 
more  than  half  guesswork.  There  is  really  nothing  in  what  Thorpe  more  pru- 
dently calls  The  Exile's  Coviplahit  to  identify  the  speaker  as  a  wife,  nor  any- 
thing in  the  other  piece  (his  as  prudently  named  Fraginoit)  to  point  to  a 
husband  or  even  lover. 

2  Text  in  Guest,  English  Rhythms,  and  ed.  p.  369,  or  in  Thorpe's  Analecta, 
ed.  i868,  p.  153.  Longfellow  translated  it  not  long,  I  think,  after  Conybeare  first 
made  it  known.  It  is  thought  to  be  as  late  as  the  twelfth  century,  and  shows  signs 
of  metrical  influence  in  its  rhythm. 

c 


i8  PRELIMINARIES  OF  ENGLISH   LITERATURE         book  i 

duction  known  as  the  Rhyming  Poem,  or  Conybeare's  Rhyming 
Poem,  is  found  in  the  Exeter  Book.  This,  though  far  inferior  in 
intrinsic  and  poetical  interest,  has  great  historical  importance.  It  is 
probably  a  Biblical  paraphrase,  like  so  many  others,  and  as  it  is  in 
the  Exeter  Book,  it  must  be  as  old  at  least  as  the  tenth  century,  or 
the  very  earliest  eleventh.  Now,  not  merely  at  that  time,  but  much 
later,  Anglo-Saxon  was  rebel  to  rhyme  ;  ^  even  two  hundred  years  after, 
in  Layamon,  the  appearances  of  that  instrument  are  but  occasional 
and  very  rudimentary.  In  the  Rhyming  Poem,  however,  though  there 
is  still  alliteration,  and  the  general  structure  of  the  lines  is  not  very 
different  from  the  staple  of  Anglo-Saxon  verse,  they  are  arranged  in 
couplets,  or  sometimes  even  larger  groups,  not  merely  tipped  with  end 
rhymes,  but  endowed  with  leonine  or  middle  rhymes  as  well.  Some- 
times the  rhyme  is  not  much  more  than  assonance,  but  oftener  it  is 
full  rhyme,  and  not  seldom  it  adopts  the  kind  which  later  English 
poetry  discourages,  though  it  is  allowed  in  other  languages,  the  actual 
repetition  of  the  same  complete  words  or  group  of  letters,  onwrah, 
onwrah,  hiwum,  hiwum,  etc.  Once  there  is  a  batch  of  seven  lines 
with  the  same  rhyme  —  ade,  varied  a  little  by  ide  and  ede  —  in  the 
middle  and  at  the  end  of  each  ;  in  another  place  one  of  five  lines 
similarly  equipped  with  words  in  iteth ;  and  sometimes  the  couplet 
shrinks  to  a  single  line  with  leonine  adjustment.  Of  course  this  is 
inartistic  and  overdone :  the  poet  is  thinking  so  much  of  his  new  toy 
of  rhyme  that  he  has  not  much  time  to  think  of  his  poetry.  But  he 
is  ahead  of  his  fellows  by  two  centuries  if  not  by  three,  and  that  is 
something  and  much.^ 

1  There  were,  however,  other  outbreaks,  or  rather  z'wbreaks  of  it.  See  espe- 
cially the  remarkable  verse-fragment  in  the  Chronicle  (A.  1036,  edited  in  Grein- 
Wul(c)ker,  i.  384-85),  describing  Godwin's  outrages  on  the  "guiltless  etheling" 
Alfred  and  his  men. 

2  This  tour  de  force,  whith  is  only  partially  intelligible,  and  in  which  there 
is  good  reason  to  suppose  the  invention  of  words  for  the  purpose,  has  been  thought 
to  be  imitated  from  Icelandic.  A  few  things  of  little  literary  interest  —  para- 
phrases of  the  Psalms,  a  dialogue  of  Solomon  and  Saturnus,  a  piece  on  Dooms- 
day, etc.  —  complete  the  tale  of  Anglo-Saxon  poetry. 


CHAPTER    III 


ANGLO-SAXON   PROSE 


The   works   of    King  Alfred — The   Doethius — The    Orosius  —  The  Bede  —  The 
Pastoral  Care — Th&  Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle  —  Elfric — Wulfstan 

The  prose  division  of  Anglo-Saxon  literature  is  of  less  literary  interest 
than  the  verse ;  but  it  is  more  abundant  in  quantity,  and  it  is  not 
separated  from  the  later  developments  of  the  language  by  any  such 
sharp  gulf  as  that  which  cuts  off  the  prosody  and  rhythm  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  from  the  prosody  and  rhythm  of  English.  We  maj^,  indeed, 
observe  in  it  that  curious,  yet,  when  considered,  very  far  from  unin- 
telligible combination  of  earliness  and  immaturity,  rapid  development 
up  to  a  certain  point  and  inability  to  go  beyond  that  point,  which 
meet  us  in  the  poetry ;  but  there  is  not  the  bar  to  any  further  devel- 
opment which  existed  in  that  case. 

In  all  languages  poetry  as  literature  comes  before  prose,  the 
immortal  jest  of  Moliere  owing  its  piquancy  to  exactly  this,  that 
though  prose  is  more  obviously  natural  to  man  in  conversation,  he 
never,  till  after  considerable  experience,  seems  to  understand  that  it  is 
fit  to  be  made  a  medium  of  recorded  thought  or  formal  writing.  But 
it  would  appear  that  it  was,  in  Anglo-Saxon,  pretty  early.  Professor 
Earle  speaks^  of  *•  obscure  but  well-evidenced  remains  of  the  fifth  and 
sixth  centuries,"  but  as  so  enthusiastic  an  authority  does  not  himself 
dwell  much  on  these,  or  on  the  laws  of  Ina  attributed  to  the  seventh, 
we  may  afford  to  pass  them  over.  It  is  in  the  eighth  century  that 
Mr.  Earle  claims  something  like  literary  competency  for  the  earliest 
English  prose,  and  the  examples  which  he  chooses  are  a  deed  cf 
remission  of  port  dues  by  King  Ethelbald  of  Mercia,  and  the  some- 
what famous  passage  of  the  Saxon  Clironicle  relating  the  death  of 
King  Cynewulf  (^not  the  poet),  the  first  of  these  dating  a  little  before 
and  the  second  a  little  after  the  very  middle  of  the  eighth  century 
itself.     With  the  later  passage,  too,  Mr.  Sweet  begins  the  prose  speci- 

1  English  Prose,  London,  1890,  p.  370, 
«9 


20  PRELIMINARIES   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE         book  i 

mens  in  his  Anglo-Saxon  Reader,  ^  and  it  seems  to  be  generally  allowed 
the  position  of  the  earliest  distinctly  spirited  piece  of  prose  *  literary 
composition  in  the  language. 

To  such  spirit,  or,  in  other  words,  to  the  motive  power  of  sty  ley 
laws,  title-deeds,  and  similar  documents  can,  in  the  very  nature  of 
the  case,  seldom  lay  claim.  It  would,  in  fact,  be  decidedly  out  of 
place  in  them,  and  the  bare  enumerations,  specifications,  common 
forms  of  legal  and  other  speech,  etc.,  which  they  contain  could  be  of 
little  illustrative  use,  even  if  they  were  not,  as  in  most  cases  they  may 
be  suspected  to  be,  pretty  closely  copied  from  Latin  originals.  But 
.the  story  of  the  attack  made  by  the  atheling  Cyneheard  on  the  King 
Cynewulf,  when  the  latter  had  imprudently  left  most  of  his  guard 
behind  while  visiting  a  lady-love,  gives  better  opportunities.  The 
incident  is  told  at  no  great  length,  and  without  much  personal  char- 
acterisation, except  in  the  notable  answer  of  the  thanes  to  Cyne- 
heard's  offers  of  bribes  and  arguments  from  kinship,  that  "  no  kinsman 
was  dearer  to  them  than  their  lord,  and  they  never  would  follow 
his  bane."  Except  that  the  piece  seems  contemporary,  one  would 
imagine  a  rough  prose  "unrhyming"  of  some  ballad  or  romance. 
But  if  we  are  to  consider  the  thing  as  prose  merely,- it  may  give  us 
some  pause  to  find  that  of  the  two  authorities  above  cited,  Mr.  Sweet, 
though  giving  it  the  high  distinction  of  being  "  by  far  the  oldest 
historical  prose  in  any  Teutonic  language,"  thinks  the  style  "of  the 
rudest  character  .  .  .  abrupt,  disconnected,  obscure,  and  full  of 
anacolutha,"  while  Professor  Earle  discerns,  and  thinks  that  every 
one  must  discern,  the  evidence  of  "a  literary  tradition  already  of 
mature  standing,"  and  "a  syntax  not  more  rugged  than  that  of 
Thucydides. "  Thucydides  has,  of  course,  a  sort  of  traditional 
repute  for  crabbed  syntax,  so  that  the  eulogy  is,  after  all,  not 
unqualified. 

By  the  next  century  (the  ninth),  however,  there  is  no  doubt  about 
the  plentiful  production  and  the  at  least  relative  accomplishment  of 
Anglo-Saxon  prose.  Of  the  three  writers  of  it  who  alone  may  be 
said  to  have  a  personal  reputation,  King  Alfred,  Elfric,  and  Archbishop 
Wulfstan,  the  first  belongs  to  this  century,  the  last  third  of  which  was 
covered  by  his  glorious  and  beneficent  reign.  The  Saxon  Chronicle, 
in  its  continuous  and  fairly  accomplished  shape,  may  be  a  little  older 
than  Alfred  himself,  though  it  is  thought  to  have  taken  final  form 
under  him.  The  King  and  the  Chronicle  will  at  any  rate  well  deserve 
separate  and  independent  notice. 

Alfred's  works  are,  with  the  exception  of  some  original  insertions, 
wholly  translation  —  indeed,  as  we  have  seen  with  the  verse,  so  we 

1  Oxford,  7th  ed.  1894, 


CHAP.  Ill  ANGLO-SAXON   PROSE  21 

shall  see  with  the  prose,  and  to  an  even  larger  extent,  that  the  merit  of 
originality  in  matter  is  about  the  last  that  Anglo-Saxon  as  a  literature 
can  claim.  But  in  the  special  circumstances  this  makes 
far  more  for  the  King's  honour  than  for  his  dishonour.  King^A^fred. 
His  literary  work  was  in.spired  aot  by  any  desire  of  fame, 
nor  by  any  need  of  satisfying  a  peremptory  personal  craving  to  write, 
but  wholly  and  solely  by  the  wish  to  benefit  his  people,  to  do  some- 
thing that  might  help  England  out  of  the  slough  of  barbarism  into 
which  she  had  been  plunged  by  the  Danish  ravages  and  the  efforts 
necessary  to  check  them.  To  this  end  it  would  have  been  not 
merely  presumptuous,  but,  in  the  circumstances  and  at  the  time,  posi- 
tively silly  to  have  attempted  original  composition,  when  there  was 
plenty  of  good  Latin  work  lying  ready  to  hand.  From  this  Alfred 
selected  a  book  in  what  may  be  called  general  practical  science,  the 
History  and  Geography  of  Orosius ;  one  in  domestic  history,  the 
unrivalled  Ecclesiastical  History  of  Bede ;  the  most  popular  ethi- 
cal and  philosophical  treatise  of  the  Dark  Ages,  the  Consolation  of 
Boethius ;  and  an  ecclesiastical  book,  the  Cura  Pastoralis  of  Pope 
Gregory.  The  first  of  these  is  not  precisely  a  work  of  genius  or  one 
of  much  authority,  but  it  was  a  popular  manual  of  its  day ;  the  second 
and  third  could  hardly  have  been  bettered  for  the  purpose,  inasmuch  as 
they  were  the  work  of  two  men  who  represented  the  best  character 
and  ablest  intellect  of  the  age  immediately  preceding,  and  whose 
thought,  style,  and  tone  were  in  complete  harmony  with  the  spirit  of 
the  actual  age ;  the  fourth  was  a  respectable  book,  well  suited  for  the 
purpose,  and  having  some  special  claim  on  the  attention  of  English- 
men. 

The  most  interesting  of  the  four,i  in  so  far  as  actual  matter  goes, 
IS  the  Orosius,  because  of  the  additions  which  Alfred  made  from  in- 
formation supplied  to  himself;  but  the  most  interesting  as  literature 
is  unquestionably  the  Boethius.  There  are  many  greater 
books  in  the  literature  of  the  world  than  the  De  Con- 
solatione ;  but  there  are  few  that  have  had  a  more  interesting  literary 
history,  and  still  fewer  that  seem  to  have,  with  such  strange  prescience, 
gauged  the  literary  and  philosophical  requirements  not  merely  of  their 
own  time  but  of  times  that  were  to  follow  for  almost  a  millennium. 
One  of  the  first  documents  in  English  prose  is  this  translation  of 
King  Alfred's ;  probably  the  very  first  document  in  the  earliest 
development  of  the  Romance  tongues,  Provencal,  is  the  ver.se-para- 
phrase  which  gives  us  tlic  majestic  if  slightly  monotonous  harmony  of 

1  The  Boethius  and  the  Orosius  are  easily  obtainable  in  Anglo-Saxon  (old- 
printed)  and  Enplish,  in  Hohn's  "Antiquarian  I^ibrary."  The  E.E.TS.  has 
given  critical  editions  of  the  Orosius  and  the  lit-de  and  the  Pastoral  Care.  A 
version  of  St.  Augustine's  Soliloquies  is  probably  also  Alfred's. 


22  PRELIMINARIES  OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE         book  i 

the  langue  d'^oc  a  century  or  two  after  Alfred.  When  Anglo-Saxon 
and  the  Middle  language  have  at  length  given  place  to  complete 
English,  the  most  accomplished  piece  of  prose  that  the  all-accom- 
plished muse  of  Chaucer  admits  among  his  greater  verse  is  again  a 
translation  of  Boethius ;  and  yet  another  translation,  this  time  partial, 
is  attributed  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  at  the  very  time  when  the  far-off 
heralding  of  Alfred,  the  directer  promises  of  Chaucer,  were  about  to 
be  fulfilled. 

As  "the  last  of  the  Romans"  is  not  now  in  every  one's  hands,  it 
may  not  be  superfluous  or  impertinent  to  say  that  Anicius  Manlius 
Severinus  Boethius,  as  his  barbarically  assorted  travesty  of  the  old 
Roman  nomenclature  went,  was  born  somewhere  about  the  beginning 
of  the  last  quarter  of  the  fifth  century.  He  is  said  to  have  studied 
under  Proclus  at  Athens,  which  is  possible,  but  barely  possible,  if  the 
death  of  Proclus  be  taken  at  the  ordinary  date  of  485.  He  attained 
distinction  at  Rome,  and  having  been  consul  in  510,  attracted  the 
notice  of  Theodoric  the  Ostrogoth,  and  was  for  some  time  in  favour 
with  him.  But  being  accused  of  fomenting  or  conniving  at  an  Italian 
conspiracy  against  Gothic  rule,  he  was  imprisoned  at  Ticinum,  and 
brutally  put  to  death  (clubbed,  it  is  said)  in  or  about  524-525.  The 
De  Consolatione  Philosophiae  is  supposed  to  have  been  written  in  prison. 
It  was  not  his  only  contribution  to  mediaeval  knowledge,  for  he 
exercised  an  immense  influence  on  scholastic  logic  by  his  commentaries 
on  Aristotle  and  Porphyry  and  Cicero ;  but  it  was  perhaps  his  most 
popular  and  non-technical.  It  consists  of  a  medley  of  dialogue  be- 
tween Wisdom  and  the  author,  interspersed  with  metrical  insertions. 
Two  versions  of  Alfred's  translation  exist,  in  one  of  which  the  metrical 
portions  are  rendered  into  prose,  while  in  the  other  they  are  versified. 
Although  there  is  difference  of  opinion  on  the  subject,  there  does 
not  seem  to  be  any  insuperable  difficulty  in  admitting  both  forms  as 
authentic,  though  very  likely  the  King  had  help  from  others.  If  the 
"  metres  "  in  their  Anglo-Saxon  form  are  really  his,  they  are  of  the 
greatest  interest  to  the  literary  historian,  because  they  show  that  at 
this  time  Anglo-Saxon  was  proof  against  the  temptations  of  rhyme, 
classical  metre,  and  the  like,  to  which  in  its  enfeebled  Early  Middle 
English  or  "  Semi-Saxon  "  stage  it  afterwards  succumbed.  The  trans- 
lation is  by  no  means  .slavishly  executed ;  indeed,  the  reproach  of 
want  of  originality  against  Anglo-Saxon  generally  is  largely  mitigated 
by  the  fact  that  the  translations  are  much  more  paraphrases  with 
» interpolations  ad  lib.  than  simply  faithful  versions.  It  is  quite  possible 
that  deficient  scholarship  may  to  some  extent  account  for  this  free- 
dom, but  it  would  be  as  uncritical  as  it  would  be  illiberal  to  take  this 
as  the  sole,  even  as  the  chief,  reason.  Alfred's  moral  purpose  in 
the  Boethius,  like  his  scientific  and  practical  purpose  m  the  0?  osius, 


CHAP.  HI  ANGLO-SAXON   PROSE  23 

induced  him  and  authorised  him  not  merely  to  rearrange,  but  to  add 
gloss  and  comment  here  and  there.  It  is  a  pity  that,  in  the  edition 
of  the  Boethius  most  accessible,  a  rhymed  and  sophisticated  English- 
ing by  the  late  Mr.  Martin  Tupper  takes  the  place  of  the  rendering 
into  rhythmical  prose  which  alone  can  give  any  proper  equivalent  for 
Anglo-Saxon  verse  in  modern  English. 

The  Orosius,  it  has  been  said,  has,  or  rather  would  have,  nothing 
like  the  intrinsic  interest  of  the  Boethius,  were  it  not  for  the  insertions, 
which  in  the  Boethius  itself  have  chiefly  the  interest  of  curiosity. 
Paulus  Orosius  was  a  Spanish  priest,  who  was  a  disciple 
of  St.  Augustine's  in  the  second  decade  of  the  fifth 
century,  an  antagonist  of  Pelagius,  and  a  friend  of  St.  Jerome.  He 
wrote,  as  befitted  an  Anti-Pelagian,  a  book  about  free-will,  and  other 
matters ;  but  his  name  has  been  chiefly  preserved  by  the  work  which 
Alfred  translated,  the  Historia  adversus  Paganos,  one  of  the  numerous 
summaries  of  universal  history  which  the  decline  of  classical  times 
and  the  Dark  Ages  saw,  but  differentiated  by  a  special  intention  to 
refute  the  Pagan  argument  that  the  decline  and  fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire  were  due  to  the  neglect  of  the  ancient  deities.  It  is,  for  the 
most  part,  a  mere  compilation  from  previous  compilations,  and  in  no 
part  a  work  of  any  literary  merit ;  but  like  all  books  of  the  kind,  not 
hopelessly  incompetent,  it  has  the  advantage  of  keeping  the  general 
course  of  history  before  the  reader.  It  would,  however,  be  folly  to 
suppose  tliat  Alfred  had  any  philosophical  consideration  of  this  kind 
in  view  when  he  chose  the  book.  It  was  an  orthodox  and  popular 
manual,  it  gave  opportunities  for  insertions  of  a  kind  specially  inter- 
esting to  himself  and  specially  useful  to  his  people,  and  he  took  it 
and  altered  it  accordingly,  displaying,  as  in  the  Boethius,  no  great 
reverence  towards  the  text,  but  in  the  nature  of  the  case  making 
somewhat  smaller  alterations  in  arrangement,  and  rather  fewer  addi- 
tions of  reflection  and  suggestion,  though  in  parts  a  good  deal  more 
reduction  to  the  character  of  an  epitome. 

Tlie  interesting  parts,  to  us,  are  the  insertions  in  the  earlier 
chapters  on  the  geograpliy  of  Northern  Europe,  beginning  "  Othere 
told  his  Lord  King  Alfred,"  and  '•  Wulfstan  said,"  these  being 
either  known,  or  reasonably  taken  to  be,  reports  of  voyages  either  dis- 
tinctly made  under  the  King's  commission,  or  at  any  rate  indicating 
his  desire  for  the  best  and  latest  direct  information.  Othere  tells  of 
a  voyage  to  Lapland  and  the  Wliite  Sea;  Wulfstan  of  an  explora- 
tion of  the  Baltic,  and  especially  of  tlie  Esthonians,  the  folk  about 
the  mouth  of  the  Vistula.  It  should  be  olxserved  tliat  both  the 
liocthiiis  and  the  Orosius  are  abundantly  furnished  with  vernacular 
''contents"  to  facilitate  their  reading  and  understanding  by  the 
people. 


24  PRELIMINARIES   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE         book  i 

Alfred's  translation  of  Bede's  History  has  yet  again  a  different 
kind  of  interest ;  and  to  us  it  is  especially  welcome  because  it  brings 
the  Venerable  one  within  the  compass  of  a  history  of 
English  literature.  Invaluable  as  Bede  in  his  Latin  dress 
is  to  the  historian  proper,  he  would  have  been  dearer  to  the  literary 
historian  if  he  had  lived  a  little  later,  so  that  he  might  have  been 
tempted  to  write  in  the  vernacular.  That  he  could  have  done  so 
there  can  be  no  doubt,  for  he  was.  as  the  famous  and  charming 
description  of  his  death  by  his  reader  Cuthbert  says,  "  learned  in  our 
poetry,"  and  on  his  death-bed  summed  up  the  situation  —  the  vanity 
of  all  knowledge  but  such  as  will  guide  a  man's  soul  right  at  the  last 
—  in  a  memorable  stave  of  five  Anglo-Saxon  verses.  But  in  his 
day  —  he  was  born  in  673,  entered  the  monastery  of  Wearmouth  at 
seven  years  old,  was  soon  transferred  to  that  of  Jarrow,  and  lived  his 
whole  life  there,  dying  in  735  —  it  was  more  important  to  digest 
learning,  both  sacred  and  profane,  in  Latin  for  popular  consumption, 
and  this  Bede  did.  Even  as  it  is,  the  interesting  story  of  Caedmon 
referred  to  above  may  be  said  to  be  the  beginning  of  English  literary 
history,  and  here  Alfred's  translation  (or  another's  if  it  was  not  his)  is 
particularly  important,  because,  while  Bede's  account  is  in  Latin,  it  has 
preserved  to  us  what  may  possibly  be  the  very  words  of  Caedmon's 
actual  inspiration. 

At  any  rate,  the  translation  of  Bede  shows  us  that  Alfred  was 
not  so  anxious  merely  to  instruct  his  people  in  general  and  foreign 
learning  that  he  wished  to  divert  their  attention  from  "  things  of 
England  "  ;  and  it  is  impossible  not  to  take  it  in  conjunction  with  the 
great  enterprise  of  the  Saxon  Chronicle,  of  which,  as  an  aspirant 
to  learning  once  remarked  in  an  examination  (probably  taking  the 
Chronicle  for  a  daily  paper),  "  Alfred  was  editor." 

The  fourth  book  has,  at   the  present  day,  the  least  interest  for  us 

in  itself.     Gregory's  Regula  or  Cura  Pastoralis,  as  far  as  its  intrinsic 

claims   are   concerned,    must   be   studied  in  the  original ;  and,  ^ore- 

over,    Alfred,    either    out    of    respect    or   otherwise,    has 

Care.  here  translated  much  more  exactly  than  in  the  other 
cases.  But  fortunately  he  prefixed  an  original  introduc- 
tion, and  this  introduction  contains  a  constantly  quoted  and  extremely 
important  account  of  the  state  to  which  polite  learning  in  England, 
in  the  middle  of  the  ninth  century,  had  been  reduced  by  the  Danish 
invasions.  "There was  a  time,"  quoth  Alfred,  "when  people  came  to 
this  island  for  instruction,  now  we  must  get  it  from  abroad  if  we  want 
it."  "  There  were,"  adds  the  King,  "  very  few  on  this  side  Humber 
who  could  so  much  as  translate  the  Church  Service  or  an  ordinary  Latin 
letter  into  English  [for  "Englisc"  has  taken  its  place  once  for  all 
as  the  general  name  of  the  tongue],  and  not  many  on  the  other  side" 


CHAP.  Ill  anClo-saxon  prose  25 

(there  being  still  apparently  remnants  of  the  old  Northumbrian  cul- 
ture). There  was  not,  he  ends,  with  a  gentle  and  more  than  pardon- 
able boast,  one  such  south  of  Thames,  when  he  himself  took  the 
kingdom.  It  has  been  well  pointed  out  that  though  this  decay  of' 
culture  may  have  been  lamentable  in  itself,  yet  it  was  fortunate  in  a 
way  for  English,  inasmuch  as  it  stimulated  translation,  and  so  gave 
practice  in  the  vernacular,  instead  of  tempting  men,  as  Bede  had 
been  tempted,  simply  to  abstract  and  compile  in  Latin  itself,  and 
even  when  they  wrote  original  work,  to  write  it  in  Latin.  The  trans- 
lations may  not  be  of  first-rate  literary  importance,  but  they  are  at 
any  rate  better  than  the  Latin  summaries ;  and  precious  as  the 
Historia  Ecclesiastica  is,  it  would  have  been  ten  times  more  precious 
had  it  been  in  English,  if  only  because  the  actual  original  text  of 
Caedmon  could  then  have  been  given. 

Other  works  of  Alfred  are  spoken  of —  especially  a  Commonplace- 
book  or  book  of  Table-talk  —  which  should  have  been  interesting;  but 
they  have  not  survived.  The  so-called  Proverbs  of  Alfred^  in  Middle 
English,  to  which  we  shall  come  in  due  time,  have  value,  and  may 
to  some  extent  represent  work  of  the  King's,  but  they  can  hardly 
be  accepted  even  as  a  direct  modernised  version  thereof.  It  is,  how- 
ever, at  least  possible  that  the  Chronicle  itself  in  part  represents 
his  work,  as  it  certainly  represents  his  influence,  and  it  „, 
is  m  any  case  by  far  the  most  nnportant  monument  of  Saxon 
Anglo-Saxon  prose,  carrying  us,  with  at  least  only  par-  Chronicle. 
tially  broken  sweep,  in  contemporary  vernacular  history  from  the 
middle  of  the  eighth  century  to  the  middle  of  the  twelfth,  preserving 
amid  drier  annals  some  exceedingly  interesting  fragments  of  composi- 
tion of  the  more  original  kind,  both  in  prose  and  verse,  manifesting 
an  ability  to  manage  the  subject  which  was  only  much  later  shown 
in  other  vernacular  languages,  and  bridging  for  us,  with  a  thin  but 
distinct  streak  of  union,  the  gulf  between  the  decadence  or  ruin  of 
Anglo-Saxon  even  before  the  Conquest  and  the  rise  of  English  proper 
more  than  a  century  subsequent  to  it. 

Like  other  works  of  the  kind,  and  indeed  necessarily,  the  Chronicle'^ 
was  the  work  of  monkish  labour  —  one  of  those  things  by  which  the 
lazy  monks,  the  drones  of  the  Dark  Ages,  earned  the  polite  and 
intelligent  contempt  of  the  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
And  it  followed  from  this  that  it  should  not  present  a  single  text, 
or  even  sequence  of  texts,  but  should  exist  in  more  versions  than 
one,  as  the  work  was  carried  on  at  different  centres.  The  first  of 
these  centres  was,  as  might  have  been  expected,  Winchester,  for  the 
historical  use  of  English  prose  had  not  been  discovered  in  the  palmy 

1  The  Chronicle  was  printed  as  early  as  1643,  and  has  been  repeatedly  re- 
printed, re-edited,  and  translated  since. 


26  PRELIMINARIES   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE         book  I 

days  of  Northumbrian  literature,  and  Winchester  was  by  far  the  most 
important  place  in  Wessex,  when  the  balance  of  power  had  been 
definitely  shifted  thither.  The  Winchester  Chronicle  is  vigorous 
and  full  for  the  days  of  Alfred  himself  and  Edward  the  Elder,  but 
becomes  rather  meagre  for  the  second  and  third  quarters  of  the  tenth 
century.  It  makes  up  for  this,  however,  by  inserting  verse,  the  most 
important  piece  by  far  being  the  already  referred  to  poem  celebrating 
the  battle  of  Brunanburgh.  By  the  end  of  the  century  the  tradition 
of  chronicling  seems  to  have  died  out  in  the  Hampshire  capital,  and 
to  have  shifted  to  the  metropolitan  city  of  Canterbury,  to  Worcester 
(the  main  bulwark  of  England  against  the  South  Welsh  border,  and 
far  from  Danish  reach),  and  to  the  rich  and  important  abbey  of 
Abingdon.  The  Winchester  series  extended  a  little  beyond  the  Con- 
quest, but  the  latest  batch  of  English  chronicle  comes  not  from  here 
but  from  Peterborough,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  which  the  national, 
as  opposed  to  the  Norman,  spirit  was  always  strong.  One  of  the 
very  best  known  passages  of  the  whole  —  the  constantly  quoted 
description  of  the  sufferings  of  the  country  under  Stephen's  robber- 
barons  and  in  their  castles  —  comes  from  this  last  batch,  and  indeed 
represents  the  final  utterance  of  English  historical  writing  for  the  time. 
It  was  stifled  by  the  brilliant,  but  in  the  history  of  English  literature 
irrelevant  and  interpolated,  outbursts  of  Latin  chronicle-writing  which 
the  middle  of  the  twelfth  century  saw,  and  which  only  gave  place  later 
to  the  verse  of  Robert  of  Gloucester,  and  later  still  to  the  now  fully 
English  prose  of  Trevisa.  , 

It  would  be  more  than  a  little  unreasonable  to  expect  that  such 
a  conglomerate,  or  batch  of  conglomerates,  as  the  Saxon  Chronicle 
should  present  any  uniform  literary  features.  The  variations  of  hour 
and  man  make  that  quite  imiDossible.  At  first,  and  indeed  at  intervals 
throughout,  we  get  the  barest  annals,  sometimes  mere  obituaries  or 
calendars  of  translations,  consecrations,  coronations,  and  the  like, 
only  interrupted  occasionally  by  less  jejune  accounts  of  the  founding 
of  a  monastery,  of  such  events  as  the  assassination  of  Cynewulf  at  his 
leman's  house,  etc.,  where  accident,  personal  interest,  the  chance 
possession  of  a  poem  or  a  deed,  filled  the  writer's  pen.  Then,  again, 
the  wars  of  Ethel  red  and  Alfred  and  Edward  against  the  Danes 
inspire  something  like  a  regular  history.  The  Peterborough  part,  as 
might  ^e  expected  from  its  later  date,  has,  in  so  far  as  we  possess  it, 
still  more  of  this  irregularity. 

The  two  remaining  known  and  distinctive  writers  of  Anglo-Saxon 
prose  come  under  the  disqualification  which  attaches  from  the  purely 
literary  point  of  view  to  religious  writers,  in  all  cases  but  those  of  a 
very  few  periods  and  a  few  individuals  outside  them  —  the  disquali- 
fication not  at  all  that  they  are  religious,  but  that  they  are  second- 


CHAP.  Ill  ANGLO-SAXON   PROSE 


27 


hand.  But  the  first  of  them,  Elfric,  is  undoubtedly  the  greatest  prose 
writer  in  the  language.  The  influence  and  example  of  King  Alfred, 
if  it  had  not  founded  English  prose,  had  at  least  gi\tn  a 
great  impetus  to  the  founding  of  it,  and  this  impetus  was 
followed  up  throughout  the  tenth  century,  which  has  even,  by  some 
enthusiasts,  been  hailed  as  one  of  the  great  prose  periods  of  the 
whole  English  language  in  its  widest  sense.  Essential  importance 
is  assigned  to  the  work  and  teaching  of  Ethelwold,  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester, a  pupil  of  Dunstan's,  in  the  middle  part  of  the  century,  not 
much  of  whose  own  writing  is  preserved,  but  who  is  thought  to 
have  had  a  wide  influence,  the  earliest  and  extensive  proof  of 
which  is  the  collection  of  Anglo-Saxon  sermons,  called  the  Blickling 
Hofiiilies  ;'^  while  the  greatest  and  most  lasting  is  the  work  of  Elfric, 
which  in  parts  spreads  beyond  merely  ecclesiastical  or  theological 
limits.  Elfric,'  wlio  was  a  pupil  of  Ethelwold,  as  Ethelwold  had 
been  of  Dunstan,  began  to  write  in  the  last  decade  of  the  tenth  cen- 
tury, and  first  executed  a  large  set  (some  eighty)  of  Catholic  Homilies, 
which  he  followed  up  later  with  a  series  of  homiletic  Lives  of  the 
Saints  in  an  alliterative  rhythm,  distinct  from  prose,  but  not  quite 
reaching  the  limits  even  of  Anglo-Saxon  verse.  His  other  writings 
were  numerous,  and  include  an  interesting  little  set  of  books  for  the 
instruction  of  Englishmen  in  Latin— a  grammar,  a  glossary,  and  an 
agreeable,  interlined,  Latin-English  colloquy,  which  is  the  earliest 
example  of  the  Hamiltonian-Ollendorfian  method  as  applied  to  Eng- 
lish. Elfric,  of  whose  life  not  much  is  known,  though  he  became 
abbot  of  Ensham  near  Oxford,  and  whose  death-year  is  uncertain, 
is  accused  by  some  of  having  been  rather  too  fond  of  alliteration 
even  in  his  undoubtedly  prose  work,  which  includes  translations  of 
parts  of  the  Bible.  But  his  style  is  distinctly  clear,  flow'ing,  and 
vigorous,  and  though  only  the  enthusiasm  above  referred  to  could 
possibly  see  in  it  a  medium  suited  for  general  literary  exercises,  it 
probably  carried  Anglo-Saxon  as  far  in  that  direction  as  the  immature 
character  of  the  language  itself  permitted. 

Elfric's    life    considerably    overlap])ed     that   of    the    third    writer 
referred    to,    Wulfstan,    Archbishop    of    York,    at    whose 
consecration    in    1014    Elfric    himself    wrote    one    of    his 
tractate-sermons    by  command.     Wulfstan.    who   was   for   many  years 
Archbishop  of  York,  and  during  part  of  the  time  Bishop  of  Worcester 

1  Ed.  Morris,  E.E.T.S.,  1874,  sq.     Tlie  exact  date  assigned  is  971. 

2  To  be  distinguished  from  an  archbishop  of  the  same  name  with  whom  he 
was  long  confused,  and  from  his  own  pupil,  Elfric  Bata,  who  re-edited  the 
Colloquy.  An  Elfric  Society  was  formed  more  than  fifty  years  ago  to  publish  him  ; 
and  its  work  has  been  resumed  by  the  E.E.T.S.  There  is  a  pretty  full  selection 
in  Thorpe's  Analecta, 


28  PRELIMINARIES   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE         book  l 

also,^  has  left  over  fifty  homilies,^  and  a  letter  to  the  English  people, 
or  those  of  the  province  of  York,  which  has  interest.  It  is,  however, 
quite  impossible  to  grant  the  title  of  "  fine  prose  "  which  Professor 
Earle  postulates,  either  to  his  or  to  Elfric's,  much  more  to  the 
passage  from  another,  to  which  the  Professor  especially  refers,  a 
figurative  description  of  the  Lord's  Prayer i^  "And  his  thought  is 
more  springing  and  swifter  than  twelve  thousand  holy  ghosts,  though 
each  and  every  ghost  have  sundrily  twelve  feather-coats,  and  every 
several  feather-coat  have  twelve  winds,  and  every  several  wind 
twelve  victoriousnesses  sundrily."  The  conceit  is  vigorous  and  pleas- 
ing, and  the  compounding  power  of  the  language,  which  it  has  left 
to  its  heir,  is  observable  in  sigefcestniss,  "  victoriousness."  But  the 
arrangement  and  construction  are  of  the  very  simplest  kind,  clauses 
of  the  same  model  being  merely  agglomerated.  In  Wulfstan  we 
find  more  attempt  at  periodic  prose  than  here ;  but  the  periods  are 
inartistically  arranged,  and  that  fault  which  was  later  to  mar  so  much 
seventeenth-century  prose,  the  inability  to  resist  the  temptation  of 
adding  and  piling  up  epexegetic  clauses,  already  appears.* 

1  Distinguish  again  from  the  much  later  Bishop  Wulfstan  under  the  Con- 
queror. 

2  Ed.  A.  Napier,  1883. 

3  Op.  cit.  p.  382.  The  piece  is  from  a  prose  form  of  the  Solomon  and  Saturn 
dialogue. 

4  The  list  of  A.S.  prose  is,  of  course,  by  no  means  exhausted  in  the  examples 
given.  There  are  laws,  "  leechdoms,"  short  tales,  Biblical  translations,  etc.  The 
most  interesting  are,  for  their  connection  with  later  and  romantic  literature,  the 
story  of  Apollonius  of  Tyre  (the  original  of  Pericles),  ed.  Thorpe,  1834;  a  version 
of  the  episode  of  Alexander  and  Dindimus,  and  the  wonders  of  Ind,  from  the 
great  legend  history  of  Alexander  (ed.  Cockayne  in  his  Narratiunculae)  ;  and  for 
its  matter.  Bishop  Werfrith's  translation  (with  a  Preface  by  King  Alfred)  of  the 
Dialogues  of  St.  Gregory.  If  there  is  much  in  them  like  the  plea  of  the  devil  by 
whom  a  nun  was  possessed  (see  Professor  Earle,  Anglo-Saxon  Literature,  p.  197), 
"  Ic  saet  me  on  anum  laehtrice,  tha  com  heo  and  bat  me!"  ("I  sat  me  on  a 
lettuce,  then  came  she  and  bit  [ate]  me !  ")  the  sooner  these  dialogues,  which  are 
still  unedited,  become  accessible  the  better. 


CHAPTER   IV 


THE   DECADENCE   OF   ANGLO-SAXON 


It  was  long,  and  very  naturally,  a  popular  opinion  that  the  Norman 
Conquest  sufficiently  accounted  for,  and  directly  caused,  the  practical 
disappearance  of  Anglo-Saxon  literature.  But  the  revived  study  of 
that  literature  itself,  though  it  may  in  some  cases  have  produced 
rather  an  exaggerated  estimate  of  its  intrinsic  interest  and  merits, 
helped,  and  was  helped  by,  the  previous  study  of  political  historians 
to  correct  this  delusion.  Just  as  it  was  seen  that  the  Norman  Con- 
quest, mighty  as  were  its  eifects,  was  no  absolute  political  cataclysm 
sweeping  away  the  first  England  and  replacing  it  with  something  else, 
to  the  same  extent  and  in  the  same  manner  as  those  in  which  the 
Saxon  Conquest  had  swept  away  Roman  Britain,  so  it  was  discerned 
that  the  Conquest  only  helped  and  turned  to  good  a  process  in  lan-_ 
^age  which  had"  been  independently  begun,  which  was  going  on 
^pidly,  and  which,  but  for  the  Conquest  itself,  might  have  had  more 
disastrous  results.    _ 

In  other  words,  it  has  now  for  some  time  been  recognised  that 
Anglo-Saxon,  as  a  literary  language,  was,  if  not  slowly  dying,  at  any 
rate  slowly  passing  into  soiiie  other  form,  long^  before  WilHam  landed 
at  Pevensey.  It  is  impossible  to  mistake  the  significance  of  the 
facts  thaVit  had  produced  at  that  date  no  poetry  that  can  be  called 
great,  and  little  of  any  kind,  for  some  two  hundred  and  fifty  years ; 
that  its  prose,  though  vigorously  started  under  the  highest  auspices, 
and  though  brought  to  some  measure  of  relative  perfection  by  men 
like  Elfric  and  Wulfstan,  was  itself  failing,  and  had  never,  except  in 
the  form  of  generally  meagre  chronicle,  produced  any  original  non- 
sacred  literature.  There  must  have  been  something  wrong,  some 
want,  some  coldness  in  the  literary  constitution,  to  account  for 
this.  A  language  by  weakness,  by  accident,  by  ill  luck,  may  never 
produce  literature  at  all.  But  if  it  produces  things  like  the  Ruin  and 
the  P/ia'tiix,  like  the  best  parts  of  the  poems  attributed  to  Caedmon, 
and  those  thought  to  be  signed  by  Cynewulf,  and  then  does  nothing 

29 


30  PRELIMINARIES   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE         book  i 

more  —  if  it  practically  limits  its  prose  energies  to  homilies  and  para- 
phrases and  strictly  business  jottings,  then  undoubtedly  it  wants  a 
change. 

In  the  second  place,  it  is  admitted  that  the  language  itself  was 
showing  signs  of  a  complete  "  break  of  voice,"  of  an  important 
biological  alteration.  Its  inflections  were  getting  loosened  and 
weakened,  whether  from  inherent  old  age  or  from  the  attraction  and 
competition  of  the  rival  inflections  of  French  and  Latin  must  be 
matter  of  conjecture.  But  it  appears  that  a  similar  change  was  taking 
place  in  its  Continental  kin.  That  its  warring  dialects  had  very  much 
to  do  with  this  may  be  doubted.  The  West  Saxon  had  after  the  down- 
fall of  Northumbria  taken  a  distinct  lead  ;  and  it  does  not  seem  that  at 
any  time  the  dialectic  variations  constituted  ah  insuperable  bar  between 
Englishman  and  Englishman.  But  they  must  have  helped  a  little, 
though  they  no  doubt  did  less  than  the  constant  and  age-long  effect 
of  the  practically  bilingual  education  of  every  man  who  aimed  at 
learning  in  Latin  as  well  as  in  English,  and  than,  latterly,  the  estab- 
lishment of  French  as  a  second,  if  not  a  first,  court  language  in  the 
Confessor's  Palace.  The  fact,  however,  seems  to  be  beyond  dispute, 
and  the  inevitable  literary  consequence  of  the  fact  still  more  so. 
You  cannot  write  literature  in  a  language  which  is  not  sure  of  itself, 
which  is  jcrumblinof  day  by  day.  lo  which  we  may^dd  that  the 
signs  of  senescence  ancTTte^radation  are  as  evident  in  prosody  as  in 
the  other  parts  of  grammar  proper.  We  have,  as  has  been  said,  very 
little  late  Anglo-Saxon"  poetry,  and  the  dates  of  what  we  have  are 
extremely  uncertain.  But  we  can  be  nearly  sure  that  in  all  of  it 
strict  allitgration  was  breajang..,jd»wiVJ±yme__^vvas_Jj^reaking  in,  and 
that  for  a  time  the  contemptuous  term  absurdly  applied  to  the 
true  English  prosody  which  emerged  later,  that  of  a  "  jumble," 
might  have  been  applied  without  much  injustice.  Our  ancestors  at 
this  time  had  lost  grasp  of  their  own  rhythm  and  not  learned  metre ; 
I  just  as  they  were  getting  to  mumble  Anglo-Saxon,  and  had  not 
learned  to  speak  English.  The  old  order  was  changing  in  every 
way,  but  it  was  some  time  before  the  new  could  get  into  regular 
form. 

This  is  the  rational  and  sufficient,  the  only  rational  and  sufficient,- 
explanation  of  the  whole  matter,  that  the  time  had  come  for 
Anglo-Saxon  to  die,  that  it  died,  and  that  it  would  have  had  to  die  if 
Harold  had  been  as  victorious  at  Senlac  as  at  Stamford  Bridge, 
though  probably  the  result  would  have  been  less  fortunate  for 
England,  as  it  would  pretty  certainly  have  been  quite  infinitely  less 
fortunate  for  France.  For  it  must  never  be  forgotten  —  though  it 
would  be  hardly  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  it  has  seldom  been 
remembered  —  that  France  had  little  or  no  literature  to  give  England, 


CHAP.  IV  THE   DECADENCE   OF  ANGLO-SAXON  31 

and  that  what  she  had  (a  chanson  de  geste  or  two,  and  some  verse 
saint-lives  rather  less  formless  than  England's  own)  were  things  of 
little  importance  and  less  influence.  It  is  an  amiable  but  entirely 
unhistorical  imagination  to  suggest  that  French  literature  was  brought 
to  England  by  the  Conquest.  There  was  little  or  none  to  bring; 
and  what  arose  later  would  have  been  equally  brought  by  the 
increasing  popularity  of  the  French  language  and  its  vigour  in  face 
of  Anglo-Saxon  decay.  Nay  more,  some  of  the  greatest  things  in 
Old  French  were  written  under  English  influence,  in  districts  which, 
though  not  English  in  soil,  were  under  English  rule,  on  subjects  which 
were  supplied  by  England  from  Teutonic  as  well  as  from  Celtic 
stores.  It  is  not  insignificant  that  in  the  oldest  French  literature,  the 
Chansons,  "  Normans  "  are  spoken  of  with  as  much  dislike,  and  some- 
times in  the  same  terms,  as  the  perfidious  Englishman  of  a  later  date 
has  enjoyed.  It  is  of  even  more  significance  that,  although  the 
original  texts  of  the  great  Arthurian  legend  were,  no  doubt,  all  written 
in  the  French  language,  they  are  written  on  a  "  British  matter,"  and 
partly  by  Englishmen.  We  had  lost  the  key  of  our  word-hoard: 
we  had  indeed  never  possessed  any,  had  simply  been  fumbling  for 
one,  in  regard  to  the  largest  and  richest  part  of  it.  Latin  and  French, 
Latin  even  more  than  French,  helped  us  at  last  to  forge  the  proper 
keys  of  language,  of  style,  and  best  of  all,  of  prosody.  But  they  did 
not  put  the  treasurejhere,  they  only  helped  us  to  find  it  and  use  it. 


\ 


INTERCHAPTER   1 

To  the  short,  but  it  is  hoped  not  absolutely  insufficient,  account  of 
Anglo-Saxon  literature  contained  in  the  foregoing  Book,  there  will 
now,  according  to  the  system  explained  in  the  preface,  be  subjoined  a 
general  summary  of  its  accomplishments  and  character,  disengaged 
from  the  previously  necessary  survey  of  individual  facts. 

We  have  seen  that  in  its  comparatively  scanty  bulk,  and  under 
the  disadvantages  of  a  political  history  not  indeed  short  in  time  but 
very  unsettled,  and  but  scantily  equipped  and  supplied  by  civilisation, 
Anglo-Saxon  succeeded  in  producing  work  both  in  prose  and  verse 
which  has  not  only  intrinsic  merit  and  interest,  which  has  not  only 
the  additional  historic^  clainr  of  being  'the  ancestor  of  one  of  the 
greatest  literatures~or  the  world,  "but  which  has  the~?urther  attraction, 
also  historic,  but  surely  not  negligible,  of  being^for  its  time  unii^e,  or 
having  only  Icelaiidlc  foi  "aT  dou5Ffur_competitor.  Icelandic  itself 
was  probably  some  two  cerftufies^behind  Anglo-Saxon  in  the  use  of 
vernacular  prose. 

But  it  is  exceedingly  important  to  take  stock  of  the  exact  literary 
value  of  the  accomplishments  of  this  language  both  in  themselves  and 
in  relation  to  its  great  descendant.  One  thing  that  Anglo-Saxon 
did  is  fortunately  beyond  all  dispute.  It  "unlocked  the  word- 
hoard" —  a  word-hoard  still  very  much  in  the  rough,  and  with  some 
disadvantages  which  will  be  considered  more  specially  below.  Like 
some  metals,  it  needed  blending  with  others  before  it  became 
thoroughly  useful.  j'But  in  native  strength,  in  backbone,  in  the 
power  oT  standing  rough  usage  and  being  the  better  for  it,  it  had 
perhaps  no  superiors^  and  it  possessed  certain  valuable,  or  rather 
invaluable,  qualities.  •  I  In  particular,  it  had  that  gift  which  some  lan- 
guages almost  wholly  lack,  of  forming  compounds  freely.  Caedmon's 
famous  heolster-sceado,  holster-shadow,  '^  cover  or  sheath  of  dark- 
ness," gives  at  the  second  opening  of  the  literature  a  measure  of 
its  capacities  in  this  way,  and  they  can  hardly  be  exaggerated,  A 
language  that  cannot  combine  thus,  or  can  do  it  only  with  difficulty, 
is    a  poor   thin   thing,   the   worst   stuff   possible   for   poetry,   and   fit 

32 


BOOK  I  INTERCHAPTER  I  33 

only    for   decent,   perhaps    elegant,    but   uninspired   and   uninspiring 
prose. 

In  prose  itself,  however,  Anglo-Saxon  did  not  do  very  much,  and 
it  could  hardly  be  expected  to  do  very  much.  It  had  not  the  subjects ; 
its  writers  had  not  the  demand ;  and  if  by  any  chance  any  man  had 
both  subject  and  demand,  there  was  the  fatal  mistress  Latin  tempting 
him  away  from  the  homely  English  wife.  For  almost  every  man  of 
letters  was  an  ecclesiastic,  and  almost  every  man  of  letters,  ecclesiastic 
or  not,  looked  to  the  public  not  merely  of  his  own  burg  or  realm,  but  of 
Latin  Christendom,  which  had  its  own  universal  tongue.  Moreover, 
the  fully-inflected  condition  of  Anglo-Sa.xon  has  to  be  taken  account 
of,  and  its  dialects,  and  above  all  the  extreme  insecurity  and 
instability -of  political  and  social  conditions  at  the  time.  War  and 
ruin  may  sometimes  —  they  do  not  by  any  means  always  —  repay  in 
song  what  they  have  exacted  in  suffering ;  but  prose  as  a  rule 
requires  prosperity,  business,  leisure  for  its  cultivation.  However 
this  may  be,  it  is  certain  that,  as  literature,  the  achievement  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  in  prose  is  very  much  less  than  its  achievement  in  verse, 
though  there  may  be  a  less  abrupt  separation  between  this  achievement 
and  what  follows  in  the  same  medium. 

In  poetry  it  did  more,  and  there  are  few  points  of  more  import-  - 
ance  for  the  general  study  and  comprehension  of  English  literature 
as  a  whole  than  a  comprehension  of  the  general  poetical  equipment 
and  accomplishment  of  Anglo-Saxon.  And  as  estimates  of  these 
points  have  too  often  varied  between  the  extremes  of  passionate  and 
partisan  appreciation  on  the  one  hand,  and  complete  ignoring  or 
unfair,  perhaps  sometimes  ill-informed,  depreciation  on  the  other, 
such  a  general  view  has  not  been  very  easy  to  obtain.  Yet  there  is 
no  real  difficulty  in  taking  it. 

Anglo-Saxon  poetry,  then,  as  we  see  it  in  the  sufficient  if  not  very 
plentiful  remains  of  its  best  period  before  the  end  of  the  eighth 
century,  displays  merits  of  what  we  may  call  poetical  intention  con- 
siderably surpassing  those  shown  by  most  literatures  in  their  early 
■stye's,  and  at  least  equal  to  those  which  some  literatures  have  shown  ^ 
ab  stages  far  more  advanced.  Ithas  passion  —  not  so  much  in  the 
conventional  and  limited  sense  ofTlTS  passlon  of  love,  with  which  it 
deals  very  little,  as  in  the  general  sense  of  subjective  intensity  —  of 
evidence  in  song  that  the  poet  has  felt,  seen,  thought,  or  at  least 
wondered,  with  a  deep  and  genuine  movement.  And  much  of  this  P 
action  of  thought  and  feeling  is  directed  to  natural  objects,  in  a 
fashion  agaTiTTui  v  laie  in  iiiiist  lili'i.iUiies,  and  alinTCT~entirely  absent 
from  some.  Yet  again,  though  tlie  resources  of  form,  of  art  at  the 
poet's  command  are  undeniably  scanty  and  rude,  yet,  such  as  they  are, 
they  are  used  witli   care   and   skill.     In  other  words,  and  this   is  no 


34  PRELIMINARIES   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book 

mean  praise,  the  Anglo-Saxon  poet  at  his  best,  and  that  pretty 
frequently,  has  no  mean  portion  of  the  poetic  spirit,  and  has  a  just 
reverence  for  what  he  knows  of  the  poetic  art.  In  the  first  respect 
the  author  oi  Beoivulf'i?,  at  least  not  less  richly  and  variously  endowed 
than  even  the  author  of  the  Chanson  de  Roland ;  in  the  second,  the 
author  of  the  Fhosnix  is  very  far  ahead  of  the  author  of  the  Poema 
del  Cid. 

But  valuable,  or  rather  invaluable,  as  are  these  equipments,  every 
Anglo-Saxon  poet  from  first  to  last  during  the  Anglo-Saxon  period 
proper  suffers  from  two  drav^acks  which  hamper  him  cruelly  — 
monotony  of  suLyect  and  clumsiness  of  form-  In  both  respects  his 
limitations  are  hardly  even  in  the  smallest  degree  a  reproach  to  him. 
When  we  remember  that,  so  far  as  is  known,  absolutely  no  great 
literature  except  Greek  has  ever  been  produced  without  other  pattern 
literatures  before  it ;  when  we  remember  what  was  the  comparative 
civilization  of  England  up  to  the  eighth  century  after  Christ,  and  of 
Greece  in  the  fifth  and  fourth  centuries  before  Christ ;  when  we  remem- 
ber further  that  Anglo-Saxon  culture  never  had  so  much  as  a  single 
century  of  quiet  development  on  the  great  scale  under  favourable 
political  and  social  conditions,  and  that  hardly  any  profane  patterns 
were  before  any  but"  a  very  few  writers,  we  shall  certainly  not  feel 
inclined  to  indulge  an  ignorant  and  conceited  contempt  of  the 
limitations  of  subject  to  religion  in  the  main,  and  out  of  religion  to  a 
little  legend,  a  little  contemporary  war-song,  some  rudimentary  science, 
and  the  thinnest  surplus  of  other  matters.  Take  any  poet  from 
Chaucer  to  Tennyson  and  strip  him  only  of  what  he  owes  in  subject 
—  putting  other  debts,  and  they  are  large,  out  of  sight  —  to  his 
predecessors,  and  a  terrible  reduction  would  have  to  be  made. 
Caedmon,  if  Casdmon  it  was ;  Cynewulf,  if  Cynewulf  there  was ;  and 
ail  the  anonyms,  had  practically  no  predecessors  to  oblige  them,  except 
the  Bible,  a  few  hymn-  and  homily-writers,  the  Fathers,  and  a  small, 
a  very  small,  part  of  the  profane  classics  which  had  not  gone  utterly 
out  of  fashion  or  of  reach. 

Of  what,  under  this  immense,  this  to  us  simply  incalculable,  dis- 
advantage they  accomplished  much  must  have  perished,  while  what 
has  perished  may  have  largely  exceeded  what  we  have,  not  merely  in 
bulk  but  in  variety.  On  this  head  at  least  there  is  no  fault  to  find,  but 
rather  infinite  credit  due  to  our  ancestors,  that  while  no,  other  — 
Icelandic,  perhaps,  excepted  —  of  the  modern  European  languages  had 
yet  found  its  tongue  at  all,  or  had  found  'it  only  to  let  the  results 
disappear,  they  did  what  they  did. 

Nor  is  there  exactly  any  "  fault  to  find "  with  the  defects  of  art 
and  means  which  also  beset  them,  but  in  this  respect  somewhat 
harsher  language  must  be  used.     In  the  first  place,  putting  enthusiasts 


INTERCHAPTER   I  35 


aside,  I  do  not  tliink  that  any  one  can  call  Anglo-Saxon,  in  familiar 
phrase,  a  "  pretty  "  language.  Though  not  without  a  grave  undertone 
of  music  in  it  now  and  then,  it  has  a  distinct  uncouthness.  Its 
inflections  give  it  monotony  without  music ;  the  rough  consonant 
terminations  give  the  word-structure  an  air  rather  of  a  dry-stone  wall 
unwrought  by  hand  than  of  cunning  masonry.  Afterwards,  when 
this  roughness  was  blended  with  softer  forms  and  matter,  it  was  to 
give  the  most  perfect  poetic  medium  —  more  perfect  even  than  Greek 

—  that  has  ever  existed;  at  this  time  the  destined  completion  had 
not  been  reached,  and  the  language,  full  of  forms  in  one  way,  was 
still  formless ;  crammed  with  possibilities,  was  still  void,  chaotic, 
rudimentary. 

That  it  chose  the  prosody  most  suited  to  it  is  no  doubt  true. 
Every  language  has,  and  must  inevitably  have,  the  prosody  that  it 
deserves,  the  prosody  of  which  it  is  capable,  whence  is  clear  the  folly 
of  those  who  desperately  attempt  to  force  it  into  prosodic  forms  other 
than  those  into  which  it  naturally  goes.  And  that  Old  EngUsh  pros- 
ody has  limitations  and  shortcomings,  probably  inseparable  from  Old 
English  vocabulary,  there  is  little  if  any  doubt.  .  But  there  is  no 
doubt  at  all  that  the  limitations  and  the  shortcomings  are  of  the  most 
serious  character.  With  some  of  the  objections  made  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  Ars  poetica  we  need  by  no  means  concur.  The  common  com- 
plaint that  there  are  no  similes  may  be  called  almost  silly.  In  the  first 
place,  there  are  similes ;  and  in  the  second  place,  if  there  were  none, 
why  should  there  be  any?  The  only  possible  answer  that  suggests 
itself  turns  upon  such  a  childish  argument,  or  no  argument,  as  this, 
"  Homer  is  a  great  early  poet ;  Homer  is  rich  in  similes ;  therefore 
early  poets  who  have  no  similes  are  not  great."  Moreover,  simile  or 
no  simile,  Anglo-Saxon  poetry,  like  its  cousin  Icelandic,  is  admittedly 
rich  in  metaphor,  which  is  only  simile  in  the  making.  When  a  poet 
has  once  called  the  sea  the  "  swan's  path,"  and  thought  the  "  breast- 
hoard,"  he  has  shown  himself  perfectly  competent  to  write  a  simile  in 
twenty  lines  —  a  simile  like  that  at  the  end  of  the  Scholar  Gypsy  itself 

—  if  he  chose  to  do  it.  So  too  we  shall  not,  if  we  are  wise,  shake 
our  heads  because  it  is  rather  long  before  we  come  to  epanaphora  or 
antithesis  in  Anglo-Saxon  poetry.  The  absence  or  the  slow  coming 
of  epanaphora  and  antithesis  is  no  doubt  very  disheartening,  but,  as 
Deor  himself  has  it,  this  also  mav  we  overeo. 

The  real  faults  of  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  from  the  formal  point  of 
view  lie  in,  and  indeed  are  inseparable  from,  its  staple  of  accented 
alliterative  verse,  it  may  be  discretionary,  it  may  be  quite  carefully 
and  cunningly  arranged  as  to  syllables,  but  divided  by  a  hard  and 
fast  section  or  middle  pause.  That  fine  effects  in  certain  limited 
kinds  may  be  and  have  been  got  out  of  this  arrangement  need  not 


36  PRELIMINARIES   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book 

be  denied ;  that  it  was  a  great  advance  on  mere  systemless  chaos 
is  of  course  undeniable.  It  lent  itself  with  ease  to  that  parallelism 
which  is  the  most  natural  note  of  half-civilised  poetry.  The  accents 
gave  something  of  a  "  stand-by,"  something  of  a  backbone,  to  save 
the  rhythm  from  becoming  merely  prosaic.  The  aUiteration  supplied 
a  musical  charm  which  has  never  died  out  of  Enghsh  poetry,  and 
therefore  never  can  die  out  of  it.  The  sections  helped  the  paral- 
lelism, acted  as  stays  to  the  prentice  poet,  and  assisted  the  accent 
and  the  alliteration  to  give  something  like  a  real  poetic  form,  as 
opposed  to  the  form  of  prose.  For  a  certain  meditative  kind  of 
poetry,  like  that  of  the  Ruiii  and  the  great  Phcenix  passage,  the 
whole  scheme  is  well  fitted,  and  it  does  not  do  badly  for  romantic 
narrative,  whether  in  its  earliest  form,  as  in  Beowulf,  or  in  its  latest 
and  almost  last,  as  in  Layamon.  Nay  more,  it  seems  by  no  means 
absurd  to  find  in  it,  as  I  believe  some  even  of  its  specialist  students 
are  beginning  to  do,  the  germs  not  indeed  of  later  English  poetical 
rhythm,  but  of  that  wonderful  English  prose  rhythm  which,  aimed 
at  half-blindly  from  the  fourteenth  to  the  sixteenth  centuries,  found, 
whether  consciously  or  not,  in  the  seventeenth,  but  never  deliberately 
practised,  much  less  deliberately  analysed,  till  within  the  last  hun- 
dred years,  has  given  something  almost  as  much  a  pure  hybrid 
between  poetry  and  prose  in  form  as  drama  is  a  hybrid  between  them 
in  spirit. 

But  the  defects  of  its  qualities  are  many  and  great.  When  the 
normal  scheme,  with  few  unaccented  syllables,  is  kept,  it  is  excessively 
apt  to  become  dull,  monotonous,  sing-song.  When,  in  the  poet's 
need  for  a  longer  line  and  greater  variety,  it  receives  the  Caedmonian 
extension,  it  becomes  perilously  suggestive  of  the  "  patter "  which  has 
been  consecrated  in  more  modern  times  to  burlesque  and  grotesque. 
The  excessive  and  regular  alliteration  not  only  becomes  wearisome  to 
the  ear,  but  also,  and  inevitably,  occasions  the  selection  of  words  not 
because  they  are  the  right  words,  but  merely  because  they  begin  with 
the  right  letter.  And  the  sectional  pause  is  the  worst  of  all.  It 
will  always  remain  the  most  astonishing  thing  in  that  extraordinary 
monument  of  learned  and  ingenious  paralogism,  Dr.  Guest's  English 
Rhythms,  that  he  should  have  failed  to  perceive  that  the  beginning  of 
great  English  poetry  is  synonymous  with  the  abolition  of  the  com- 
pulsory middle  pause,  and  should  even  have  endeavoured  to  convict 
Shakespeare  and  Milton  of  Use-poesie  because  they  do  not  obey  it. 
That  the  middle"  pause  is  wanted  in  very  long  lines  may  be  freely 
granted ;  in  short  ones  and  those  of  moderate  length  it  cannot  with- 
out disadvantage  be  more  than  a  rule  which  admits  the  freest  and 
most  frequent  exception. 

It  is  probably  due  to  these  faults  and  disabilities,  rather  than  to 


INTERCHAPTER  I  37 


any  want  of  genius,  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  poets  did  not  do  more  than 
they  did,  and  it  is  again  and  again  to  be  repeated  that  it  is  surprising 
how  much  they  did.  But  their  poetry,  indeed  their  whole  literature, 
is  a  rudimentary  literature,  a  literature  in  statu  pupillari,  and  one 
which  has  not  passed  any  but  the  lower  stages  even  of  pupilship. 
Even  if  the  most  elaborate  theories  of  its  prosody  be  admitted,  the 
case  will  not  be  altered :  for  a  certain  etiquette  of  detail  is  consistent 
with  a  very  early  novitiate.  It  can  manage  simple  prose  very  well, 
but  it  cannot  achieve  argument,  elaborate  narration,  or  anything  that 
in  the  proper  sense  requires  style.  In  the  poetry  we  have  been  briefly 
reviewing  we  find  some  noble  passages,  especially  of  a  serious  and 
reflective  cast,  a  few  more  showing  the  joy  of  battle  well,  still  fewer, 
but  some,  evincing  accurate  observation  and  the  power  of  putting  it 
into  words.  But  the  class  of  poetical  effects  attained,  and  to  all 
appearance  attainable,  is  exceedingly  limited,  and  excludes  altogether 
those  of  the  lighter  kind.  There  is  practically  no  lyric  —  a  want  which 
would  of  itself  and  at  once  relegate  any  poetry  to  a  position  below, 
and  far  below,  the  highest,  (in  short,  we  have  here  a  juvenile  effort, 
as  we  may  call  it,  of  immense  interest,  but  doomed  in  itself  to 
failure,  because  the  person  or  people  making  it  has  not  come  to  its 
full  strength,  has  not  entered  into  possession  of  its  full  property,  and 
is  using  clumsy  methods  and  tools  on  a  scanty  material,  instead  of 
employing  the  results  of  the  experience  of  the  past  in  method  on 
the  gathered  treasures  of  the  past  in  stuff.  \ 


BOOK    II 

THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE 
CHAPTER   I 

THE   TRANSITION 

The  sleep  of  English — Awakening  influences — Latin — French  influence — Geoifrey  . 
of   Monmouth  —  l^atin   prosody  in   the  early   Middle  Ages  —  The   Hymns  — 
Alliteration    and    rhyme  —  Rhythm   and    metre  —  French   prosody  —  Syllabic 
equivalence  in  English  —  Helped  by  Anglo-Saxon  —  Law  of  pause  in  English 

To  say  that  English  literature  ^  dives  underground  some  time  before 
the  Conquest,  and  does    not  einerge  again  till  about  the   year  1200, 
would  be  an  exaggeration  ;   but  it  would  only  be  an  exaggeration  of 
the  truth.     As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  have  nothing  certainly  dating  from 
any  part  of  this  long  period  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  except  the 
later     passages     of    the     Worcester    and     Peterborough 
Chronicles,  the   latest  of  which  does  not  go  beyond  the     oT'En'tith 
year    1155,   though   just    before   this    there   are   pages    of 
merit,  especially  that  famous  one  already  referred  to  as  to  the  sufferings 
of  the  English  people  under  Stephen.     It  is  probable  that  the  Grave 
J'liem,  and    perhaps    some    other   fragments  in    verse,  date    from    this 
time ;  it  is  tolerably  certain  that  some  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Homilies 
and  Saints'    Lives  which  we  possess,  either  as  more  or  less  original 
compositions  or  refashionings  of  older  ones,  date  from  it.     But  these 

I  'I'here  is  unfortunately  no  adequate  literary  history  of  the  Middle  English 
period.  Vols.  iii.  and  iv.  and  the  earlier  part  of  vol.  v.  of  the  late  Professor 
Morley's  English  H'riters  deal  with  it,  but  are  chiefly  occupied  with  a  crowd  of 
extraneous  matters.  Ten  Brink  (vol.  i.  Books  ii.  and  iii.)  is  much  better,  but  not 
all-sufficing.  There  is  ample  information  in  vol.  ii.  of  the  Variorum  VWirton 
(London,  1871),  but  it  is  necessarily  chaotic  and  indigestible.  Luckily  the  texts 
tliemselves  are  now  fairly,  though  not  fully,  accessible;  unluckily  tliey  have  too 
ofiirn  been  edited  from  the  merely  linguistic  point  of  view. 

39 


40  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  i- 

things  only  touch  the  fringe  of  literature,  and  there  are  extremely  few 
of  them.i  Yet  during  this  long  sleep,  so  scantily  broken,  a  process 
was  going  on  analogous  to,  but  far  more  momentous  and  thorough 
than,  the  ordinary  refreshment  by  the  "season  of  all  natures."  We 
have  said  that  the  powers  of  English,  not  merely  as  a  literature  but  as 
a  language,  were  obviously  failing  even  within  the  very  restricted 
circle  in  which  they  had  walked  before  the  Conquest  itself;  it  remains 
now  to  indicate  as  briefly  as  possible  what  the  influences  were  which 
came  to  transform  and  refresh  these  powers,  and  how  they  went  to 
work.  The  actual  instruments  were  two,  Latin  and  French ;  and 
their  working  was  directed  to  three  different  points  of  attack  —  the 
alteration  of  the  language  as  such ;  the  suggestion  of  new  subjects 
and  forms  of  literatui'e ;  and,  above  all,  the  construction  of  a  new 
prosody. 

The  notice  of  literatures  and  literary  works  not  English  has  been 
limited,  according  to  the  plan  of  this  book,  to  the  strictest  necessities, 
and  among  these  necessities  the  present  occasion  must  be  counted. 
We  can,  moreover,  economise  under  the  first  head  of  the  last  divi- 
sion, for  the  mere  linguistic  side  of  the  matter  but  faintly  concerns 
us.  It  is  sufficient  there  to  say  that  the  diff"erent  inflection  of  French 
and  Latin  (as,  it  is  thought,  the  different  inflections  of  Danish  had 
already  done)  helped  the  already  displayed  tendency  of  the  language 
to  shake  off"  inflection  almost  if  not  altogether,  though  this  was  a  work 
of  time ;  and  that  the  swelling  of  the  vocabulary  with  Latin  or 
Romance  words,  though  inevitable,  is  not,  as  we  shall  see  when  we 
come  to  actual  literature  once  more,  very  noticeable  in  the  first  place. 
The  effect  of  the  exhibition  of  new  forms  and  subjects  was  much  more 
momentous,  and  to  understand  it  we  must  try  a  "  Pisgah-sight "  of 
Latin  and  French  literature  as  each  then  was. 

In  considering  the  effect  on  English  of  Latin,  we  must  not  assume, 

as  used  to  be  assumed,  that  cjaasicalLatin  was  out   of  the  Jjeji  or 

knowledge  of  the  early  Middle  AgesT    IT  was  not ;    and  there  were 

.     ,  then  Englishmen,  such  as  Joseph  of  Exeter,  who  could 

Awakening  .  '^  ^  .  ,      -^.      ...  , 

influences.     Write  excellent  hexameters  on  a  fairly  Virgilian  or  at  least 
Latin.        Claudianic    model,    though    they    might    sometimes    con- 
descend to  leonine  or  middle  rhyme ;  while,  as  we  need  not  go  beyond 
Chaucer  to  show,  large  parts  of  the  classical  poets,  especially  Ovid, 
were  distinctly  familiar.     Indeed,  it  may  perhaps  be  said  with  safety 

1  For  instance,  Mr.  Morley  ekes  out  the  assumption  that  "  no  doubt "  there 
was  verse,  with  the  well-known  Canute  Poem,  Merry  sang  the  tnonks  of  Ely,  the 
verses  attributed  to  Godric  of  Finchale,  and  Sumer  is  icumen  in.  But  if  the 
Canute  Poem  has  any  interest  of  authenticity  it  must  be  much  older,  and  Sumer 
is  icumen  in  is  pretty  certainly  much  younger,  than  1050-1150.  Godric  (d.  1170) 
is  more  to  the  point.  His  verses  are  but  the  meagrest  scraps,  but  they  show 
rhyfne  and  inetre. 


CHAP.  I  THE  TRANSITION  41 

that  of  all  classical  writers  Ovid  had  most  influence,  though  others 
had  some.  But  the  singular  and  still  slightly  puzzling  thing  in  con- 
nection with  this  subject  is  that  readers,  even  readers  of  considerable 
education  and  great  ability,  seem  to  have  observed  no  critical  pro- 
portion whatever  in  their  relative  estimate  of  authorities,  either  from 
the  point  of  view  of  matter  or  from  the  point  of  view  of  form.  They 
preferred  in  the  '*  Tale  of  Troy,"  not  merely  to  Homer,  whom  they  knew 
but  little,  but  to  Virgil,  whom  they  knew  fairly,  and  to  Ovid,  whom 
they  knew  well,  two  beggarly  abstracts  assigned  to  a  certain  Dictys 
and  a  certain  Dares,  for  which  they  had  absolutely  no  external  authority, 
and  which  bore  internal  marks  of  absolute  worthlessness  as  literature, 
if  not  of  absolute  untrustworthiness  as  history.  They  swallowed, 
though  they  had  abundance  of  fairly  sober  abstracts  of  history,  if 
they  had  not  all  original  authorities,  huge  farragos  of  mere  fairy  tales 
about  Alexander.  And,  generally  speaking,  the  actual  classics  exer- 
cised, naturally  enough,  much  less  direct  influence  upon  them,  espe- 
cially in  the  point  of  form,  than  the  writers  of  the  decadence  and 
the  darkness  from  the  fourth  century  downwards.  And,  as  was  yet 
more  natural,  they  attached  more  importance  still  to  the  Services  of 
the  Church,  to  the  devotional  writings  of  ecclesiastics  in  verse  and 
prose ;  while  by  degrees  they  began  to  elaborate  for  themselves  an 
almost  entirely  new  system  of  philosophy,  which  the  natural  clearness 
and  precision  of  Latin  enabled  them  to  make  admirably  systematic  and 
scientific  in  terminology,  though  the  terms  might  be  barbarous  in 
form.  With  Anglo-Saxon  failing,  and  no  other  vernacular  except  the 
distant  and  thoroughly  isolated  Icelandic  come  to  full  maturity,  the 
practice  of  history-writing  became  for  a  long  period  entirely  Latin, 
and  the  usage  of  that  tongue  in  the  schools  further  established  it  as 
the  language  not  merely  of  philosophy  but  of  general  science. 

The  spoken  influence  of  French,  or  at  least  Anglo-Norman,  was 
naturally    even    greater,    for    it   was    for  centuries    the    only    court 
language,  the  language  of  superior  business,  and    to  .some  extent  at 
any  rate  the  necessary  vehicle  of  communication  between 
the   upper   and    lower  classes,   though    not    between   the      jnVuence 
lower  classes  themselves.     But   its   literary  influence  was 
very  considerably   less.     What   has   been   already  said    must   be   re- 
peated, that  at  the  time  of  the  Conquest,  and  much  more,  therefore, 
at  the  time  of  the  first  influence  of  French  at  the  court  of  Edward 
the  Confessor,  the   foreigners    had   little,  or   practically  no,  literature 
to  offer  as  an  example  to  England.     They  had  no  prose;  their  great 
national  epics  were  only  beginning ;    it  is  improbable  that   they  had 
any  finished  lyric  in  durable  form  ;  the  romances  proper  were  in  the 
British    division  not   yet  written  (they  had   pretty  certainly  to  come 
from  England  itselQ,  and  in  the  case  of  the  classical   division  were 


42  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE        book   ii 

only  beginning  to  be  written.  French  drama  was  lisping  or  still 
inarticulate  ;  the  great  French  genre  of  the  fabliau  was  hardly  born. 
In  short,  French  literature  could  exercise  no  influence,  because  it  as 
yet  was  merely  struggling  for  existence  itself. 

No  doubt,  when  it  once  began  it  made  gigantic  strides,  while  it  so 
happened  that  the  parts  of  France  where  some  of  these  kinds  saw  the 
light  were  directly  under  the  rule  of  or  closely  connected  with  the 
Kings  of  England.  Proven9al  led  the  way,  though  probably  not  by 
much,  in  formal  lyric ;  and  more  than  half  the  Proven9al-speaking 
districts  were  sooner  or  later  brought  under  English  rule  by  the 
accession  of  the  Angevins  and  the  marriage  of  Henry  II.  with 
Eleanor  of  Guienne.  The  British  and  Roman  "  matters "  were 
specially  Norman  in  place  of  treatment,  and  from  England  itself 
came  a  book  which,  though  in  Latin,  had  such  an  enormous  influence 
upon  English  literature  that  it  must  receive  exceptional  treatment 
here.  This  is  the  Historia  Britomim  of  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth, 
which  was  probably  written  almost  simultaneously  with  —  at  least 
within  a  decade  or  two  of — the  last  gasp  of  pure  original  Anglo-Saxon 
in  the  Annals  of  Peterborough. 

Not  much  is  known  of  Geoffrey,  who  must,  however,  have  either 
been  one  of  the  most  superlatively  lucky  persons  in  literary  history 
or  an  original  genius  of  the  greatest  mark.  He  was  certainly  con- 
secrated Bishop  of  St.  Asaph  in  1152,  and  must  have 
Mo°n'!!m>uth'^  died  about  two  years  later.  His  book  is  dedicated  to 
Robert,  Earl  of  Gloucester,  who  died  in  1147,  so  that  it 
cannot  be  later  than  that  date,  while  some  have  put  it  back  ten  or  fifteen 
years  earlier.  He  himself  claims  (with  almost  transparent  "make- 
believe  "  as  it  seems  to  some)  to  have  had  a  British  original  brought  to 
him  out  of  Armorica  by  a  certain  Walter,  Archdeacon  of  Oxford.  But 
nothing  has  ever  been  seen  or  heard  of  such  a  book,  and  even 
"  Walter,  Archdeacon  of  Oxford,"  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to 
identify.  Nor  have  any  other  materials  for  Geoffrey's  History  been 
traced,  save  that  in  the  case  of  its  most  famous,  though  far  from  its 
largest  episode,  the  story  of  King  Arthur,  certain  germs,  excessively 
meagre  in  substance  and  very  uncertain  in  date,  can  be  found  in 
certain  documents  attributed  to  Gildas,  a  monk  of  the  fifth  century, 
and  Nennius,  an  unknown  person  who  may  have  written  in  the  seventh, 
the  eighth,  or  the  ninth,  if  not  later,  together  with  a  Life  of  Gildas, 
which  is  certainly  not  much,  if  any,  earlier  than  Geoffrey.^ 

1  Geoffrey  himself,  Gildas,  and  Nennius  will  be  found  conveniently  trans- 
lated in  one  volume  of  Bohn's  "  Antiquarian  Library,"  entitled  Six  Old  English 
Chronicles.  I  do  not  know  any  translation  of  the  Vita  GilJae  (ed.  Stevenson) ,  and 
the  Latin  published  half  a  century  ago  for  the  English  Historical  Society  is 
not  very  accessible.    The  texts  of  Nennius  vary  a  good  deal. 


CHAP,  I  THE  TRANSITION 


43 


The  debt  which  English  Hterature  owes  to  this  curious  book  is 
not  limited  to  the  Arthurian  part,  for  Geoflfrey  has  given  us  the 
original  story  of  King  Lear,  the  most  heartrending  of  English,  or  any, 
tragedies  ;  the  ending  at  least  of  Co)?ius,  the  most  exquisite  of  English, 
or  any,  masques;  and  other  things.  But  in  magnitude,  in  interest, 
and  as  a  literary  origin,  the  Arthurian  invention  dwarfs  all  other 
things  in  the  book.  It  should  be  observed  that  by  no  means  the 
whole  story  of  Arthur,  as  we  familiarly  know  it  from  Sir  Thomas 
Malory's  greatest  of  all  compilations,  is  in  Geoffrey.  He  represents 
the  treason  of  Vortigern  to  Britain  as  partly  repaired  by  two  brothers, 
Ambrosius  and  Uther.  The  latter,  reigning  alone,  falls  in  love  with 
Igraine,  wife  of  Gorlois,  Duke  of  Cornwall,  gains  her  by  the  help 
of  the  enchanter  Merlin,  who  has  already  played  a  great  part  in 
the  story,  and  becomes  the  father  of  Arthur,  who  succeeds  him, 
crushes  opposition  at  home,  marries  a  noble  lady  of  Roman  de- 
scent, Guanhumara  (Guinevere),  joins  issue  with  and  defeats  the 
Romans  on  the  Continent,  is  recalled  by  the  treason  of  his  nephew 
Madred,  whom  Guanhumara  has  married,  returns,  defeats  and 
finally  slays  the  traitor,  but  is  mortally  wounded,  and  gives  up  the 
crown,  being  carried  to  the  Isle  of  Avilion  to  be  healed  of  his 
wounds. 

The  Middle  Ages,  despite  what  we  hear  and  talk  about  their 
defects  of  communication  and  the  like,  are  famous  for  the  almost 
unintelligible  rapidity  of  their  literary  diffusion  in  some  cases.  But  in 
none  is  this  so  remarkable  as  in  the  case  of  the  Arthurian  story,  which, 
if  not  entirely  invented  on  the  meagre  basis  of  Nennius  by  Geoffrey 
himself,  can  at  most  have  some  other  basis  of  Welsh  legends,  chiefly 
about  Merlin.  We  have  seen  that  the  book  cannot  have  been 
written  much  earlier  than  1130,  and  may  not  have  been  written  till  a 
few  years  before  11 50.  It  appears  that  before  the  later  date  it 
was  already  turned  into  French  verse  by  Geoffrey  Gaimar,  whose 
version  is  lost ;  and  shortly  after  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth's  own  death 
by  Wace  of  Jersey,  whose  version  remains.  Fresh  legends  or  sheer 
invention  furnished  Wace  with  some  important  additions,  and,  as  we 
sliall  see,  he  handed  it  on  to  the  first  English  handler  of  the  story, 
the  poet  Layamon.  But  the  development  of  the  whole  into  a  real 
romance  occupied  pens  in  verse  and  prose  during  the  later  part,  prob- 
ably the  third  quarter,  of  the  century,  in  a  manner  the  exact  account 
and  distribution  of  which  is  still  a  mystery.  The  chief  credit  used  to 
be  assigned,  and  tlie  present  writer  is  still  inclined  to  assign  it,  to 
Walter  Map  or  Majjes,  a  native  of  the  Welsh  marches,  and  the  author 
not  merely  of  a  very  curious  and  interesting  Latin  miscellany  called 
De  IVugis  Curialium,  but,  by  possible  attribution  at  least,  of  a  still 
more   interesting    collection    of    student    poems,   satires    on    church 


44  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

dignitaries,  etc.,  issued  under  the  general  nom  de  guerre  of  "Golias."^ 
At  much  the  same  time,  later  or  earlier,  Chrestien  de  Troyes,  a 
French  poet,  gave  poetical  versions  of  many  parts  of  the  legend.  But 
the  complete  execution  of  this  in  verse  or  in  prose  belongs,  in 
language  at  least,  to  French  not  to  English  literature,  till  it  was 
magnificently  vindicated  for  its  native  soil  by  Malory  three  centuries 
later.  The  probably  earliest  English  version  after  Layamon  will  be 
found  noticed  in  the  next  chapter  but  one,  as  that  of  Layamon  will  be 
found  in  the  very  next. 

The  opportunity  of  an  example  of  unmatched  pertinence  has 
taken  us  a  little  way  from  the  actual  stream  of  English  literature  to 
illustrate  the  manner  in  which  that  literature  drew  its  subjects  from 
literatures  other  than  English.  This  was  all  the  more  desirable 
because  at  this  very  time  such  new  stocks  of  subjects  were  simply 
pouring  in  from  East  and  West  and  North  and  South  alike.  We  must 
return  to  show  how  a  change  greater  far  than  any  mere  introduction 
of  subject  —  the  introduction  of  the  true  and  universal  prosody  of 
English  instead  of  the  cramjoed  and  parochial  rhythm  of  Anglo-Saxon 
—  came  about,  showing  at  the  same  time  how  the  surviving  virtue  of 
that  rhythm  itself  differentiates  English  metre,  as  it  was  to  be,  from 
that  of  other  modern  languages. 

It  appears  probable,  and  the  reasons  which  make  it  so  have  been 
already  partly  set  forth,  that  it  was  Latin  even  more  than  French  that 
effected  this  transmutation.  It  is  therefore  unnecessary  for  even  the 
most  sensitive  patriot  to  be  jealous  of  what  has  been  rather  absurdly 
called  "the  rhythm  of  the  foreigner."  Latin,  to  the  Middle  Ages,  wa's 
Lati  d     "°^  foreign  in  any  country,  just  as  it  was  mother  tongue 

in  the  early  in  none.  It  was  in  Church  and  State  alike  the  common 
'  ^  ^"'  speech,  the  common  literary  stock  of  Christendom ;  the 
very  Italian  himself,  and  still  more  the  Goths  and  Franks  who  spoke 
the  other  Romance  tongues,  had  hardly  more  part  in  it  than  the  Anglo- 
Saxon.  And  the  Latin  prosody,  as  well  as  the  Latin  vocabulary,  that 
affected  English  poetry  once  for  all  in  the  centuries  between  looo  and 
1400  A.D.  was  Latin  enormously  changed  by  influences  which  may 
have  been  themselves  barbarian  in  origin.  It  is  improbable  that 
we  shall  ever  exactly  know  the  causes  of  the  change  which  we  first 
observe  in  Prudentius,  and  which  becomes  ever  more  noticeable.  It 
may  be  that,  as  some  will  have  it,  the  elaborate  classical  prosody  of 
Latin  was  a  mere  interlude,  that  "  the  rhythm  of  the  foreigner  "  was 
introduced  from  Greece,  and  for  a  time  superimposed  with  crushing 

1  Both  edited  for  the  Camden  Society  by  Thomas  Wright,  whose  services  to 
Middle  English  literature  were  inferior  to  those  of  no  man,  dead  or  living,  in  his 
numerous  editions  of  texts,  and  in  his  Diographia  Britannica  Literaria  (2  vols. 
London  —  Anglo-Saxon  Period,  1842;  Anglo-Norman  Period,  1846). 


CHAP.  I  THE  TRANSITION  45 

weight  on  a  natural  accentual  prosody  such  as  we  see  partly  indi- 
cated in  "Saturnian"  fragments.  But  what  is  certain  is  that,  from 
the  end  of  the  fourth  century  onward,  there  is  observable  a  movement 
(whether  of  innovation  or  reaction  is  not  here  essential)  which  not 
only  alters  to  the  most  material  extent  the  quantity  of  syllables,  but  also, 
as  a  consequence  or  independently,  conditions  the  structure  of  verse. 
And  this  change  is  seen  more  especially  in  the  compositions  which 
were  certain  to  exert  most  effect  upon  the  vernaculars,  the  Hymns  of 
the  Church.  For  not  only  were  these  sure  to  resound  in 
millions  of  ears,  the  eyes  corresponding  to  which  were  very  *  ymns. 
unlikely  to  read  written  literature,  secular  or  sacred,  but  the  music 
by  which  they  were  accompanied  was  equally  certain  to  familiarise 
the  ear,  and  with  the  rhythm  to  impress  it  on  the  brain,  and  make  it 
likely  to  be  reproduced  in  vernacular  composition,  especially  when 
the  prosodic  forms  more  specially  belonging  to  that  composition  had 
gone  almost  entirely  out  of  use. 

Now,  the   characteristics  of  this  kind  of  verse  were  chiefly  two, 
and    each    of   these   was    in    direct   and    striking    contrast   with    the 
corresponding    characteristics    of    Anglo-Saxon.     In    the 
first  place,  though  alliteration  might  by  accident  appear    ^n'^'r^'^" 
in   them,  its   regular   presence  as  a  distinguishing  poetic 
form,   a  regulator  and   mainspring  of  rhythm,   was   entirely   absent, 
and  was  replaced  by  rhyme  ^  both  middle  and  end,  but  especially  the 
latter.     And   in    the    second    place,    the    requirement    of    a    certain 
number  of  "accented"  syllables,  not  even  itself  insisted  on 
with  absolute   rigidity,  and  accompanied  by  the  vaguest    ^'^J^'etre^"'^ 
and  widest  license  of  inserting  syllables  that  were  unac- 
cented, was  replaced  by  the  system  of  definite  metre,  composed  of 
syllabic  integers  either  identical  or  equivalent. 

This  influence  had  already  exerted  itself  on  the  so-called  Romance 
languages,  and  so  in  the  case  of  the  second  foreign  influence  —  French 
—  Anglo-Saxon  found  itself  confronted   with  an  ally  of  Latio,  or  let 
us  say  with  a  pupil  who  had  already  passed  his  freshmanship.     But 
French  had  received  the  Latin  influence  and   instruction  in  its  own 
way.      One   of  those   strange    and    infinitely    interesting, 
though   also   infinitely   mysterious,    idiosyncrasies    of  Ian-      prosody. 
guage,   which   students    of   philology   and    phonetics    too 
often  neglect,  had  brought  it  about  that  French  should  be  a  language 
in  which  the  distinction  of  syllabic  value  (call  it  "long"  or '-short," 

*  "Rhyme,"  not  "rime"  "Rime"  in  English  means  "hoar-frost,"  and 
we  need  not  introduce  an  unnecessary  ambiguity,  against  the  practice  of  all  our 
greatest  writers,  save,  perhaps,  one.  Nay,  the  suggested  etymology  of  fivdfiSs, 
if  false,  shows  the  instinctive  recognition  of  the  fact,  first  formulated  by  Mitford, 
that  "  rhyme  is  a  time-beater,"  not  a  mere  tinkling  tag. 


46  THE  MAKING   OF  ENGLISH   LITERATURE         book  ii 

"  accented  "  or  "  unaccented,"  "  heavy "  or  "  light,"  or  by  any  op- 
position of  words  which  may  be  preferred  as  least  controversial)  is, 
and  seems  always  to  have  been,  less  marked  than  in  almost  any 
other.  It  followed  from  this  that  trisyllabic  feet  —  that  is  to  say,  feet 
in  which  one  syllable  is  intrinsically  strong,  long,  heavy,  or  what  not, 
enough  to  take  two  weaker,  shorter,  lighter  ones  on  its  back  and 
preserve  them  distinct  from  others  —  were  never  prevalent  in  French, 
and  for  many  centuries  have  been  non-existent.  And  it  followed 
from  this  again  that  "syllabic  equivalence"  —  that  is  to  say,  the 
principle  by  which  one  strong,  long,  heavy  syllable  may  be  .substituted 
for  two  weak,  short,  light  ones,  and  vice  versa  —  has  in  the  regular 
prosody  of  France  never  had  any  place,  while  even  in  doggerel,  in 
comic  songs,  and  the  like,  syllables,  if  they  are  not  to  count  at  full, 
have  to  be  simply  slurred  or  omitted,  as  may  be  seen  in  the  printed 
works  of  the  lighter  French  songsters. 

Now  there  was,  and  from  what  has  been  said  it  will  be  seen  that 
this  also  was  natural,  something  of  a  reflex  tendency  in  Latin  non- 
classical  verse  to  imitate  this  chaiacteristic  of  the  Romance  tongues, 
which  showed  itself  also  in  Provencal,  in  Italian,  and  to  a  less  degree 
in  Spanish.  And  undoubtedly  the  crucial  question  was  whether 
English  would  follow  it  and  them  in  this  respect.  For  centuries,  as 
„  „  . .        we  shall   see,  the   question  was  undecided  —  nay.  at  the 

Syllabic  1  ,  r      y      ■         •  1 

equivalence  in  present  day  there  are  some  persons  ot  distinction  who 
English.  ^yj]j  ]^ave  it  that  there  is  no  syllabic  equivalence  in 
English,  and  who  resort  to  slurring,  to  "  extrametrical  syllables,"  and  to 
all  manner  of  strange  devices  to  twist  out  of  this  great,  this  cardinal, 
this  supreme  feature  of  our  poetry.  For  it  is  this  —  the  possibility, 
namely,  of  substituting  almost  anywhere,  with  due  precautions,  dactyl 
or  tribrach  or  anapaest  for  iamb  or  trochee  ^  —  which,  when  the  example 
of  Spenser  to  some  extent,  and  the  inestimable  license  of  the  great 
dramatists  far  more,  had  given  it  an  unquestioned  right  of  place  in 
literature,  and  when  it  had  allied  with  itself  the  shaking  off  of  the  rigid 
caesura  or  pause,  endowed  English  verse  with  that  astonishing  and 
unparalleled  variety  of  music  which  puts  it  at  the  head  of  the  poetry 
of  the  modern  world. 

And  we  should  be  doing  Anglo-Saxon  a  grave  injustice  if  we  did 
not  recognise  that  one  of  its  main  poetical  features  undoubtedly 
helped  to  bring  about  this  blessed  result,  and  that  was  the  old 
license  of  putting  in  unaccented  syllables  almost  ad  libitjtm.  Indeed, 
.some  authorities  would  recognise  a  formal  and  regular  equivalence 
in  Anglo-Saxon    itself.     The  sectional    arrangement  of  Anglo-Saxon 

1  Strictly  speaking,  of  course,  only  the  tribrach  corresponds  to  the  trochee  or 
iamb.  Fiut,  as  in  Greek  itself,  dactyls  and  anapaests  (though  not,  I  think,  cretics 
or  anijihihrachs)  claim  a  place. 


CHAP.  I  THE  TRANSITION  47 

was  less  beneficial,  and  would,  if  maintained,  as  there  was  for  some 
centuries    a    blind    effort    to    retain    it,    have    been    very 
mischievous.     But    here   too  the   dramatists,  with  Shake-     Helped  by 

■  Anglo-baxon. 

speare   at   their   head,  came  to  the  rescue,  and,  with  the 

aid   of  their   mighty   follower   Milton,   once   for  all   established    the 

following  law :  — 

III  an  English  heroic  line,  as  well  as  in  any  shorter  one^  the  patise 
may  fall  after  the  first  or  any  subsequent  syllable  to  the 
penultimate,  while  there   need  not  be  any  distinct  pause     hrEngirsh.'^ 
at  all. 

But  we  must  now  see  in  detail  what  the  actual  history  of  Middle 
English  literature  was. 

1  In  the  Alexandrine  and  longer  lines  a  pause  is  necessary,  somewhere  about 
the  middle,  when  they  are  used  continuously,  though  not  always  in  isolated 
applications  like  Spenser's.  But  it  is  a  question  whether  these  lines  are  not  more 
or  less  disguised  disticks,  a  fact  of  which  the  sixteenth-century  practice  of  printing 
them  in  halves  was  a  clumsy  recognition. 


CHAPTER   II 

FIRST   MIDDLE   ENGLISH    PERIOD 

I 200-1250 

Layamon's  Brut —  The  Ormulum  —  Its  spelling —  Its  metre  —  The  Ancren  Riwle  — 
The  Moral  Ode  —  Genesis  and  Exodus  —  The  Bestiary  —  The  Orison  of  our 
Lady  —  Proverbs  of  Alfred  and  Hendyng  —  The  Owl  and  the  Nightingale 

The  dates  of  the  books  —  not  numerous,  but,  in  some  cases  at  least, 
both  important  and  interesting — which  compose  the  first  growth  of 
Middle  English  literature,  or  what  used  to  be  called  "  Semi-Saxon," 
are  known  with  very  little  certainty.  But  a  circa  of  reasonable 
probability  can  generally  be  attached  to  them,  and  there  seems  very 
little  doubt  that  about  the  close  of  the  twelfth  and  the  beginning  of 
the  thirteenth  centuries  something  like  a  distinct  first-crop  made  its 
appearance.  It  is  natural  that  the  subjects  of  this  new  literature 
should,  like  those  of  the  old,  be  at  first  mainly  religious.  But  they 
soon  ranged  more  widely,  and,  as  it  happens,  the  most  important  of 
all  in  bulk  and  in  contents,  if  not  also  in  actual  literary  quality,  is 
secular. 

This  is  the  famous  Brut  ^  of  Layamon,  which  we  possess  in  two 
forms,  one  assigned  by  scholars  to  the  earliest  and  the  other  to  the 
latest   years   of  the   half-century  which    has   been  subsumed  for  this 
chapter.       The   differences   between   these    two   versions, 
^^^B^ut^     though    occasionally,  as  in  the  case  of  the  name   of  the 
author's   father,^  a  little   puzzling,  are  of  great  value  for 
linguistics,  and  they  are  by  no  means  unimportant  for  hterary  history 
proper,    inasmuch   as  we   perceive    in    the   later   version    the   distinct 
enlargement  of  the  intrusion  of  rhyme,  which  is  already  noticeable  in 
the  earlier.     But  in  mere  contents  the  later  version  is,  somewhat  con- 
trary to  the  wont  of  mediaeval  times,  shortened  rather  than  watered 

^  Ed.  Madden,  3  vols.  London,  1847. 

2  In  the  earlier  text  we  have  "  Layamon  the  son  of  Leovenath,"  in  the  later 
"  Laweman  the  son  of  Leuca." 

48 


CHAP.  II  FIRST   MIDDLE   ENGLISH   PERIOD  49 

out ;  and  it  is  also  in  much  worse  condition,  having  suffered  by 
that  too  famous  fire  in  the  Cottonian  Library  which  plays  in  Early 
English  literary  history  an  actual  and  historical  counterpart  to  Caleb 
Balderstone's  thunderstorm  in  fiction.  Fortunately  for  the  student 
of  letters,  both  are  contained  in  one  of  the  best,  as  in  one  of  the 
handsomest,  editions  which  have  fallen  to  the  lot  of  any  Early  English 
classic.^ 

Layamon,  the  son  of  Leovenath,  of  whom  we  know  nothing  save 
from  his  own  words,  appears  to  have  been  a  priest  at  Arley  or  Ernley 
(a  village  near  Bewdley,  on  the  Severn),  into  whose  hands  Wace's 
translation  of  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  fell.  He  combined  with  it,  as 
he  tells  us,  Bede,  historical  works  by  "Albinus"  and  "Austin," 
which  have  not  been  identified,  though  the  first  may  have  been  some 
lost  Latin  original  of  Bede's  own,'-^  and  (but  this  he  does  not  tell  us) 
apparently  either  traditions  of  the  Welsh  marches,  near  which  he 
lived,  or  some  imaginations  of  his  own.  The  result  is  a  Brut,  or 
British  History,  of  great  length,''  displaying  occasionally  no  small 
literary  power,  very  interesting  as  the  first  English  book  on  the  great 
legendary  history  of  England,  and  absolutely  priceless  as  showing  the 
inroads  which  the  influences  described  in  the  last  chapter  were 
making  upon  the  effete  rules  and  weakened  powers  of  Anglo-Saxon. 

In  mere  vocabulary  the  change  is  by  no  means  great.  Authori- 
ties differ  as  to  the  number  of  French  words  used,  but  none  sets  it 
above  an  almost  infinitesimal  proportion.*  Yet  the  forms  of  the 
language  are  unmistakably  altering,  and  the  forms  of  prosody  are 
altering  more  unmistakably  still.  The  general  structure  is  still  the 
unrhymed  alliterative  line  of  two  short  sections.  But  an  absolutely 
perfect  example  of  the  older  form  —  four  accents,  three  alliterations, 
no  rhyme  whatever,  and  a  rhythm  often  not  marked  at  all  according 
to  any  metrical  system,  and  only  vaguely  trochaic  when  sensible  — 
is  the  exception,  an  exception  appearing  at  long  intervals.  Constantly 
the  alliteration  is  broken  down.  Very  frequently  rhymes  appear 
between  the  line-halves  —  rhymes  of  a  simple  and  obvious  kind, 
"  brother  "'  and  '•  other,"  "  king  "  and  "  thing,"  "  night "  and  "  light," 
etc.,  but  for  that  very   reason   all   the  easier,  all  the  more  tempting, 

1  Sir  Frederic  Madden's  Layamon,  like  Thorpe's  Ccsdmon  and  Exeter  Book, 
was  published  by  the  Society  of  Antiquaries,  which  unfortunately  did  not  find 
encouragement  to  go  further. 

2  "  Albinus  "  of  Canterbury  was  one  of  Bede's  authorities. 

8 Text  A  contains  over  32,000  lines  or  half-lines;  Text  B  seems  to  have  had 
about  24,000,  of  which  more  than  the  odd  4000  are  lost  or  damaged.  The  older 
practice  of  printing  Anglo-Saxon  verse  in  half-lines  is  distinctly  preferable  here, 
because  tlie  change  of  rhythm  and  the  inroad  of  rhyme  are  more  clearly  shown. 

^Madden  allows  about  50  in  A,  about  80  in  B;  Professor  Skeat  puts  the 
total  at  170. 


50  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

and  all  the  more  frequent  in  occurrence.  Most  important  of  all,  the 
unmetrical  or  vaguely  trochaic  cadence  tends  steadily  towards,  and 
sometimes  readies,  the  full  and  exact  octosyllabic  couplet,  rhymed 
and  complete.     When  we  come  across  such  a  couplet  as  — 

Tha  answersede  Vortiger, 
Of  elchen  ufel  he  was  war  ; 

still  more  when  we  find  that  in  the  fifty  years'  interval  between  the 
two  versions  the  terminations  "  Appollin "  and  "  wel  iwon "  have 
been  changed  into  "Appollin"  and  "of  great  win,"  the  inference 
is  unmistakable.  Rhymed  metre  has  challenged  on  rhymed  rhythm, 
and  is  slowly  driving  it  out. 

As  for  the  substance  of  Layamon,  it  may  be  regarded  from  two 
points  of  view :  his  additions  to  his  predecessors,  as  far  as  we  have 
these  latter,  and  his  handling  of  his  subjects,  original  or  added.  The 
list  of  the  former  given  by  Sir  Frederick  Madden  fills  two  large  pages, 
and  includes  among  its  more  important  items  the  legend  of  Oriene 
(the  name  which  Layamon  gives  to  St.  Ursula  of  the  Eleven  Thousand 
Virgins),  a  much  fuller  account  of  Rowena's  appearance  as  Dalilah, 
the  all-important  additions  to  the  Arthurian  story  that  "  elves " 
figured  at  the  King's  birth  and  took  him  to  Avalon,i  the  foundation 
of  the  Round  Table,  and  numerous  details  of  Arthur's  wars  with 
rebels  and  invaders  and  Romans.  From  the  latter  point  of  view 
particular  attention  may  be  directed  to  the  whole  of  the  Rowena 
story,  which  Layamon  works  into  a  much  completer  romance-episode 
than  any  previous  writer  whose  work  has  come  to  us,^  and  the  .whole 
of  the  Arthurian  passages.  These  latter  have  not  indeed  received 
the  immense  addition  to  their  interest  which  is  given  (possibly  by 
Layamon's  earlier  contemporary  and  neighbour  by  birth,  Walter 
Map)  in  the  Anglo-French  romances  on  the  subject,  but  it  is  in  itself 
a  much  greater  advance  upon  Wace  than  Wace  is  upon  Geoffrey, 
and  it  displays  much  more  poetical  capacity  than  the  Jerseyman's. 
Indeed,  when  we  give  fair  weight  to  the  fact  that  Layamon  was  like 
an  animal  which  is  struggling  out  of  its  old  shell  or  skin  into  a  new 
one.  and  has  not  half  completed  the  process,  the  poetical  merit  of  his 
work  deserves  to  be  set  far  higher  than  it  has  usually  been  put.  A 
"  chronicler,"   as   he  is  sometimes  called,   he  is  not,  though  he  may 

1  Their  queen  is  here  "Argante,"  of  course  the  same  as  the  "  Morgane  "  of 
the  more  usual  stories  and  the  "  Urganda  "  of  Peninsular  revival  in  Amadis. 

2  It  is  luckily  accessible  to  those  who  do  not  possess  the  whole  in  Morris  and 
Skeafs  Specimens  of  Early  English,  part  i.  p.  64.  I  could  wish  that  (instead  of 
the  whole  of  King  Horn,  of  which  a  fifth,  or  ten  pages,  would  well  sufifice) 
much  larger  extracts  from  Layamon  were  given  in  this  invaluable  book.  There  is 
plenty  to  choose  from. 


CHAP.  II  FIRST   MIDDLE   ENGLISH    PERIOD  $1 

have  thought  himself  one.     He  is  really  the  first  writer  of  romance  in 
English  of  whom  we  know. 

The  second  great  poetical  work  —  or  at  least  work  in  verse  —  of  this 
time,  the  Or>niiliim,^  is  far  inferior  in  interest  of  subject  to  the  Brut, 
for  it  is  simply  one  of  the  numerous  and  always  more  or  less  larae 
homiletic  paraphrases  of  the  Scriptures  —  in  this  case  ^^^ 
busied  with  the  Gospels  for  each  day.  We  have  not  Ormulum. 
the  whole  set,  but  a  considerable  part  of  it,  extending 
to  some  lo.ooo  lines  of  fifteen  syllables  each,  or  double  that  number 
if  the  poem  be  divided  into  couplets  of  eight  and  seven.  The  author, 
of  whom  nothing  is  known  except  from  this  work,  was  one  Orm 
or  Ormin,  an  Augustinian  monk,  probably  resident  somewhere  in 
the  east  of  England,  or  in  Northern  Mercia.  He  addresses  a  cer- 
tain Walter,  whom  he  terms  threefold  his  brother  —  in  the  flesh,  in 
faith,  and  in  monastic  order.  Of  actual  poetical  merit  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  Orm  has  nothing,  and  it  is  at  the  same  time  not 
paradoxical  to  add  that  his  work  is  much  more  valuable  by  reason  of 
certain  characteristics  which  it  possesses  than  one  of  much  greater 
poetical  merit  without  these  characteristics  could  have  been  to  us. 

The  first  of  his  peculiarities  lies  in  his  spelling.  It  would  have 
been  in  any  case  probable  that  the  jostling  of  English  by  French  and 
Latin  should  have  effected  some  confusion  in  English  pronunciation, 
while  this  confusion  would  also  be  assisted  by  the  variety 

.  ,,         A  i'^  spelling. 

of  dialects  still  prevalent  in  ••  Semi-Saxon."  At  any 
rate  Orm,  who  seems  to  have  been  a  purist  in  the  matter,  and  to  have 
liad  a  sensitive  ear,  was  offended  by  this,  and  determined  to  adopt 
a  plan  which  should  at  least  prevent  .short  vowels  from  being  sounded 
long  and  vice  versa.  In  order  to  do  this  he  seized  upon  the  prin- 
ciple—  sound  English  to  this  day,  and  fatal  to  what  is  called  American 
spelling  —  that  caeteris  paribus,  and  in  the  absence  of  special  know- 
ledge to  the  contrary,  a  vowel  before  two  consonants  will  be  pro- 
nounced short  in  English,  a  vowel  before  one  consonant  long.  And 
regardless  of  the  extraordinary  effect  produced  to  the  eye  —  indeed 
♦his  was  of  less  consequence  before  the  days  of  printing,  and  of  least 
in  the  days  when  reading  was  not  so  much  reading  as  recitation  —  he 
steadily  doubled  the  consonant  after  every  short  vowel,  even  when  there 
could,  as  in  the  case  of  the  infinitive  hrinngcmu  "  to  bring."  be  practi- 
cally no  danger.  The  effect  in  appearance  is  naturally  hideous  and 
grotesque  ;  as  a  monument  in  literary,  or  at  least  linguistic,  history  the 
practice  (the  observance  of  wliich  the  author  solemnly  enjoins  on  any 
scribe  wlio  sliall  copy  his  work)  is  priceless. 

As  valuable,  and  more  strictly  literary,  is  Orm\s  metrical  arrange- 


1  Ed.  White  and  Holt,  2  vols.  Oxford,  1878. 


52  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE         book  ii 

ment.  His  prosody  is  distinguished  from  Old  English  by  being 
neither  accentual  nor  (at  least  regularly)  alliterative,  nor  tolerant  of 
extrametrical  syllables.  It  is  distinguished  from  classical 
metre,  ^atin  by  having  no  syllabic  equivalence  nor  any  tri- 
syllabic feet.  If  its  metre  —  a  strict  iambic  form  of  tetrameter 
catalectic,  or  alternate  dimeters  acatalectic  and  catalectic  —  occurs 
anywhere  in  Latin  hymns,  it  must  be  very  rare,  and  Orm  has  no 
rhyme.  The  general  opinion  is  that  he  adapted  it  from  the  hymns, 
in  principle,  whether  from  an  actual  example  or  not.  But  I  suspect 
also  the  influence  of  French,  v^^here  strict  syllabic  prosody  had  long 
been  established. 

Now  nothing  can  be  more  reasonable  as  a  matter  of  expectation, 
or  more  valuable  as  a  matter  of  fact,  than  that  in  this  period  of 
groping  and  experiment,  of  endeavouring  to  suit  the  old  bottle  to  the 
new  wine,  some  one  should  have  selected,  as  Orm  apparently  did, 
the  method  of  hard-and-fast  syllabic  prosody,  unhelped,  uninfluenced 
even  by  rhyme.  It  is  not  a  success ;  it  is  contrary  to  the  genius  of 
English,  though  strangely  enough  there  are  even  now  persons  who  cling 
to  the  idea.  But  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  attempt  was  one  of  the 
experiments  which  had  to  be  made,  if  partially  to  fail,  and  that  in  the 
very  failure  it  did  good  by  curbing  and  restraining  the  English 
tendency  to  slipshod  doggerel  with  rhyme  to  match. 

Nor  ought  we  to  put  the  actual  value  of  the  Ormulnm  too  low. 
It  is  stiff,  monotonous,  bolstered  out  here  and  clipped  there  to  suit 
e  hard-and-fast  rhythm,  occasionally  of  a  most  prosaic  and  prp- 
voking  sing-song.  But  it  ought  to  be  remembered  that  sing-song 
was  exactly  what  English  wanted.  It  was  the  defect  in  cadence,  the 
substitution  of  rhetorical  for  strictly  poetical  effect,  which  was  the 
greatest  shortcoming  of  Anglo-Saxon  poetry.  Here  at  least  there 
was  no  such  defect,  though  the  verse  not  unnaturally  tumbled  into 
the  'opposite  fault  of  too  monotonous  ictus,  of  an  effect  like  that 
I'^j  'a,  which  has  been  whimsically  transferred  from  the  King  of  France  in 
f,,pJ  the  rhyme  to  French  verse,  of  marching  up  the  hill  and  then  march- 

'^t  ing  down  again  with  remorseless  alternation.       In  morals  to  go  into 

one  extreme  in  order  to  cure  the  other  is  a  dubious  recipe ;  but  in 
other  matters  it  is  the  one  most  familiar,  most  generally  applied,  and 
perhaps  most  generally  effective.  That  something  better  ought  to 
come  and  would  come  than  the  half-alliterative,  half-rhymed,  half- 
rhythmical,  half-metrical  jumble  of  Layamon  was  clear;  that  it  would 
be  something  also  different  from,  and  much  better  than,  the  stiff 
rhymeless  cadence  of  Ormin  was  clear  likewise.  But  this  was  the 
necessary  tack  in  one  direction  as  that  was  in  the  other,  and  between 
them,  with  other  minor  veerings  to  help,  they  brought  the  ship  through 
the  troublesome  middle  passage  of  the  thirteenth  and  early  fourteenth 


CHAP.  II  FIRST   MIDDLE   ENGLISH   PERIOD  53 

centuries  safe  into  the  open  sea  where  Chaucer  took  command,  and 
where  she  has  sailed  since,  and  may  sail,  we  hope,  for  evermore. 

The  third  capital  work  of  the  earliest  period  of  Middle  English 
is  not  like  the  Brut  and  the  Ormidum  in  verse,  but  in  prose,  though 
it  resembles  the  Ormulutn  in  belonging  to  sacred  not  to  profane  litera- 
ture. It  is  thus  less  important  than  either  in  the  history  of  literary 
form,  though  as  an  example  of  pleasant,  easy  prose-writing  it  shows  a 
considerable  advance  on  any  Anglo-Saxon  prose  that  we  possess, 
and  its  interest  of  subject,  of  tone,  and  temper  is  very  considerable. 
This  is  the  Ancren  Riivle  ^  or  Rule  of  Anchoresses,  xhe 
written  by  an  unknown  person  for  the  guidance  of  three  ■^"ff"' 
ladies  who  had  taken  the  vows,  but  belonged  to  no 
order,  abiding  in  a  free  female  hermitage  at  Tarrant  Keynes  in 
Dorsetshire.  This  book  is  partly  a  devotional  manual,  six  of  its 
eight  books,  or  '•  deals,"  being  devoted  to  what  the  author  calls 
the  Inner  Rule  —  the  cultivation  of  the  soul  by  guarding  against  sin 
and  practising  piety.  The  first  handles  services  and  ceremonial 
matters ;  the  last,  the  daily  life  of  the  recluses.  The  characteristic 
of  these  practical  parts  is  a  curiously  wide  and  liberal  spirit  of  charity, 
informed  by  good  sense  and  human  feeling.  The  hermitage  of 
Tarrant  Keynes  was  no  Abbey  of  Theleme :  its  motto  is  fats  ce  que 
dots,  not  fats  ce  que  voiidras,  and  the  writer  is  perfectly  well  aware 
of  what  comes  of  the  unlimited  indulgence  of  sense  and  will.  But  he 
not  only  does  not  advise,  he  distmctly  reprobates  and  forbids,  exces- 
sive austerities,  and  is  never  weary  of  dwelling  on  the  contrast  between 
the  Inner  and  Outer  Rule,  and  the  superior  importance  of  the  former. 
The  strictly  devotional  parts  are  animated  by  a  mysticism  which  is 
of  the  kindly  order  likewise,  and  the  illustrations,  parables,  and  the 
like  are  frequently  of  considerable  literary  interest,  while  the  style 
shows  at  least  possibilities  of  splendour  as  well  as  an  actual  command 
of  ease. 

The  rhyming  productions  of  this  period  are  of  less  individual  bulk, 
but  in  almost  every  case  (except  those  of  the  Homilies  and  Lives  of 
Saints)  they  possess  literary  as  well  as  linguistic  importance.  One  or 
two  of  these,  if  we  could  believe  some  authorities,  preceded  even  Lay- 
amon  and  Orm  by  the  greater  part  of  a  century.  But  this,  as  will  be 
seen,  is  nearly  inconceivable. 

1  Extracts  of  this  appeared  in  Wright  and  Halliwell's  Reliquiae  Atitiquac  in 
1841-43.  It  was  completely  published  by  the  Rev.  James  Morton  for  the  Camden 
Society  in  1853.  The  authorship  is  quite  uncertain :  it  has  been  assigned  to  two 
Bishops  of  Salisbury ;  Simon  of  Ghent,  who  died  too  late,  1313,  to  have  written  a 
book  probably  of  the  earliest  years  of  the  thirteenth  century;  and  Richard  Poore, 
who  was  certainly  born  and  lived  at  Tarrant,  and  whose  time  (he  died  in  1237) 
suits  well  enough.  But  there  is  no  evidence  of  his  having  written  it.  It  was  widely 
popular,  and  was  translated  both  in  prose  and  verse. 


54  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE  book  ii 

The  most  important,  perhaps,  and  according  to  the  authorities  just 
mentioned  the  oldest,  is  the  somewhat  celebrated  Poeina  Morale,  or 
Moral  Ode,  published  at  the  beginning  of  the  last  century 
The.i/<'/-rt:    jjy  Hickes.^     This,  which  answers  to  its  name,  is  a  dis- 
quisition in  verse  on  the  rapid  passing  of  life,  on  the  fact 
that  growth  in  years  and  in  goods  does  not  always,  or  often,  mean 
growth  in  wisdom  or  in  grace,  on  the  importance  of  good  works,  the 
certainty  of  Judgment,  and  the  like.     It  is,  though  necessarily  dealing 
with  commonj^laces,  good  literature,  and  its  metrical  form  is  very  re- 
markable ;  while  the  language,  for  all  its  age,  is  in  parts  so  modern 
that  scarcely  anything  more  than  the  slightest  alteration  in  spelling  is 
necessary  to  make  the  first  four  lines  intelligible  :  — 

I  am  elder  than  I  was  in  winter (s)  and  eke  lore; 
I  wield  more  than  I  did:   my  wit  ought  to  be  more; 
Well  longe  I  have  child  ibeen  in  worke  and  eke  in  deede; 
Though  I  be  in  winters  old,  too  young  am  I  in  rede. 

It  will  be  seen  that  this  form  is  different  from  anything  hitherto 
noticed,  and  that  it  is  identical,  not  only  almost  but  altogether,  with 
the  most  insignificant  differences,  with  the  swinging  "fourteener" 
which  was  almost  the  staple  verse  of  English  literature  at  the  end  of 
the  early  and  middle  sixteenth  century,  and  which  has  never  gone  out 
since. 

Now  Professor  Ten  Brink  not  only  thinks  that  this  metre  is  all  but 
identical  with  Orm's,  but  believes  that  the  poem  may  be  as  early  as 
the  reign  of  lienryl.  The  first  position  is,  I  think,  a  clear  mistake. 
It  is  tme  that  occasionally  the  lines  of  the  Odegwt  us  the  full  Ormulum 
fifteener  with  iambic  cadence,  while  the  feminine  termination  which 
distinguishes  it  is  rigidly  maintained.  But  as  a  rule,  as  the  already 
given  example  will  show,  the  first  syllable  is  cut  off,  the  cadence 
becomes  trochaic,  and  what  is  more,  there  is  a  distinct  tendency,  if 
not  to  the  definite  insertion  of  trisyllabic  equivalents,  to  a  hop,  a  slur, 
a  quaver,  breaking  the  steady  "thid-thud"  of  Walter's  excellent  brother. 
Nor  is  the  rhyme  a  less  important  or  a  less  disturbing  addition.  This, 
however,  is  one  of  those  points  which  it  may  not  be  easy  to  make  clear 
to  a  foreigner's  ear  —  a  fact  which  no  doubt  should  render  all  foreigners 
chary  of  committing  themselves  on  prosodies  not  their  own.  The 
other  position  is  more  arguable. 

How  is  it  possible  when  we  find  after  1200  (the  certainly 
earliest  possible  date  of  the  Br7ct),  even  up  to  1250  (that  of  the  Owl 
and  Night ittgale,  etc.),   metrical  as  opposed  to  rhythmical  scansion 

1  It  has  been  several  times  reprinted,  and  will  be  found  complete  in  two  differ- 
ent texts  (which  are  supposed  to  represent  about  the  same  difference,  1200  and 
1250,  as  those  of  the  Brut),  in  Morris  and  Skeat,  op.  cit.  i.  194,  sq. 


\ 


CHAP.  II  FIRST   MIDDLE   ENGLISH   PERIOD  55 

barely  struggling  in,  that  not  long  after  iioo  a  perfect  metrical 
swing  of  the  modern  kind  should  have  been  attained  by  one  poet, 
and  should  somehow  or  other  have  failed  to  appear  in  any  other? 
Observe  too,  that  the  rhyme  is  not  middle-rhyme,  the  earlier,  but 
end-rhyme,  the  later  kind ;  that  the  author  keeps  it  up  with  ease,  in- 
stead of  using  only  the  most  obvious  and  recurrent  rhymes,  and  lapsing 
continually,  as  Layamon,  much  later  than  iioo,  did.  Of  the  language 
I  do  not  profess  to  speak  as  an  expert  in  even  a  slight  degree.  But 
of  the  metrical  form  I  will  say  boldly  that  it  is  rather  astonishingly 
advanced  even  for  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century,  which  is  the 
time  most  probably  assigned  to  it.  And  it  would  be  almost  equally 
astonishing  if  the  rhymed  Paternoster  which  we  also  have,  and 
which  Ten  Brink  assigns  to  the  later  half  of  the  twelfth  century,  were 
of  that  date,  couched  as  it  is  in  the  regular  octosyllabic  couplets 
which  again  we  only  find  struggling  into  existence  in  Layamon. 
There  will  be  few  occasions  in  the  course  of  this  history  on  which 
we  can  allow  ourselves  even  as  much  discussion  of  controversial 
points  as  this.  But  the  ord^r  of  the  change  in  prosody  is  too 
important  to  dispense  with  it  wholly  here. 

As  it  so  happens,  however  (and  here,  as  in  the  case  of  Layamon, 
the  possession  is  precious  not  merely  for  philological  but  for  true 
literary  reasons),  we  possess  more  versions  than  one  of  the  Poema 
Morale,  and  the  comparison  of  them  establishes  the  unlikelihood  of 
an  early  date  for  its  more  finished  metrical  form.  The  sober  and 
even  yet  hardly  disputed  authority  of  the  late  Dr.  Morris  does  not 
venture  to  put  even  the  elder  of  these  earlier  than  "^before  1200," 
the  later  he  dates  more  plumply  as  "1250."  And  even  in  the  1200 
version  we  see  that  the  proper  metrical  form  is  only  struggling  out 
of  the  shell,  which  it  has  not  thoroughly  chipped  till  later.  In  the 
earlier  we  find  such  a  line  as  this  — 

Elche  time  sal  l>e  man  of-)>unche  his  misdade; 

which  becomes  in  the  later — 

On  hwuche  tyme  so  euer  the  mon  of-J>inkeJ>  his  mysdede^ 

an  almost  perfect  fourteener  such  as  might  have  been  written  (were  it 
not  for  the  ///  letter)  in  the  early  sixteenth,  or  for  the  matter  of  that  in 
the  late  nineteenth,  century.  And  generally  it  may  be  laid  down 
with  the  utmost  confidence  that  the  procession  from  rhythm  to 
metre  is  astonishingly  regular,  and  perhaps  affords  as  good  a  test  of 
date  as  any  other.  Here  and  there,  of  course,  individual  study  or 
genius  will  make  a  start  in  front;  individual  clumsiness  or  the  un- 
favourable nature  of  surroundings  will  cause  another  to  lag  behind. 


56  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

But  generally  the  procession  is  as  regular  as  the  growth  of  a  tree ; 
and  it  cannot  be  said  to  be  in  the  least  interrupted  —  it  is  at  the 
most  for  a  time  paralleled  and  accompanied  —  by  the  curious  alliter- 
ative revival  which  we  shall  have  to  notice  in  the  fourteenth 
century. 

A  considerable  part  of  the  literature  of  this  time  is  only  literature 
by  courtesy,  Homilies  and  Lives  of  Saints,  with  rare  exceptions, 
being  merely  refashionings  of  previous  matter  for  present  consump- 
tion. These  are  found  both  in  prose  and  in  verse,  the  latter 
gradually  taking  the  form  either  of  the  rudimentary  "  fourteener " 
just  noticed,  or  of  the  octosyllabic  couplet,  which,  as  we  have  seen, 
crops  up  even  in  Layamon.  The  so-called  Saivles  Warde,'^  a  prose 
homily,  has  a  certain  interest  because  in  one  of  those  fits  of 
agglomeration  which  have  been  and  will  be  noticed,  and  which 
alternate  with  segregation  in  the  philological  ague,  it  has  been 
sought  to  unite  its  authorship  with  that  not  merely  of  the  Ancren 
Riwle,  but  of  Hali  MeidenJiad^^  the  Wooing  of  Our  Lord^  and  the 
prose  lives  of  St.  Margaret,^  St.  Juliana,*'^  and  St.  Katharine.  Identi- 
fications of  this  kind  can  at  the  best  be  conjectural,  and  are  always 
exceedingly  rash,  but  they  may  fairly  be  supposed  to  argue  on  the  part 
of  those  who  make  them  the  apprehension  of  a  certain  literary  unity 
in  the  styles  as  well  as  in  the  mere  language  of  the  different  books. 
Even  this  is  exposed  to  the  objection  that  in  matter  which  more  than 
any  other  lends  itself  to  the  adoption  of  "  common  form,"  which  is 
constantly  based  on  similar  Latin  originals,  and  which  must  pre- 
sumably have  been  written  in  schools  of  conventual  practice,  even 
a  great  similarity  is  probable  without  an  identity  of  authorship 
being  fairly  to  be  inferred ;  while  mere  agreement  in  grammatical 
and  dialectic  forms  is  the  very  slenderest  and  most  treacherous  of 
clues. 

There  is  much  more  purely  literary  interest  in  a  verse  translation 

or  paraphrase  of  the  books  of  Genesis  and  Exodus^  which  appears  to 

have  been  executed  about  the   middle   of  the   thirteenth 

^'Rxodu^.^  century,  and   which    has   great   attraction   not   merely  for 

its   extremely  sharp  contrast  of  language  and  form  with 

those  of  the  Caedmonian  paraphrases,  but  for  the  intrinsic  character 

of  the  form  itself.     Here  is  a  passage : — 

For  sextene  get  Joseph  was  old 
Quane  he  was  into  Egipte  sold; 
He  was  Jacobes  gunkeste  sune, 

1  In  full  ed.  Morris,  Old  English  Homilies  (E.E.T.S.)  ;  part  of  each  given 
in  Morris-Skeat  Specimeris,  vol.  i. 

2  Ed.  Cockayne,  E.E.T.S.  8  Ed.  Morris.  E.E.T.S. 


CHAP.  II  FIRST   MIDDLE   ENGLISH   PERIOD  57 

Brictest  of  wasme  and  of  witter  wune;^ 

If  he  sag  hise  brethere  misfaren, 

His  fader  he  it  gan  un-hillen  and  baren. 

Now  it  must  be  evident  here  to  the  most  careless  reader  who 
has  any  ear  that  we  have  stumbled  upon  one  of  the  most  famous  of 
English  measures,  the  great  Christabel  metre  itself,  or  in  other 
words,  the  iambic  dimeter  with  wide  license  of  trisyllabic  substitution, 
catalexis,  and  metrical  truncation  so  as  to  interpose  trochaic  chords. 
The  enormous  influence  of  this  (through  Scott's  hearing  part  of 
Christabel  before  it  was  published)  has  long  been  a  commonplace 
of  literary  history ;  and  it  has  been  also  often  pointed  out,  though 
less  often,  that  it  was  only  developed,  not  invented,  by  Coleridge,  in- 
asmuch as  it  occurs  in  Spenser's  The  Oak  and  the  Brere  {Shep.  Kal. 
Feb.),  and  in  other  places,  including  even  Co?nus.  But  not  much 
attention  has  been  called  -  to  its  occurrence  practically  full-fledged, 
though  not  with  all  its  tricks  of  flight  yet  learnt,  in  the  middle  of  the 
thirteenth  century.  And  it  cannot,  I  think,  be  necessary  to  point  out 
how  vain  are  efforts  to  make  out  an  Anglo-Saxon  ancestry  for  it. 
Except  on  the  very  rarest  occasions,  and  then  in  the  most  distant 
and  halting  fashion,  there  is  not  even  an  accidental  resemblance  to  it 
in  any  Anglo-Saxon  verse  from  Beowulf  to  Briinatiburgh.  And 
there  could  not  be,  for  it  depends  for  its  unmatched  combination  of 
freedom  and  harmony  on  exactly  the  two  eff'ects  which  Anglo-Saxon 
poetry  lacked  —  metrical,  not  rhythmical,  cadence  and  final  rhyme. 
Only  the  first  could  give  the  freedom  without  doggerel  license ;  only 
the  second  could  give  *' time  beat"  —  the  warning  bell  which  prevents 
that  license  from  being  overstepped  at  the  same  time  that  it  gives 
harmony  to  the  verse. 

A  Bestiary ^^  of  the  same  date  or  thereabouts  —  in  itself  one  of 
the  numerous  mediasval  renderings  of  the  fantastic  mystical  zoology 
which  was  so  popular,  and  which  has  already  met  us  far  earlier  in 
the  Whale  and  Panther  of  the  Exeter  Book  —  possesses  , 
interest  of  the  same  kind  though  rather  less.  This  interest  ^  "  "^n- 
lies  in  the  fact  that  it  oscillates  between  unrhymed  accentuation 
and  rhymed  metre ;    for  we   shall    almost   invariably  find    (and    it   is 

1  "  Brightest  of  form  and  of  wise  wont"  (habits);  ger,  of  course  =" year " ; 
gunkeste  =  "  youngest  "  ;  sag  =  "  saw  " ;  unhillcn  —  "  unAult"  =  "  discover."  I  have 
taken  the  text  from  the  Specimens  as  more  accessible,  and  also  because  some  of  the 
MS.  asperities  are  softened,  but  the  whole  poem  ought  to  be  read  to  justify  the 
above  remarks. 

2  In  the  E.E.T.S.  edition  the  metre  is  noticed,  briefly,  by  Professor  Skeat.  But 
no  attention  is  drawn  to  it  in  the  Specimens,  and  it  has,  I  tiiink,  been  generally 
ignored  in  literary  histories. 

8  Ed.  Wright,  Reliquiae  Antiquae,  i,  208 ;  ed.  Morris,  Old  English  Miscellany, 
p.  I.     Some  in  Specimens. 


58  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE  book  ii 

surprising  that  poets  like  Campion  and  Milton  centuries  later  failed 
to  discern  the  fact)  that  rhyme  and  metre  are  in  modern  languages 
almost  indissolubly  bound  together— English  blank  verse  being 
mainly  a  "sport,"  though  as  we  shall  see  later,  an  extremely 
interesting  and  valuable  sport.  At  one  time  in  the  Bestiary  we  find 
somewliat  irregular  and  broken-down  alliteration,  not  very  dissimilar 
from  the  non-rhymed  parts  of  Layamon.  At  another  we  come 
upon  wandering  and  uncertainly  octosyllabic  couplets,  fairly  constant 
in  their  rhymes,  but  as  "  wobbling "  in  point  of  syllabic  constitution 
as  the  nearly  contemporary  examples  of  the  same  metre  that  we  find 
in  Germany  and  Spain.  Anon  will  come  a  series  (evidently  inspired 
by  some  hymn)  of  very  respectable  eights  and  sixes  rhymed  in 
quatrains,  and  a  good  deal  better  than  Tate  and  Brady,  but  with  the 
same  tendency  to  sevens  instead  of  sixes  which  we  find  in  the  un- 
rhymed  Onmiluvi,  and  which  may  be  accounted  for  by  the  still  over- 
inflected  state  of  the  language.  And  yet  again  the  unrhymed  couplet  of 
the  Onntihim  itself  meets  us  to  show  the  staggering  state  of  the  writer 
or  writers.  For  even  if — which  would  be  rather  improbable  —  the 
book  were  a  composition  from  more  hands  than  one,  the  absence  of 
any  prevailing  metre  would  be  equally  noticeable  aad  equally  striking 
by  contrast,  especially  with  the  almost  tyrannous  predominance  of  the 
regular  octosyllable  in  all  but  strictly  lyrical  work  in  France  at  the 
same  time.  Most  noteworthy  of  all  perhaps  is  the  fact  that  these 
quatrains  or  couplets  are  mixed,  the  writer  sometimes,  it  would  seem, 
being  unable  to  hit  upon  rhyme,  though  he  would  if  he  could. 

Nor  does  the  same  fruitful  source  of  interest  fail  in  an  earlier 
production  of  the  sacred  kind  —  the  so-called  Orisoti  of  our  Lady^  to 
which  as  early  a  date  as  1210  is  assigned.     This  is  in  couplets  and 

very  fairly  rhymed,  but  the  lines  have  not  settled  down 
'^o«rZ.a^^.''^^"^o  anything  like  even   length.      They  range   from   the 

fourteeners  and  fifteeners  of  the  Ormiilum  and  the  Moral 
Ode  to —  and  this  is  where  the  importance  of  the  poem  comes  in  — 
examples  of  no  less  famous  a  form  than  the  decasyllable  itself.^  It 
has  always  been  matter  of  surprise  that  this  famous  form,  the  earliest 
staple  of  French,  and  in  one  way  or  another,  as  decasyllable  or  hen- 
decasyllable,  making  its  appearance  early  in  the  other  Romance  lan- 
guages, should  have  been  so  late  to  appear  in  English.  I  do  not 
tiiink  that  a  complete  decasyllabic  couplet  can  be  found  in  the  Orison 
—  the  writer's  grip  of  his  metre,  or  rather  his  conception  of  what  he 
means  to  grip,  is  too  loose  for  that.     And  indeed,  though   attempts 

1  Whole  in  Morris,  Old  English  Homilies,  i.  191 ;  more  than  half  in  Sped' 
ment. 

2  Cristes  |  milde  |  moder  |  seynte  |  Marie  — 
Al  is  j  the  heouen  |  e  ful  |  of  thin  |  e  blisse. 


CHAP.  II  FIRST   MIDDLE   ENGLISH   PERIOD  59 

have  been  made  to  find  couplets  in  Hampole,  it  is  extremely  doubtful 
whether  they  are  not  merely  accidental  in  all  cases  before  Chaucer  — 
the  tendency  either  to  the  short  octosyllable,  the  long  line  halved,  or 
the  composite  fourteener  being  apparently  irresistible.  But  that  the 
decasyllable  should  appear  at  all  (as  it  does  later  in  Langland's 
alliteration)  is  the  important  thing.  There  is  no  simile  or  metaphor 
that  suits  these  metrical  appearances  so  well  as  the  old  one  of  the 
coral  island,  which  first  makes  uncertain  show  just  awash,  witji  a  few 
points,  and  in  the  course  of  ages  establishes  itself  as  a  complete  and 
continuous  reef  or  atoll. 

The  metrical  uncertainty  of  the  Bestiary  and  the  Orison  displays 
itself  also   in   the   curious   Proverbs  of  Alfred^  to   which,   in   their 
present  form,  no  older  date  than  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century 
is  assigned,  but  which  must  be  far  older  in  substance,  and  which  may 
not  quite  fancifully  be  connected  with  the  King's  Ephemeris  noticed 
above.       They  may  be  most  conveniently  taken  in  com- 
parison with   the   somewhat   later,    but    not    much    later,    A^Tdlnd 
Proverbs  of  Hendyng^-  attributed    to  a   mythical   person      Hendyng. 
of  that  name,  son  of  the  equally  mythical  "Marcolf,"  who  in  scores 
of  different  forms  holds  colloquy  with  Solomon  in  mediaeval  writings. 
The   same   familiar   saws    make    their  appearance  in  both  with  little 
variation —  "A  fool's  bolt  is  soon  shot,"  "Spare  rod  and  spoil  child," 
etc.     This    has   of    itself  a   genuine   literary   interest,   because   these 
products   of  the  wisdom  of  many  and  the  wit  of  one,  thus   passing 
through  all  English   literature,  act   as    tie-rods   to   maintain   its   con- 
tinuity.^     But   the   form    has   interest   as   well   as   the   matter.      The 
later  or  Hendyng  proverbs  are  in  regular  six-lined  stanzas  of  the  so- 
called  Romance  form,  rhymed  aabaab.     In   those  assigned  to  Alfred 
we    have   over   again,  but  with  a  distinctly  greater   tendency  toward 
the  predominance  of  rhyme,  the  Layamon  jumble  of  regular  rhymed 
or  even  assonanced  couplet,  and  of  equally  regular  alliterated  stave. 
Some  of  the  sections,  each   introduced  with  a  "  Thus  quoth  Alfred," 
are  rhymed  throughout  in  couplets  of  a  somewhat  staggering  dimeter ; 
some  show  no  rhyme  at  all ;  and  in  some  it  emerges  and  sinks  again 
after  much  the  same  fashion  as  in  the  Bestiary.     In  fact,  the  moral 
to  be  drawn  from  all  these  poems,  even   singly  but  much  more  to- 
gether, is  that  rhyme  and   metrical  equivalence  of  verse,  struggling 
still  at  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century,  had  by  its  middle  got 

1  To  be  found,  like  the  Bestiaiy,  both  in  Reliquiae  Aiitiquac,  i.  170,  and  in  An 
Old  English  Miscellany,  two  texts  (102,  103,  sq.).     Part  again  in  Specimens. 

2  AV/.  Antiq.  i.  109.  Extracts  will  be  found  in  the  second  part  of  Morris  and 
Skeat's  Specimens,  where  the  work  is  dated  12J2-1207. 

8  So,  I  may  note  in  passing,  the  pet  Elizabethan  antithesis  of  "  Wit  "  and 
"  Will "  appears  at  this  time  in  a  short  piece  given  by  Morris,  Old  English 
Miscellany,  p.  192. 


6o  THE   MAKING  OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

so  distinctly  the  better  that  everybody  turned  to  rhyme,  that  most 
people  tried  to  write  pretty  regular  metrical  verse,  and  that  very  fair 
success  crowned  both  attempts.  Such  success  was  especially  re- 
markable in  the  last  poem  of  this  period  which  will  claim  detailed 
notice,  a  poem  which  is  at  the  same  time  one  of  the  best. 

This  is  The  Oiul  and  the  Nightingale^  a  poem  of  some  2000 
lines  in  fairly  regular  octosyllabic  couplets,  which  is  attributed  to 
one  Nicholas  de  Guildford,  who  lived  at  Portesham  in  Dorset- 
shire, and  which  cannot  be  much  later  than  the  middle 
and  the  of  the  thirteenth  century.  The  form  of  it  is  the  very 
Nightingale,  common  mediaeval  one  of  the  dibat,  as  it  is  called  in- 
French  —  a  metrical  disjiute  between  two  persons  or  things,  which 
mav  range  from  a  mere  exhibition  of  their  several  qualities,  in- 
tended to  instmct  the  reader  and  show  the  poet's  learning,  to  a 
"flyting"  of  the  kind  popular  much  later  in  Scotland.  The  general 
scheme  is,  of  course,  a  contest  and  conflict  between  "  crabbed  age  and 
youth,"  between  gravity  and  gaiety,  but  the  Nightingale  is  the  aggressor 
and  the  more  violent  in  her  language,  while  the  poet  seems  rather  to 
incline  to  the  side  of  the  Owl.  Certainly  the  Nightingale  indulges 
in  the  greater  personality,  and  makes  on  the  whole  less  ingenious 
use  of  her  case.  It  is,  for  instance,  a  distinct  hit  of  the  Owl,  when 
her  rival  has  pleaded  that  she  teaches  priests  to  sing,  and  increases 
the  joy  of  man,  to  retaliate  that  there  are  numerous  countries  where 
the  Nightingale  does  not  go  at  all,  and  that  she  had  better  make  up 
for  this  by  going  and  teaching  the  priests,  in  Ireland  and  Scotland, 
in  Galloway  and  Scandinavia,  to  do  their  duty.  And  the  bird  of 
Pallas  has  also  a  good  "  flyte  "  on  the  moral  side  (one  which  she  could 
have  justified  abundantly  from  French  and  Proven9al  poetry)  in  his 
suggestion  that  the  principal  effect  of  the  Nightingale's  song  is  to 
make  women  false  to  their  husbands,  and  to  get  them  into  various 
sorts  of  trouble.  This  passage  contains  an  allusion  which  seems  to 
tie  the  poem  dowQ  to  the  reign  of  Henry  III. 

On  the  whole,  this  is  the  best  example  of  the  octosyllabical 
couplet  to  be  found  before  the  fourteenth  century.  The  poet  (who, 
by  the  way,  quotes  "  Alfred "  repeatedly,  and  little  else)  occasionally 
commits  the  fault  —  specially  unpleasing  to  modern  English  ears, 
but    natural    at    his    early   date,   and   probably   connected   with    the 

1  I  use  Wright's  ed.  for  the  Percy  Society,  1843.  The  piece  (of  which  there 
are  large  pieces  in  the  Specimens)  was  printed  earlier  (1838)  for  the  Roxburghe 
Club  by  Stevenson,  and  later  (1868)  at  Krefeld  by  Stratmann,  the  compiler  of  the 
completest  M.  E.  Lexicon.  Wright's  ed.  contains  some  interesting  shorter  poems, 
perhaps  by  the  same  author,  and  these  with  others  (but  not  the  Owl)  reappear  in 
an  Old  English  Miscellany.  The  last  of  the  latter  is  a  Love-Rune,  a  (religious) 
Love  Song,  assigned  to  Thomas  of  Halys,  and  apparently  versified  from  part  of  the 
Ancren  Riwle. 


CHAP.  II  FIRST   MIDDLE   ENGLISH   PERIOD  6i 

indifference  of  his  French  originals  to  identical  rhymes  —  of  making 
the  same  rhyme  do  for  two  successive  couplets  ;  but  this  does  not  occur 
often  enough  to  interfere  seriously  with  harmony.  His  variations  from 
eights  to  sevens  are  not  more  than  the  genius  of  the  language  specially 
allows.  His  style  is  easy  and  his  poetical  imagery  and  apparatus  gen- 
erally, though  comparatively  simple,  well  at  command,  and  by  no  means' 
of  a  rude  or  rudimentary  order.  We  cannot,  of  course,  say  that  he  may 
not  have  been  directly  indebted  to  a  French  original,  for  the  theme 
is  one  which  must  almost  certainly  have  tempted  the  tireless  inge- 
nuity of  the  troubadours  and  trouv^res  of  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth 
centuries  in  France  and  Provence.  But  we  have  no  direct  original, 
and  in  such  a  case  it  is  only  fair  to  credit  Nicholas)  or  whoever  he 
was)  with  independence.  It  should  be  observed  that  the  name  occurs 
in  the  poem  as  that  of  the  referee  selected  by  the  birds  and  their 
audience-arbiter,  the  Wren.  He  is  very  handsomely  spoken  of,  and 
the  bishops  are  reproached  because  he  has  only  one  "  wonning " 
—  and  tithing,  which  has  made  some  think  that  the  author  cannot 
have  referred  to  himself.  But  this  argument,  which  is  a  sound  one 
at  the  date  and  in  the  circumstances  of  the  Shepherd'^s  Calendar,  has 
not  much  weight  in  reference  to  a  "finder"  of  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, at  which  date  and  in  which  class  men  were  by  no  means  wont 
to  be  troubled  with  excessive  modesty.  Moreover,  there  is  a  not 
impossible  touch  of  humour  in  the  passages  relating  to  "  Maister 
Nichole"  — 

Through  [whose]  mouth  and  through  [whose]  hand 
It  is  the  better  into  Scotland  ! 

It  should  be  remarked  also,  before  concluding,  that  in  this  poem,  as  in 
all  others  of  the  time,  the  language  is  by  no  means  freely  gallicised. 

At  no  long  time  in  front  of  this  period  romances  must  have  begun 
to  be  written  in  English,  and  three  of  not  the  least  interesting  that 
we  have,  Havelok,  Horn,  and  Sir  Tristrem,  are  allowed  even  by  jealous 
literary  chronologists  to  be  probably  older  than  the  year  1300.  But 
the  advantage  of  treating  the  Anglo-French  romance  together  is  so 
great  and  obvious,  that  it  will  be  better  to  relegate  these  to  a  future 
chapter.^ 

^  The /ailiau  of  Dame  Siriz  (Wright's  Anecdota  Literaria,  1844),  The  Vpx 
[Fox]  and  the  Wolf  (Reliquiae  Antiquae,  ii.  272-8),  an  interesting  and  early 
English  version  of  Reynard,  and  others,  might  be  added.  The  Christabel  varia- 
tion occurs  in  these  also ;  but  Genesis  and  Exodus  appears  to  be  much  the  earliest 
and  most  considerable  example  thereof. 


CHAPTER   III 

SECOND   MIDDLE   ENGLISH   PERIOD 

1 300- 1 360 

Robert  of  Gloucester  —  Robert  Manning  —  Lyrics  —  The  Ayenbite  of  Inwyt  —  The 
Northern  Psalter — Manning  —  William  of  Shoreham  —  The  Cursor  Mundi  — 
Hampole — Adam  Davy  —  Laurence  Minot — Cleanness  and  Patience — The 
Pearl 

The  last  quarter  of  the  thirteenth  century  is  not  a  very  fruitful 
period  of  English  literature  —  so  far  at  least  as  attributions  that  can 
be  called  in  any  way  certain,  or  even  probable,  are  concerned.  We 
have  glanced  at  possible  roinances.  Of  other  work  we  have, 
dating  from  the  extreme  end  of  the  thirteenth  century  and  the 
earlier  half  of  the  fourteenth,  a  very  considerable  body  of  theological 
literature  of  the  old  kind,  exhibiting  characteristics  frequently  of 
linguistic  and  occasionally  of  literary  interest ;  at  least  one  named  and 
known  writer  of  such  literature,  Richard  Rolle  of  Hampole,  who, 
though  his  importance  has,  as  usual,  been  exaggerated,  is  of  some 
mark ;  at  least  one  individual  religious  poem,  the  Cursor  Mundi, 
which,  though  its  authorship  is  unknown,  is  remarkable  not  merely 
for  size ;  two  most  interesting  and  important  new  developments  — 
the  verse-history  of  more  or  less  contemporary  events,  and  the 
accomplished  lyric  in  the  new  prosody ;  and  (to  mention  only  work 
of  distinction)  at  the  extreme  close  of  the  period,  or  a  little  beyond 
it,  a  group  of  companions  of  very  remarkable  poetical  merit,  which 
have  been  thought  to  be  of  common  authorship,  the  Pearl,  Cleanness, 
and  Patience,  to  which  some  would  add  the  very  attractive  alliterative 
romance  of  Gawain  arid  the  Greene  Knight.  This  latter  will  be  most 
conveniently  dealt  with  later,  the  others  had  best  be  handled  here. 
All  four  pieces  were  at  any  rate  connected  with  a  very  curious  literary 
phenomenon,  the  resurrection  of  alliterative  verse,  which  had  some 
good  consequences,  and  but  for  Chaucer  might  have  had  many  more 
bad  ones. 

62 


CHAP.  Ill  SECOND   MIDDLE   ENGLISH    PERIOD  63 

The  earliest  of  these  works,  or  group  of  works,  in  point  of  time, 
and  not  the  least  interesting  in  literary  history,  if  not  of  the  first 
intrinsic  literary  merit,  is  the  batch  of  verse-histories,  of  which  Robert 
of  Gloucester's  is  tlie  oldest.  This  is  dated  about  two  years  before 
the  close  of  the  thirteenth  century,  while  Robert  Manning,  or  Robert 
of  Brunne,  comes  some  thirty  years  later. 

Robert  of  Gloucester  ^  is  a  very  interesting  person,  and  a  much 
better  poet  than  it  has  been  the  fashion  to  represent  him,  though  his 
first  object  was  not  poetry,  and  though,  had  it  been  so,  he  was  but  ill- 
equipped.  It  is  not  known  when  he  was  born,  but  he 
did  not  write,  or  finish  wrilinj^^,  till  quite  the  close  of  pl^ulssttfrT 
the  thirteenth  century,  though  he  had  personal  remem- 
brance of  the  civil  wars  in  the  latter  part  of  Henry  III.'s  reign 
and  carried  his  own  chronicle  to  the  year  1272.  He  was  not 
superior  to  the  odd  craze  which  induced  most  of  the  historians  of 
this  time  to  begin  with  the  Siege  of  Troy,  and  he  abstracts  Geoffrey 
of  Monmouth  for  a  considerable  part  of  his  book  with  that  docility 
which,  though  it  may  seem  singular  in  the  transferred  sense  of  the  word, 
was  universal  as  far  as  almost  all  his  contemporaries  were  concerned. 
With  Anglo-Saxon  history  he  deals  slightly,  and  despite  his  ardent 
English  patriotism  —  his  book  opens  with  a  vigorous  panegyric  of 
England,  the  first  of  a  series  extending  to  the  present  day  (from  which 
an  anthology  De  Laudibtis  AnglicE  might  be  made)  —  he  deals  very 
harshly  with  Harold  Godwinson.  From  the  Conquest  onward  he 
does  his  best  to  draw  on  French,  Latin,  and  English  sources  alike, 
reinforcing  them  in  the  later  years  with  personal  recollections  of 
reminiscences,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Oxford  town-and-gown  row  of  1263. 
■  Although,  however,  Robert  is  in  many  places  agreeable  to  read 
for  the  story  and  for  his  spirited  temper,  yet  the  main  interest  in  him 
for  the  literary  historian  is  still  connected  with  his  form  and  vehicle. 
This  is  the  long  swinging  verse,  half-trochaic,  half-anapeestic,  which 
we  have  already  watched  in  its  development,  as  the  new  metrical 
prosody  beat  it  out  of  the  ancient  alliterated  and  unmetrical  stave,  and 
which  was  to  be  ever  improved  and  suppled  from  this  date  to  that 
of  Mr.  Morris's  Sii^urd  the  Volsioii:^.  This  line  may  be  said  to  have 
two  normal  varieties,  towards  wliich  it  unconsciously  directs  itself. 
Of  one  of  these,  Robert's  first  line,  hardly  altered  — 

Enge  I  land  is  a  |  right  good  |  land,  I  |  ween  of  all  |  lands  the  |  best  — 

is  a  very  fair  average  example,  and  the  poet  not  unfrequently  equals 
it.     But  he  has  also  some  inclination  towards  the  other  form,  which 

'  I'"irst    printed    by    Hearne,   with    Manning,    etc.,  in    1724.     I    use   the   i8iQ 
reprint  (4  vols.)  of  these. 


64  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

in  its  perfection  is  simply  the  iambic  fourteener  so  much  spoken  of 
in  the  last  chapter  — 

By  her  |  he  had  |  a  daugh  |  ter  sweet  |  the  goo  |  d'}  queen  |  f  Maud  |  . 

But,  as  miglit  be  expected,  he  not  merely  oscillates  between  these  two 
cadences,  but  frequently  rolls  or  staggers  into  others  —  sometimes 
considerably  less  musical ;  while  he  is  by  no  means  free  from  the 
tendency  to  cut  the  line  so  short  that  with  a  slight  change  in 
pronunciation  it  would  become  neither  more  nor  less  than  a 
decasyllable,  as  in  — 

And  took  |  him  hos  |  tage  good  |  at  his  |  own  will  | 

where  no  doubt  the  contemporary  value  of  some  words  would  disguise 
the  length.  Nor  is  this  the  only  possibility  which  his  uncertain  move- 
ment develops,  for  again  elsewhere  we  have  approaches  to  the  pure 
anapaestic  tetrameter,  also  to  become  a  favourite  metre  later  — 

An  house  |  of  reli  |  gion  of  ca  |  nons  ywis  ] 

though  in  the  same  manner  here  the  full  syllabic  value  of  "  religion  " 
would  obscure  for  the  time  the  cadence.  The  point  has,  however, 
been  dwelt  upon  here  because  it  is  an  interesting  help  towards  the 
comprehension  of  the  manner  in  which  a/l  the  stock  English  metres 
resulted  from  the  clash  of  the  strict  French  syllabic  prosody,  of  the 
Latin  syllabic  equivalence,  and  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  tolerance  of  extra- 
metrical,  or  rather  extra-rhythmical  syllables.  That  the  French  deca- 
syllable itself  helped  the  English  analogue  to  emerge  is  perfectly  true, 
but  there  is  no  need  to  regard  the  latter  as  atforeign  importation. 

The  peculiarity  of  this  metre  (which  it  is  a  sad  mistake  to  regard 
as  by  any  means  the  same  as  our  hymn  common  measure,  a  strict 
iambic  metre  without  trisyllabic  liberties,  and  never  shifting  the  foot 
to  trochaic  rhythm)  is  very  closely  reproduced  in  a  large  body  of 
Lives  of  the  Saints  of  about  the  same  period,  which  accordingly  good 
authorities  have  regarded  as  being  also  the  work  of  Robert  of 
Gloucester.  Mr.  W.  H.  Black,  who  edited  one  of  them,  that  dealing 
with  Becket,  more  than  fifty  years  ago,^  was  very  positive  on  the 
subject,  and  the  latest  authorities  ^  seem  to  have  no  objection.  The 
beautiful  Celtic  legend  of  St.  Brandan  »  has  also  been  edited  from  this 
collection,  as  well  as  others.     It  must,  of  course,  be  obvious  that  the 

1  Percy  Society,  1845. 

2  Morris  and  Skeat  (Specimens,  ii.  i)reprint  selections  from  the  Chronicle  and 
the  Life  of  St.  Dunstan  as  Robert's. 

3  Exi.  Wright,  Percy  Society,  1844.  The  whole  collection  has  been  issued  by 
the  E.E.T.S.,  ed.  Horstmann. 


CHAP.  Ill  SECOND    MIDDLE   ENGLISH   PERIOD  65 

adoption  of  the  form  for  things  so  popular  as  Saints'  Lives  both 
testifies  to  its  own  popularity  and  would  help  to  coniirm  and  spread 
this.  And  it  is  perhaps  not  rash  to  add  that  there  are  points  in  it 
which  would  rather  encourage  the  relapse  on  alliteration  which  we 
shall  have  to  notice  at  the  end  of  this  chapter.  In  the  first  place,  the 
extreme  looseness  of  the  verse  —  almost  the » most  mobile  of  all 
English  forms  —  tends  that  way ;  and  in  the  second  the  great  distance 
of  the  rhyme-safeguards  from  each  other  makes  them  more  likely  to 
be  overpowered,  if  not  overlooked. 

From  this  same  point  of  view  the  interest  of  Robert's  forty  years  later 
successor,  Robert  Manning,  is  well  sustained,  though  in  other  respects 
it  falls  short.  This  second  Robert,  whom  we  shall  meet  again  in  this 
chapter,  was  a  Gilbertine  canon,  and  derived  his  surname  ^ 

from  the  place  of  his  birth,  Brunne  or  Bourn  in  Lincoln-  Ma°i!'ning. 
shire.  The  authorities  are  generous  to  him  in  the  matter 
of  life,  supposing  that  it  may  have  extepded  from  about  1260  to 
about  1340,  or  even  later;  but  this  is  mere  guesswork.  It  seems 
that  his  history  was  not  finished  till  1338.  Unlike  Robert  of 
Gloucester's,  it  was  a  translation,  or  rather,  as  all  mediaeval  translations 
are,  an  adaptation,  of  a  single  work,  the  chronicle  written  in  French,  but 
by  an  Englishman,  Peter  Langtoft,  canon  of  Bridlington,  with  ampli- 
fications from  Wace  and  other  sources.  Historically  he  has  not 
much  importance,  nor  can  his  work  be  said  to  equal  the  other 
Robert's  in  direct  literary  attraction. ^  But  for  the  study  of  the  history 
of  English  metre  it  is  very  valuable.  Langtoft  had  written  in  the 
ordinary  measure  of  the  later  chansotis  de  geste,  monorhymed  laisses 
of  twelve-syllabled  lines,  and  Manning  was  clearly  under  the  im- 
pression that  he  must  get  as  near  to  this  as  he  could.  In  his 
prefatory  remarks  he  employs  the  regular  octosyllabic  couplet,  the 
earliest  of  all  our  metres ;  but  this  would  not  have  done  for  the  body  of 
the  work.  He  accordingly,  having  none  of  his  namesake's  swing,  con- 
tented himself  with  a  very  prosaic  line,  which  at  its  best  is  the 
fourteener,  at  its  worst  an  indefinite  number  of  .syllables  which  some 
might  call  a  "verse  of  four  accents"  because  of  its  rebelliousness  to 
any  more  accomplished  arrangement. 

It  was  about  rhyme,  however,  that  Robert  Manning  seems  to  have 
been  most  careful  and  troubled.  Sometimes  he  is  content  to  let 
these  shaml^ling  lines  of  his  rhyme  in  couplets.  But  ever  and  anon 
his  conscience  seems  to  prick  him,  and  he  either  adds  middle  rhyme 
or  attempts  the,  in  English  almost  hopeless,  task  of  emulating  the 
continued  rhymes  of  his  original.     Of  these  he  achieves  sometimes 

1  It  oupht  to  be  s.iid  that  important  authorities,  Sir  Frederick  Madden  nnd  Dr. 
Furnivali,  have  thought  better  of  Manning's  poetical  power,  but  chiefly,  I  think, 
as  shown  in  Handlyng  Synne, 
F 


s^  ^^ 


ic« 


66  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  il 


as  many  as  a  score,  but  always  with  a  result  equally  cacophonous 
and  lame. 

To  those,  however,  who  are  not  satisfied  with  merely  formal  interest, 

the  next  division  to  which  we  come  will  have  far  greater  attraction, 

while  to  those  who  can  appreciate  both  form  and  spirit  it  will  have 

altogether    exceptional    charm.      This    division    consists   of   the   first 

blossoming    of    English    lyric    properly  so    called.      The 

^     _"       famous  Sumer  is  ictwKji  in,  the  Cuckoo-Song   long  ago 


printed  by  Sir  John  Hawkins,  and  made  popular  by  Ellis  in  his 
Specime)is  for  more  than  a  century  past,  has  generally  had,  as  observed 
above,  the  credit  assigned  to  it  of  being  the  actually  oldest  piece 
of  the  kind,  and  though  such  attributions  are  always  rather  temerarious, 
there  is  no  need  to  disturb  this  particular  one  if  the  date  is  not  carried 
back  too  far.  The  poem  is  in  very  short  lines  and  of  a  simple 
and  almost  rude  structure,  besides  being  more  noticeable  for  its  fresh 
and  genuine  observation  of  nature  than  for  any  very  poetical  spirit. 
Rhyme  is  quite  established  in  it,  but  it  may  easily  be  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  and  perhaps  as  early  as  its  middle.  It  is  not,  however,  till 
the  close  thereof  that  we  get  any  considerable  collection  of  lyrics 
of  great  merit  on  profane  subjects.^  This  is  the  collection  taken 
from  the  MS.  known  as  2253  Harl.,  preserved  in  the  British  Museum. 
Its  prettiest  piece,  Alison,  was  also  printed  by  Ellis,  whose  taste  in 
these  matters,  though  just  a  little  touched  with  eighteenth-century 
Voltairianism,  was  excellent ;  but  the  whole  collection  did  not  appear 
till  Thomas  Wright,  that  benefactor  of  our  literature,  printed  it  for 
the  Percy  Society  on  ist  March,  1842,  a  particularity  of  date  which 
may  be  pardoned  in  consideration  of  the  exceptional  charm  of  the 
work  and  of  its  importance  in  English  literary  history.  For  though 
there  must  have  been  other  poems  of  the  kind  written,  and  though 
we  actually  have  a  few,  they  have  not  been  collected  as  they  should 
have  been  into  a  corpus,  and  the  total  does  not  appear  to  be  very 
large. 

/  It  is  obvious,  though  it  is  not  the  less  important  for  its  obvious- 
ness, that  these  poems,  like  all  the  lyrical  work  of  Europe  during  the 
thirteenth  century,  were  composed  not  in  slavish  imitation,  but  in 
generous  yet  none  the  less  distinct  following,  of  the  troubadours  of 
Provence   and   the   trouv^res   of    Northern  France.'^      In  the  course 

'  probably  of  the  twelfth  century,  certainly  by  its  end,  these  poets  had 

1  The  shorter  poems  mentioned  in  the  last  chapter  (p.  60,  note  i)  must  not 
be  forgotten,  but  they  are  almost  entirely  sacred.  At  the  same  time,  as  the 
maiden  asked  the  author  of  A  Love  Rune  for  an  actual  love-song,  love-songs  must 
have  been  written. 

^  The  direct  influence  of  Provence  was  probably  very  small.  But  it  has  been 
sometimes  assumed  on  the  strength  of  the  marriage  of  Henry  HI. 


q 


CHAP.  Ill  SECOND   MIDDLE   ENGLISH    PERIOD  67 

almost  exhausted  the  possible  combinations  of  lyric  so  far  as  strictly 
syllabic  prosody  went,  and  within  the  limitations  of  dissyllabic  feet 
which  the  structure  of  both  languages  imposed.  There  are  vestiges 
of  trisyllabic  arrangement  in  Northern  French,  but  they  disappear 
early.  The  English  minstrel  and  the  German  minnesinger  took 
these  models  and  adapted  them,  but  in  each  case  gave  more  or  less 
scope  to  the  irrepressible  craving  of  Teutonic  lips  and  ears  for  the 
triple  movement. 

This    Romance  influence   is   plainly   evidenced   in    the    collection 
before  us  by  the  very  fact  of  its  being  bilingual.     Of  the  forty-two 
pieces   printed    by   Wright,   the   three   first  and   others   later  are   in 
French.     But  the  fourth,  beginning 
• 

Middelerd  for  mon  is  made, 

is  in  English,  and  at  once  introduces  us  to  a  complete  and  distinctly 
elaborate  lyrical  arrangement.  There  is  still,  as  in  almost  all  Middle 
English  poetry  —  even  in  Chaucer  himself — a  great  deal  of  alliteration, 
but  it  has  no  influence  on  the  actual  form.  This  consists  of  an 
eleven-line  stanza,  which  proceeds  as  far  as  the  octave  in  regular 
''eights,"  admitting  catalexis,  rhymed  abababab,  and  completes  itself 
with  a  six,  eight,  six  coda  or  "bob  "  rhymed  cbc.  The  next  has  ten-lined 
stanzas  monorhymed  in  the  octave,  which  consists  of  heavily  alliterated 
"  four-accent  "  doggerel  tipped  with  a  decasyllabic  couplet  differently 
rhymed,  and  approaching  more  closely  to  a  regular  decasyllabic. 
This  is  not  a  good  piece,  but  the  next,  the  Alison,  which  is,  or  ought 
to  be,  as  famous  as  Sinner  is  iciimen  in,  is  quite  delightful  —  the  first 
perfectly  delightful  thing  in  English  poetry.  The  lovely  intertwined 
music  of  its  twelve-lined  stanzas,  composed  of  an  eight  and  six 
quatrain,  an  eight  triplet,  a  six,  another  eight  triplet,  and  another  six, 
rhymed  ababbhcdddc,  is  not  too  good  for  the  simple  but  fervid  passion 
and  the  charming  imagery  of  the  piece.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say)) 
that  the  promise  of  Donne  and  Herrick,  of  Burns  and  Shelley,  is  in/ 
Alison.  ' 

A  careful  study  of  the  various  metres  of  these  poems  will  show 
that,  in  spite  of  occasional  lapses  from  strict  metrical  propriety,  there 
was  practically  no  secret  of  English  prosody  which  was  not  at  least 
ready  to  be  unlocked  for  English  poets.  Even  their  greatest  license, 
the  shrinkage  of  the  octosyllable  to  seven  or  even  six,  which  is  so  \ 
freely  allowed,  had  this  of  merit  in  it,  that  it  served  as  an  additional 
safeguard  against  the  cast-iron  syllabic  uniformity  of  their  Romance 
models,  which  would  have  fatally  hampered  the  varied  music  of 
English.  There  is  as  yet  less  tendency  to  extend,  and  the  influence 
of  the  same  models  as  yet  checks  anapaestic  movement.     But  even 


68  THE   MAKING  OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

this  appears,  and  it  was  certain  to  be  encouraged  by  that  beneficent 
process  of  regular  dropping  of  inflections,  and  the  final  ^  in  particular, 
which  went  on  without  cessation  till  the  fifteenth  century.  When  one 
man  gave  a  word  the  value  of  three  syllables  and  another  that  of  two, 
it  was  practically  impossible  that  an  absolute  mould  like  that  of  a 
Latin  Alcaic,  or  a  French  scheme  of  any  sort,  should  be  adopted. 
Nor  is  the  fact  that  in  these  poems  we  occasionally  find  polyglot 
French  or  Latin  lines  in  alternation  with  English  to  be  regarded 
as  a  matter  of  little  consequence.  For  it  cannot  be  too  often  repeated 
that  what  English  wanted  now  was  exactly  that  "  madman  to  mix 
it"  who,  according  to  the  proverb  (of  Spanish  origin,  I  think),  is 
required  to  make  a  good  salad.  The  three  tongues,  with  their 
different  cadences,  their  different  structure,  their  different  prosodic 
ideals,  could  not  be  shaken  up  against  each  other  too  much  in  order 
to  produce  that  matchless  blend  the  English  poetic  language,  with 
its  unequalled  combination  of  freedom  and  order,  and  its  inexhaustible 
resources  of  varied  melody. 

The  most  noticeable  metre,  though  not  the  best,  that  emerges 
from  this  pleasant  welter  of  experiment  is  that  romance  sestet  or 
douzain,  as  the  case  may  be,  which,  as  we  shall  see  m  the  next 
chapter,  by  degrees  rivalled,  and  again  by  other  degrees  even  out- 
did, the  regular  octosyllabic  couplet  as  the  favourite  vehicle  of  narrative 
poetry.  Its  great  drawback,  the  danger  of  a  sing-song  monotony, 
which  Chaucer  brought  out  in  the  memorable  but  rather  unfair 
burlesque  of  Sir  Thopas,  appears  at  once.  )  But  English  literature 
owes  it  a  distinct  debt.  If  it  is  more  exposed  to  this  danger,  it  is 
less  exposed  to  that  of  undistinguished  fluency  than  the  couplet,  the 
"  ungirt "  character  of  which  did  much  harm  to  French  poetry  and 
(till  Chaucer  showed  how  it  might  be  strengthened  and  varied)  to 
English.  And  it  provided  what  was  now  specially  wanted,  a  go-cart 
of  fairly  accomplished  but  not  in  the  least  difiicult  metrical  stanza 
in  which  the  growing  language  could  practise  itself.  The  earlier 
stages  of  no  literature  can  be  properly  understood  unless  this  function 
of  exercise  is  apprehended.  And  such  stages  have  the  immense  and 
untiring  attraction  of  future,  of  promise,  joined  to  that,  more  delicate 
but  even  more  poignant,  of  antiquity  and  of  the  past.^ 

Although,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  the  sacred  division  of  this 
literature  forms  much  the  larger  part  in  bulk,  it  is,  for  reasons  already 
also  indicated,  of  less  literary  importance  than  the  profane.  Linguis- 
tically, however,  it  helps  very  largely  to  build  the  bridge  over  what 
would   be  otherwise   in  most  cases  the  unbridged  gulf  between   the 

1  Four  of  the  best  of  these  pieces,  including  Alison  and  the  only  less  charming 
Lenten  is  come  with  love  to  town,  will  be  found  in  Morris  and  Skeafs  Speci- 
mens, 


CHAP.  Ill  SECOND    MIDDLE   ENGLISH   PERIOD  69 

Anglo-Saxon  of  the  eleventh  century  and  the  accomplished  Middle 
English  of  the  fourteenth  ;  and  in  so  far  as  it  is  in  verse,  it  supplies 
many  useful  links  and  tell-tales  in  that  surpassingly  interesting 
examination  of  prosodic  change  which,  as  has  been  said,  really 
constitutes,  for  literature,  the  chief  attraction  of  this  period  in 
English. 

Of  this  attraction  the  prose  part  of  this  division  of  literature  is 
necessarily  divested,  and  its  principal  monument,  the  Ayenbite  of 
Inivyt  1  of  Dan  Michel  of  Northgate  (a  translation  from  the  same 
treatise,  the  Somi/ie  des  Vices  et  aes  Vertus  of  a  French 
monk  named  Laurence,  which  afterwards  served  as  the  ^^g/\nwyu' 
stuff  of  Chaucer's  Parson'' s  Tale),  is,  with  some  sermons 


by  the  same  author,  of  little  or  no  interest  as  literature.  Indeed 
it  is  almost  the  worst  possible  even  of  translations,  executed  with  no 
intelligence,  and  simply  beaten  out,  word  for  often  mistaken  word.  Its 
quaint  Kentish  dialect,  far  more  uncouth  than  that  of  much  earlier 
work,  and  surprisingly  so  when  we  remember  that  it  was  probably 
written  as  late  as  the  year  (1340)  of  Chaucer's  probable  birth,  consti- 
tutes an  attraction  for  the  philologist.  With  its  ^•'s  for  j's  and  other 
peculiarities,  it  suggests  the  original  of  the  kind  of  composite  patois^ 
now  chiefly  suggesting  to  us  that  of  the  extreme  south-west,  which  we 
find  in  Shakespeare  and  in  other  literary  English  up  to  the  present 
century.  Nor  is  the  contemporary  Northern  prose  ascribed  to  Ham- 
pole  or  his  disciples  (of  whom  more  infra)  without  a  certain  interest 
of  curiosity,  while  it  is  distinctly  less  archaic  and  more  literary  than 
the  Ayenbite.  But  in  strictness  there  is  no  English  prose  that  really 
deserves  much  attention  from  the  literary  point  of  view  until  the 
latter  half  of  the  fourteenth  century.  "  Let  the  Ancren  Riivle  be 
saved  alone  by  its  flavour,"  as  Saint-Evremond  says  of  the  snipe 
among  brown  meats. 

With  verse  —  still,  as  always  in  the  Middle  Ages,  the  maid-of-all- 
work  of  literature  —  the  case  is  different.  The  verse  Homilies  and 
Lives  of  Saints  steadily  continue,  and  furnish  us  from  time  to  time 
with  fresh  examples  of  the  manner  in  which  the  ordinary  versifier 
handled  his  tools.  Of  much  greater  interest  is  a  certain  Metrical 
Version  of  the  Psalms'-  in  Yorkshire  or  Northumbrian  dialect,  which 
is  sometimes  stated  to  be  of  the  thirteenth  century,  but  which  the 
devotees  of  Hampole  assign  to  their  favourite,  in  which  case  it  would 

1  Ed.  Morris,  E.E.T.S.  The  eccentric-looking  title  only  requires  a  minute's 
consideration  to  explain  itself  as  the  "again-biting"  (  =  "re-morse,"  cf.  Pecock's 
vocabulary  in  Book  iv.  tn/rii)  of  inner  wit  (  =  conscience). 

2  First  published  by  the  Surtees  Society  in  1843;  *o  be  found  in  vol.  ii.  pp. 
129-273,  of  Dr.  Horstmann's  great  Hampoiian  Miscellany,  London,  1896.  Some 
examples  in  Specimens. 


70  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

be  thirty  or  forty  years  younger  at  least.  The  present  writer  has  np 
pretensions  to  decide  on  Hnguistic  grounds,  and  is  not  of  the  Ham- 
pole  fanatics.  But  the  metrical  arrangement  of  the 
'^''psaher^^'^"  Psalter  certainly  seems  to  favour  rather  the  later  than  the 
earlier  date,  and  in  any  case  to  argue  a  writer  distinctly 
above  the  common  in  literary  and  poetical  gifts.  The  metre  is  the 
octosyllable,  seldom  or  never  shortened  to  less  than  sevens,  but  often 
extended  into  that  form  which  I  have  taken  to  be  the  probable 
original  of  the  heroic  couplet.  The  slight  harshness  (not  going  beyond 
an  agreeable  astringency)  of  the  Northern  dialect  is  compatible  with, 
and  here  attains,  a  considerable  dignity ;  the  feeble  fluency  which  is 
the  curse  of  the  octosyllable  couplet  seldom  or  never  appears ;  the 
expletives  which  are  almost  a  greater  curse  not  merely  of  the  couplet 
but  of  stanza-writing  at  this  time,  and  from  which  even  Chaucer  did 
not  entirely  free  himself,  are  mainly  absent ;  and  the  phrase  and 
arrangement  possess  that  grave  stateliness  which  is  so  suitable  to 
religious  poetry,  and  which,  except  in  the  late  sixteenth  and  early 
seventeenth  centuries,  it  has  too  often  lacked. 

There    is    not    so    much    dignity,    though    there    is    rather    more 

freedom  and  engagingness,  in  the  Handling  Sin  i  of  Robert  Manning, 

already  mentioned   as   a   historian.     There    is   much   significance   for 

literary  history  in  the  fact  that  this,  like  Manning's  secular 

Manning.  '  7  a 

work,  was  a  translation  from  the  French  work  of  an 
English  predecessor,  in  this  case  the  Manuel  des  Pdches  of  William 
of  Waddington.  This  work,  containing,  after  homiletic  fashion, 
stories  of  the  pious  fabliau  kind,  gave  some  practice  in  tale-telling, 
and  is  not  unimportant  among  the  ancestry  of  Chaucer.  Contem- 
porary with  Manning,  but  in  the  South  not  the  North,  was  another 
named  writer  of  religious  verse,  William  of  Shoreham  (the  Kentish 
not  the  Sussex  Shoreham),  who  lived  and  wrote  in  the  first  quarter  of 
the  fourteenth  century  at  Leeds  and  Chart  Sutton,  in  the  district 
between  Maidstone  and  Canterbury.  Shoreham  ^  dealt  in  verse  with 
the  Sacraments,  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins,  the  Ten  Commandments,  the 
service  of  Our  Lady,  and  even  the  higher  questions  of  theology,  such 
as  immortality  and  the  existence  of  God.  The  curious 
Shoreham.  thing  —  though  it  would  not  have  seemed '  curious  to  any- 
body then  —  is  the  selection  of  lyric  metres  for  such 
subjects.  Thus,  for  instance,  the  Poem  on  Baptism,  which  is  the 
most  easily  accessible  of  his  works,  being  given  in  Morris  and  Skeat's 
Selections,  is  couched  in  a  seven-line  stanza,  rhymed  xaxabxb,  in 
which  X  stands  for  unrhymed  lines  of  ad  libitum  ending.  And  the 
unsuitableness  of  the  form  to  modern  ^yes  and  ears  is  completed  by 

1  Ed.  Furnivall  for  the  Roxburghe  Club,  1862. 

2  Ed.  Wright  for  the  Percy  Society,  1849. 


I 


CHAP.  Ill  SECOND   MIDDLE   ENGLISH    PERIOD  71 

the  fact  that  while  the  first  quatrain  is  of  Orinuluiii  eights  and  sevens, 
and  the  last  couplet  of  the  same,  the  fifth  line  is  a  "  bob "  or  short 
catch  of  two  or  three  syllables  only.  But  there  was  nothing  incon- 
gruous in  this  then  to  the  reader  or  hearer,  while  the  invincible 
patience  of  the  mediaeval  scriptorium  made  it  no  doubt  easy  enough 
to  the  writer.^ 

We  have,  as  has  been  said,  for  this  time  a  fair  supply  of 
verse  homilies,  usually  in  octosyllables ;  but  by  far  the  most  interesting 
verse  divinity  of  the  period  is  contained  in  the  huge  poem  or  collection 
called  the  Cursor  MimdiP- 

This  enormous,  but   by  no   means   tedious,  production  has  been 
put    at    the    service    of   every    reader    by    the    more    than    mediaeval 
diligence  of  the   late    Dr.   Morris,  in  four  parallel  texts 
exhibiting  different  forms  of  dialect  and  substance,  with  ^      ^^f,     .. 

°  .    .  '  Cursor  Mundi. 

appendices  contaimng  parts  of  others.     The  longest  ver- 
sion just  falls  short  of  30,000  lines,  and  the  total  in  all  forms  cannot 
be  much  below  five  times  this  amount. 

The  poem,  however,  is  of  real  interest  and  value.  The  author,  who 
writes  in  octosyllabic  couplets  of  considerable  ease  and  spirit,  begins 
by  acknowledging  the  general  desire  for  rhymes  and  romances  of 
Alexander,  of  Troy,  of  Arthur,  of  Sir  Isumbras  and  Sir  Amadas,  and 
of  Charlemagne,  most  of  which  deal  with  earthly  love.  But  earthly 
love  fails,  the  love  of  Our  Lady  (in  whose  honour  he  writes  his  book) 
dies  not.     He  intends  to  tell  the  whole  of  the  Bible  history  — 

Into  Inglis  tong  to  rede, 

For  the  love  of  Inglis  lede  (people)  — 

and  he  does  so. 

But  the  way  in  which  he  does  it  is  the  true  mediaeval  divagation. 
Not  merely  does  he  dilate  on  .such  incidents  as  please  him  with 
perfect  freedom ;  not  merely  does  he  comment  on  them  in  the 
homiletic  manner,  letting  the  narrative  stand  still,  but  in  the 
arbitrary,  uncritical,  to  us  now  inconceivable,  but  always  charming, 
fashion  of  the  time,  he  incorporates  with  the  Scriptural  narrative 
itself  any  fragments  of  hagiology,  any  traditional  stories  —  sometimes 
of  a  more  or  less  mundane  character  —  and  any,  it  mav  be.  inventions 
of  his  own,  that  come  into  his  head.  The  fall  of  tlie  angels,  the 
Creation,  the  loss  of  Paradise,  are  expanded  with  rather  less  than  the 
amplifications  u.sual  in  these  cases,  until  we  come  to  that  delightful 
legend,  the  Story  of  the  Three  Trees,  which  plays  such  an  important 

1  The  Athanasian  Creed  may  be  found  paraphrased  in  sixains  of  eights  and 
fours  at  p.  139  of  Wright's  edition. 

*  Ed.  Morris  (E.E. T.S.),  in  seven  parts. 


72  THE   MAKING  OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

part  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the  Arthurian  cycle.  Afterwards,  we 
pass  few  of  the  Biblical  data  without  finding  them  enriched  by  fresh 
details,  as  that  Lame'ch's  daughter  Noema  was  the  first  "  webster," 
and  that  man  became  carnivorous  after  the  Deluge  only,  because  the 
earth  had  so  much  of  the  goodness  washed  out  of  it  by  the  water  that 
its  fruit  was  not  strong  enough  to  support  man,  whose  own  constitution 
was  likewise  debilitated. 

Among  the  pains  least  lost  upon  this  interesting  book,  those 
spent  upon  the  classification  of  its  materials  may  perhaps  be 
counted.  Much  seems  to  have  been  taken  from  the  History  of 
Petrus  Comestor  in  the  twelfth  century,  something  from  poems  of 
Wace,  who,  as  we  have  seen,  was  much  in  the  hands  of  English 
writers,  together  with  a  good  deal  from  Grostete's  Castle  of  Love,  the 
apocryphal  Gospels  of  Matthew  and  Nicodemus,  and  the  works  of 
Isidore  of  Seville.  The  fact  is  that,  at  first  or  second  hand,  the 
books  at  the  disposal  of  an  ordinary  mediaeval  writer  were  pretty 
constant;  and  the  frequent  reappearance  of  the  same  or  similar 
legends  is  not  at  all  difficult  to  account  for. 

The  important  thing,  however,  in  this  as  in  all  cases,  is  not  the 
information  which  was  at  a  writer's  disposal,  but  the  use  he  makes  of 
it.     The  author  of  the  Cursor  Mundi  — 

The  best  book  of  all, 

"The  Course  of  the  World"  men  do  it  call  — 

(as  one  enthusiastic  copyist  prefaces  it)  — knew  very  well  indeed  how 
to  use  his  materials.  Long  as  the  book  is,  and  familiar  as  is  the 
main  substance,  if  not  the  occasional  settings-off,  it  can  be  read  with 
ease  and  pleasure  from  beginning  to  end  by  any  one  who  has  time, 
and  can  be  dipped  into  with  satisfaction  by  those  who  have  not. 
The  Cotton  version  is  perhaps,  on  the  whole,  the  best  to  read, 
though  there  is  not  very  much  difference.  The  satisfaction  comes 
from  the  easy  but  not  at  all  slipshod  way  in  which  the  writer  manages 
his  metre,  the  simple  but  by  no  means  contemptible  art  with  which 
he  mixes  and  varies  his  materials,  and  the  shrewd  but  kindly  sense 
of  his  comments  and  observations.  In  speaking  of  the  destruction 
of  the  Cities  of  the  Plains  —  a  subject  generally  exciting  to  mediaeval 
imagination  —  he  cannot  rise  to  the  indignant  passion  of  the  later 
poem  called  Cleanness  {vide  infra),  but  he  acquits  himself  very  well, 
and  never  falls  into  the  falsetto  of  moral  indignation.  The  "Three 
Trees "  story  above  referred  to  is  told  very  effectively ;  and  the  Life 
of  Christ,  varied  and  heightened  as  it  is  by  the  additions  from 
apocryphal  story,  makes  a  religious  romance  of  high  merit.  He  is 
proverbial  without  being  over-sententious,  good  in  description  with- 


CHAP.  Ill  SECOND   MIDDLE   ENGLISH   PERIOD  73 

out  descending  to  too  much  detail  (an  excellence  rare  in  mediaeval 
times,  perhaps  not  common  in  any)  ;  he  has  throughout  his  immense 
narrative  a  distinct  sense  of  proportion.  It  is  really  a  pity  that  we 
do  not  know  his  name,  for  if  not  exactly  a  great  man  or  a  genius,  he 
must  certainly  have  been  a  person  of  no  ordinary  ability. 

Yet  in  the  ignorance  of  the  name  of  an  author  there  is  a  certain 
consolation,  inasmuch  as  he  is  less  likely  to  be  made  the  theme  of 
uncritical  criticism.  This  latter  has  been  the  lot  of  the  one  named 
author  of  importance  who  falls  to  be  noticed  in  this  chapter,  Richard 
RoUe  of  Hampole,  the  author  certainly  of  the  Stimulus 

,        ^    ^  .  ,  Hampole. 

Conscientiae  or  Prick  of  Consciefice,  the  author,  more  or 
less  probably,  of  a  considerable  number  of  other  works  both  in 
Latin  and  English,  and  the  reputed  author  of  many  more  still. 
Rolle  is  the  first  Middle  English  author  of  whom  we  have  anything 
approaching  to  a  full  biographical  account  (we  have  even  a  portrait 
of  him  which  may  be  authentic),  and  his  history  as  told  by  himself  is 
certainly  not  uninteresting.  He  must  have  been  born  about  the 
meeting  of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries,  at  Thornton,  in 
the  North  Riding  of  Yorkshire,  not  far  from  Pickering;  his  death  is 
set  by  the  author  of  his  Vita,  with  more  exactness,  at  2gth  September 
1349.  It  will  have  been  observed  from  one  or  two  scattered  notices 
already,  that  the  literary  effacement  of  the  North,  which  had  been 
begun  by  the  Danish  fury  in  the  ninth  century,  and  had  been  renewed 
by  the  devastations  of  the  Conqueror  and  the  Scottish  wars  in  the 
eleventh  and  twelfth,  had  shown  signs  of  ceasing,  and  Richard  Rolle 
seems  to  have  had  every  advantage  of  education.  His  father, 
William,  was  a  friend  of  Sir  John  Dalton,  and  may  have  been 
connected  with  the  great  family  of  Neville.  At  any  rate  Richard, 
after  some  home  instruction,  was  sent  to  Oxford  by  Thomas  Neville, 
Archdeacon  of  Durham.  In  the  second  decade  of  the  fourteenth 
century  there  were  no  colleges  but  Merton,  Balliol,  Exeter,  and 
University,  nor  does  there  seem  to  be  any  record  of  Rollers  con- 
nection with  any  of  these.  But  the  University  itself  was  at  the 
height  of  its  vogue :  halls  and  hostels  were  innumerable.  Richard 
appears  to  have  become  fairly  competent  in  the  schola.stic  philosophy 
which  was  the  chief  study  of  the  place,  but,  Hke  other  devotional 
mystics,  to  have  mistrusted  merely  intellectual  teaching,  and  is  said 
to  have  left  Oxford  and  returned  to  Yorkshire  in  his  nineteenth  year, 
determined  to  adopt  the  life  of  a  hermit,  not  "•  unholy  of  works,"  as 
Langland  was  to  put  it  a  generation  later.  The  way  in  which,  still  to 
borrow  from  his  successor,  he  "shope  hrm  a  shroud"  was  slightly 
grotesque,  for  he  borrowed  two  of  his  sister's  gowns,  a  grey  and  a 
white  one,  cut  off  the  grey  sleeves,  then  put  on  the  white  gown  first 
and    the    grey    over    it,    completed    his    uniform    with    one    of    his 


74 


THE   MAKING  OF  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 


father's  hoods  (black,  it  may  be  presumed),  and  ran  away.  It  is  not 
surprising  to  hear  that  his  injured  sister  thought  him  mad,  and  cried 
out  that  he  was  so.  He  had  known  the  young  Daltons  at  Oxford, 
and  this  or  some  other  reason  induced  him  to  make  for  their  father's 
estate,  supposed  to  be  near  Thirsk  (an  easy  day's  journey  from 
Pickering),  where  he  appeared  at  church,  and  entered  the  Daltons' 
pew.  He  was  recognised,  and  allowed  first  to  sing,  then  to  preach  — 
an  illustration  of  the  easygoing  ways  of  that  mediaeval  Christianity 
which  has  been  represented  by  and  to  the  ignorant  as  a  tyrannical 
and  hidebound  system  of  ceremonial.  After  he  had  been  for  a  time  an 
almost  unwilling  guest  of  the  Daltons,  the  father  gave  him  a  cell,  an 
allowance,  and,  with  the  proper  dress,  the  recognised  status  of  a 
hermit. 

'These  details  have  been  given  because,  with  the  exception  of  the 
Ccedmon  story,  they  are  almost  the  first  fragments  of  literary 
biography  in  English.  The  accounts  of  the  remainder  of  Richard's 
life  are  less  picturesque.  He  remained  for  some  years  in  the 
hermitage  which  Sir  John  Dalton  had  given  him,  attaining  at  last 
complete  "conversion,"  and  it  would  appear,  converting  others, 
sometimes  travelling  to  do  so.  From  the  Thirsk  hermitage  he  seems 
to  have  transferred  himself  to  one  in  the  Richmondshire  district  of  his 
native  Riding.  We  hear  something  of  his  friends  here,  especially  an 
anchoress  named  Margaret  Kirkby.  But  at  last  he  made  another  move 
to  Hampole,  near  Doncaster,  in  the  extreme  south  of  the  county, 
and  abode  there  for  the  rest  of  his  life  in  the  neighbourhood  of  a  Cister- 
cian nunnery,  where  he  seems  to  have  had  disciples.  He  may  have 
died  of  the  first  outbreak  of  the  Black  Death,  which  coincided  with  the 
date  above  given,  and  his  sepulchre,  which  was  carefully  tended  by  the 
nuns,  became  famous  for  miracles. 

The  works  of  Hampole  ^  are,  as  has  been  said,  both  Latin  and 
English.  The  former  do  not  directly  concern  us,  but  it  is  notice- 
able that  the  alliteration  of  which  we  shall  presently  hear  so  much  is 
very  obvious  in  them  as  well  as  in  the  English.  They  also  contain 
perhaps  the  clearest  exhibitions  of  his  religious  opinions.  These 
centred  round  that  mystical  clinging  to  Divine  Love  which  was  the 
frequent,  and  no  doubt  the  natural,  reaction  from  the  intense  but 
hard  intellectuality  of  scholasticism.  Although  Hampole  has  all  the 
mediaeval  terror  of  the  "soft  mystery"  of  woman's  love,  though  he 
cannot  reach  the  noble  directness  and  passionate  sanity  of  the  author 
of  Cleanness,   he    had   an    odd   aversion   to   "rules,"   to   the   regular 

1  The  Prick  of  Conscience  was  edited  by  Morris  for  the  Philological  Society 
(1863).  The  E.E.T.S.  added  some  English  Prose  Treatises  (ed.  Perry).  Dr. 
Horslmann's  Hampolian  Thesaurus  above  referred  to  is  entitled  Yorkshire 
Writers,  2  vols.,  London,  1895-96. 


ciL\p.  Ill  SECOND   MIDDLE   ENGLISH    PERIOD  75 

monkish  institutions,  which  explains,  or  at  any  rate  is  a  very  early 
symptom  of,  the  deterioration  of  monarchism  apparent  in  England. 

His  principles  also  appear  in  his  English  works,  but  it  is  not 
with  his  principles  that  we  are  here  concerned.  The  study  of  him 
would  have  been  facilitated  if  his  latest,  most  extensive,  and  most 
enthusiastic  editor,  Dr.  Horstmann,  had  indulged  his  readers  with  the 
usual  compliment  of  a  table  of  contents,  the  absence  of  which  is  at 
all  times  troublesome,  but  positively  bewildering  in  the  case  of  a 
thousand  large  pages  of  small  print,  arranged,  as  far  as  the  verse  is 
concerned,  in  double  columns,  and  consisting  of  scores  and  hundreds 
of  separate  pieces  of  all  lengths.  This  edition,  moreover,  does  not 
contain  the  Prick  of  Conscience,  Hampole's  chief  work.  This  is 
a  poem  containing  nearly  10,000  lines,  dealing  with  the  Life  of  Man, 
its  uncertainty,  and  the  Four  Last  Things.  The  matter  has  a  sort  of 
shuddering  intensity  which  is  very  noticeable,  and  which  sometimes 
gives  direct  picturesque  force.  The  form  is  the  octosyllabic  couplet 
with  distinct  trisyllabic  admixture  in  the  Christabel  direction.  It  has 
been  pointed  out  already  that  this  scheme  constantl}i  tends  towards 
something  that  may  be  indifferently  scanned  as  a  "four-accent" 
verse  with  trisyllabic  sections  and  a  heroic  of  five  iambs.  Such 
things,  e.g.  —  .      • 

The  b(o)ugh  |  es  are  |  the  ar  |  mes  with  |  the  handes 
And  the  |  legges  |  with  the  |  fete  |  that  standes  | 

are,  or  are  like,  heroic  couplets,  and  accordingly  it  has  not  been  very 
unusual  to  claim  for  Hampole  the  use,  or  even  by  a  singular  want  of 
understanding  of  the  facts  the  invention,  of  the  metre  before  Chaucer. 
This  is  uncritical. 

His  prose  treatises  contain  nothing  very  remarkable  as  literature, 
though  they  may,  with  care,  be  taken  as  further  stages  in  the  chain 
which  leads  from  the  Ancren  Riwle  to  Chaucer's  Parson'^s  Tale. 
But  his  minor  poems,  if  they  be  his,  have  much  more  merit,  and  excel 
in  this  respect  the  Prick  of  Conscience  itself.  They  are  all  sacred ; 
but  they  show  that  the  "  soft  mystery "  of  human  love  was  not 
absent  from,  and  indeed  had  probably,  for  ill  or  good,  inspired 
Hampole's  Love  Divine.  To  say,  as  a  too  ardent  editor  has  said, 
that  their  beauty  and  melody  have  never  been  surpassed,  is  unlucky  ; 
this  is  the  kind  of  thing  which  brings  discredit  upon  literary  history 
and  hopelessly  mars  its  usefulness.     But 

Unkinde  man,  give  kepe  til  me, 
and 

Lo  leman  sweet,  now  may  thou  see, 


76  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

have  the  "  unction  "  of  our  most  successful  hymn-writers,  and  certainly 
the  poem  beginning  — 

My  treuest  treasure  so  traitorly  taken, 
So  bitterly  bounden  with  bytand  band(e)s, 
How  soon  of  thy  servants  wast  thou  forsaken, 
And  loathly  for  my  life  hurled  with  their  hand(e)s! 

has  a  rhythm  which  is  no  common  one,  and  which  curiously  reminds 
us  of  another  Northumbrian  poet  500  years  later  than  Hampole  —  that 
is  to  say,  of  Mr.  Swinburne.^ 

Nor  can  any  one  of  these  canticles  of  Divine  Love,  according  to 
Richard  Hampole,  be  spoken  of  otherwise  than  with  admiration,  while 
of  the  remaining  pieces  of  verse  attributed  to  him  most  have  a 
certain  individuality  of  form  or  spirit  or  both.  But  for  the  attribution 
to  him  of  the  revival  of  strictly  alliterative  verse  there  is  little  if  any 
more  warrant  than  for  the  ascription  to  him  of  the  invention  of  the 
heroic.  We  can  at  the  most  (and  also  at  the  least)  allow  that  this 
revival  was  a  very  reasonable  consequence  of  the  increased  stimulus 
to  literary  composition  in  the  North  —  always  fonder  of  alliterative 
rhythm,  and  more  rebel  to  strict  metrical  ways,  than  the  South  —  of 
which  he  certainly  was  one  of  the  lights  and  leaders. 

Two  other  named  writers,  one  a  little  earlier,  one  a  little  later 
than  Hampole,  have  obtained  representation  in  English  literary 
history,  though  they  are  decidedly  less  interesting,  even  when  we 
take  the  hermit  who  I'obbed  his  sister  of  her  gowns  somewhat  less 
seriously  than  he  has  sometimes  been  taken.  *The  first  of  these, 
Adam  Davy,  occupied  the  rather  mysterious  office  of 
^^'  "Marshal  of  Stratford-atte-Bowe "  about  the  year  1312, 
and  no  doubt  spoke  good  French  of  the  local  pattern  to  the  persons 
whom  he  marshalled.  He  happened,  while  many  worthier  writers 
escaped  it,  to  attract  the  attention  of  Warton,  who  not  merely  attrib- 
uted to  him  divers  sacred  poems  found  in  the  same  manuscript,  but 
also  the  excellent  romance  oi  Alexander,  which  is  probably  earlier,  and 
certainly  by  a  much  better  writer.  Davy's  undoubted  work  consists 
of  Visions  of  Edward  I/.,  which  have  been  re-edited  for  the  Early 
English  Text  Society  by  Dr.  furnivall. 

Laurence  Minot  had  a  likelier  subject  than  Adam  Davy,  inasmuch 

1  Swallow  my  sister,  O  sister  swallow, 
How  can  thy  heart  be  full  of  the  spring  ? 

Itylus. 

and  the  great  stanza  of  the  Triumph  of  Time.  The  final  es  of  Hampole's 
alternate  lines  would  soon  have  dropped.  There  is  no  other  weak  ending.  Cf. 
also  the  pretty  lines  of  Eve  in  the  second  Coventry  Play,  "Alas  I  that  ever  the 
speech  was  spoken." 


CHAP.  HI  SECOND    MIDDLE   ENGLISH   PERIOD  77 

as  he  celebrated  not  Edward  IL,  but  Edward  IIL  in  his  earlier 
glories.  His  subsequent  fortune  has  been  correspondent,  for  he 
has  had  the  honour,  most  unusual  for  a  Middle  English 
poet  even  of  higher  rank  than  himself,  of  being  four  Mij^ou* 
times  edited,  and  five  times  printed  in  full  —  by  Ritson 
in  1795  and  1825,  by  Mr.  Wright  in  his  Record  Office  Political  Poems, 
by  Dr.  SchoUe  in  a  German  periodical,  and  by  Mr.  Joseph  Hall  for 
the  Clarendon  Press.  The  fact  is  the  best  possible  evidence  of  the 
superiority  of  subject  to  form  as  means  of  gaining  general  atten- 
tion. Minot,  who  wrote  in  1352,  who  seems  to  have  been  a 
Northerner  from  his  dialect,  but  of  whom  we  know  nothing  more,  is  a 
fair,  but  no  more  than  a  fair,  specimen  of  the  English  trouvfere-of-all- 
work  of  the  period.  His  subjects  are :  Halidon  Hill ;  the  capture  of 
Berwick,  which  he  takes  as  an  avenging  of  Bannockburn ;  the  entry 
of  Edward,  our  comely  king,  into  Brabant;  the  battle  in  the  Swin-, 
the  leaguer  at  Tournay ;  the  march  to  Calais ;  Crecy  and  the  battle 
there ;  the  siege  of  Calais ;  Neville's  Cross ;  the  sea-fight  with  the 
Spaniards  ;  and  the  taking  of  Guines. 

The  forms  of  the  poems  that  compose  this  cycle  of  the  deeds  of 
Edward  —  for  that  is  what,  with  all  its  formal  variety,  it  comes  to  — 
are  various.  Halidon  is  told  in  octave  eights  admitting  catalexis, 
rhymed  alternately  with  a  title  couplet  which  is  found  in  all  the 
poems  and  a  final  quatrain.  The  Berwick  sack  is  in  sixains  rhymed 
aaaabb,  the  lines  hovering  between  anapaestic  fours  and  iambic 
fives  as  so  often  noted ;  the  entry  into  Brabant  in  octosyllabic 
couplets  followed  by  romance  sixains  886886  rhymed  aabaab ;  the 
battle  of  the  Swin  or  Sluys  in  the  above  hovering  couplets ;  Tournay 
in  octaves  of  sixes,  to  the  three  last  of  which  "  bobs  "  and  couplets  are 
added,  making  the  Tristrem  stanza  {vide  infra)  ;  Crecy  in  octaves  like 
Halidon  with  a  couplet  prologue ;  Calais  in  similar  staves  without 
prologue ;  Neville's  Cross  in  long  sixteen-lined  stanzas  of  very  short 
lines,  which  perhaps  should  be  octaves  of  longer  lines ;  the  Spaniards 
in  twelves  of  the  same  kind,  and  the  Castle  of  Guines  in  the  same. 

These  poems  have  historical  and  patriotic  interest  1  in  no  small 
degree ;  but   for   literature    their   chief  value   is   perhaps  the   way  in 

1  Their  patriotism,  as  is  not  unnatural  or  uncommon,  becomes  a  little  abusive 
now  and  then.  It  may  perhaps  be  usefully  observed  in  connection  with  them 
that  the  employment  of  the  vernacular  for  political  satire,  etc.,  is  a  sure  gauge 
of  its  literary  standing.  In  Wright's  first  collection  of  Political  Songs  for  the 
Camden  Society  in  1839  —  a  collection  extending  from  the  reign  of  John  to  that  of 
Edward  II.  —  not  one  of  the  four  pieces  for  John's  reign  is  English,  only  one  of 
the  fifteen  for  Henry  III.'s,  but  nearly  ^a//"  (eight  out  of  seventeen)  of  those 
for  the  Edwards.  In  his  later  and  much  larger  collection  from  Edward  III. 
to  Richard  III.  for  the  Rolls  Series  (2  vols.  1859-1861J  any  language  save 
English  becomes  more  and  more  the  exception. 


78  THE  MAKING   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE  book  II 

which  they  show  that  a  fairly  sufficient  and  satisfactory  medium,  a 
ready-made  poetic  diction  and  cadence,  was  now  at  last  at  the  dis- 
posal of  the  verse-writer.  There  is  nothing  in  Minot's  poems, 
though  some  have  spirit,  especially  the  Neville's  Cross  piece,  and 
that  on  the  naval  victory  over  the  Spaniards,  with  its  apostrophe  to 
the 

Boy  with  the  black  beard  ! 

that  can  be  said  to  show  any  very  special  or  peculiar  poetical  talents 
in  the  author.  He  is  given  to  expletives,  he  seldom  or  never 
succeeds  in  giving  us  a  distinct  visual  picture ;  his  very  variety  of 
metre,  etc.,  looks  more  like  the  absence  of  any  distinct  grasp  and 
command  of  one  form  than  like  a  sense  of  general  mastery. 
But,  as  has  hardly  been  the  case  for  three  hundred  years  and  more, 
he  has  a  fairly  settled  tongue  and  a  generally  accepted  prosody, 
with  its  peculiarities  of  lilt  and  swing  all  ready  to  his  hands ;  and 
he  manages  to  make  very  tolerably  good  use  of  them.  Indeed, 
though  it  may  seem  rather  ungracious,  it  is  not  impossible  to  say 
that  his  chief  use  in  literature  proper  is  that  he  explains  Chaucer  — 
shows  how  the  tools  were  ready  for  the  workman. 

Last  in  this  chapter  falls  to  be  noticed  a  very  remarkable  group 
of  poems,  which,  with  another  reserved  for  the  Romance  division, 
have  been  attributed  to  a  single  author  by  their  editors,  who  have 
also  in  some  cases  indulged  in  much  hypothesis  as  to  that  author's 
identity.  As  in  all  cases,  the  reader  is  here  simply  referred  to  the 
discussions  in  question  on  the  latter  point.  As  to  the  former,  I  should 
be  disposed  to  admit  as  extremely  probable  the  common  authorship 
of  Patience,  Cleanness,  and  The  Pearls  Gawain  and  the 
'"patience"  Gt'^ene  Knii^kt  {j)i(ie  chap,  v.)  seems  to  me  to  be  much  more 
dubiously  their  brother ;  for  the  fact  of  their  being  found 
in  the  same  MS.  is  really  no  argument  at  all,  considering  the  almost 
invariable  mediaeval  habit  of  transcribing,  straight  on,  the  most  hetero- 
geneous and  unconnected  work.  And  it  is  also  very  possible  to 
allow  too  much  weight  to  the  alleged  linguistic  resemblances. 
But  it  is  not  impossible  that  the  four  poems  may  have  had  a 
common  writer,  and  it  is  certain  that  all  are  much  above  the  average 
in  merit. 

In  the  three  that  are  to  be  noticed  in  this  place,  the  alliterative 
reaction,  which  has  been  already  referred  to,  shows  itself  (as  it  does 
also  in  the  Greene  Knight^  very  strongly,  though  in  differing  measure 
and  degree.  Cleanness  and  Patience,  two  poems,  the  first  of 
rather    over    1800    lines,    the    other    of    rather    over    500,    each    of 

"^  Early  English  Alliterative  Poems,  ed.  Morris  (E.E.T.S.),  [The}  Pearl 
separately  edited  by  I.  Goilancz,  London,  1891. 


CHAP.  Ill  SECOND   MIDDLE   ENGLISH    PERIOD  79 


which  begins  with  the  title-word,  are  written  in  alliterative  blank 
verse,  observing  for  the  most  part  the  old  rule  of  two  alliterations  in 
the  first  section  and  one  in  the  second,  very  closely  though  not  rigidly 
equivalent  in  syllabic  length,  precise  in  the  middle  pause,  and  though 
not  metrical,  yet  exhibiting  a  general  set  of  rhythm  towards  anapaestic 
cadence  in  the  first  half,  and  trochaic  in  the  second.  This,  in  fact, 
was  the  general  scheme  of  the  new  alliteration  at  its  best  t'me,  as 
here  and  in  Langland.  Later,  especially  in  Dunbar  and  Douglas, 
the  alliteration  is  exaggerated,  and  the  lines  lengthened  accordingly. 
The  Pearly  on  the  other  hand,  though  very  strongly  alliterated,  does 
not  depend  on  alliteration  for  its  system  of  scansion,  but  is  in  twelve- 
lined  octosyllabic  stanzas  rhymed  abababahbcbc,  these  stanzas  being 
further  grouped  in  divisions  generally  of  five  each,  the  last  line  of 
each  stanza  in  the  group  being  a  sort  of  refrain,  which  is  more  or 
less  repeated  throughout.  "Jhe  characteristics  of  matter  and  spirit 
are  more  uniform.  All  three  poems  are  pervaded  by  a  singular  and 
very  impressive  mixture  of  devotional  feeling,  with  poetical  apprecia- 
tion of  things  mundane  as  well,  and  by  a  solemn  melody  rare  in 
earlier  verse.  In  Cleanness  the  mediaeval  worship  of  purity,  enforced 
by  vigorous  paraphrases  and  commentaries  on  the  Parable  of  the 
Marriage  Feast,  the  Fall  of  the  Angels,  the  Deluge,  the  Destruction 
of  Sodom,  the  Incarnation,  and  the  story  of  Nebuchadnezzar  and 
Belshazzar,  is  yet  entirely  free  from  the  almost  insane  exaltation  of 
virginity  in  and  for  itself  which  is  so  common.  There  is  no  nobler  or 
more  passionate  appreciation  of  the  delights  of  lawful  love  in  English 
poetry  than  a  passage  in  Jehovah's  denunciation  of  Sodom  to 
Abraham  —  Milton's  famous  apostrophe  is  a  coarse  and  diffuse  example 
of  rhetorical  commonplace  in  comparison  —  and  the  whole  poem, 
though  quaint  now  and  then,  is  full  of  sombre  energy,  mixed,  as  in  the 
destruction  of  Babylon  and  of  the  fire  from  Heaven,  with  description 
of  great  power.  Patience  has  an  apparently  less  inspiring  subject ; 
but  the  story  of  Jonah,  with  which  the  poet  chiefly  fills  it,  gives  him 
good  opportunities  of  which  he  avails  himself  well.  The  storm  in 
particular  is  very  good.  It  must  no  doubt  be  admitted  that  the 
slightly  grotesque  effect  of  continuous  and  regular  alliteration,  and  the 
way  in  which  it  compels  even  poets  very  fertile  in  resource  to  choose 
the  wrong  word  instead  of  the  right  for  the  mere  sake  of  an  initial 
.  letter,  receive  some  illustration  here.  But  the  result  is  by  no  means 
fatal. 

As  a  whole,  however.  The  Pearl  is  undoubtedly  the  pearl  of  the 
three.     As  too  often   happens,  the  well-mentioned  and  very  amiable 
partiality  of  its  latest  editor  has  set  some  against  it;  but     f^f  pfarl. 
this  is  always  indefensible.       It  need  only  be  read  —  and 
it  is  by  no  means  difficult  to  read  —  to  show  its  real  beauty.     There 


So  THE   MAKING  OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 


can  be  no  reasonable  doubt  that  it  describes  the  loss  of  a  daughter, 
probably  in  early  age,  who  may  very  likely  have  borne  the  actual 
name  of  Margaret,  beloved  by  the  Middle  Age  because  of  the  charm- 
ing and  popular  legend  of  the  patroness  saint,  because  of  its  own 
harmonious  sound,  and  because  of  the  endless  plays  on  the  meanings 
"pearl"  and  "daisy"  which  it  suggested. ^     This 

Pearl  pleasant  to  princes'  pay  — 

(the  first  line)  — this 

Privy  pearl  withouten  spot  — 

which,  with  slight  changes,  is  the  refrain  of  the  first  group  —  is  first 

dealt  with  as  a  gem   richly   set,  but    dropped   by   the  owner  on   the 

ground.     The   father  (probably)  visits   the   spot,  almost   avowedly  a 

grave,  and,  falling  asleep  of  pure  sorrow,  is  carried  off  to  a  strange 

resfion.     Following  a  stream  he  sees  a  white-clad  maiden,  whom    he 

at  first  partly,  and  then  seeing  a  mighty  pearl  set  on  her  breast,  wholly 

recognises.      He  asks  her  whether  she  is  really  his  Pearl,  since  the 

loss  of  whom 

I  have  been  a  joyless  Jeweller. 

She  says  "Yes."  But  she  is  not  lost,  though  he  cannot  now  come 
to  her.  He  must  wait  God's  will  awhile ;  she  is  a  queen  in  Heaven, 
which  (he  proving  dull  of  understanding)  she  explains,  adding  the 
Parable  of  the  Vineyard  and  an  account  of  the  Brides  of  the  Lamb. 
He  has  a  distant  vision  of  the  Heavenly  City  and  the  worship  oCthe  , 
Lamb,  and  rashly  endeavouring  to  cross  the  water,  wakes. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  this  poem  is  not  faultless.  The  fault  does 
not  lie,  as  some  would  vainly  speak,  in  the  allegory :  for  allegory  is 
always  a  natural  and  frequently  a  powerful  ally  to  poetry,  while  it  is 
never  dangerous  if  kept  in  its  own  place.  The  only  faults  of  The 
Pearl  in  connection  with  allegory  are  that  there  is,  as  is  the  case 
with  the  vast  majority  of  narrative  poems  of  the  kind  in  the  fourteenth 
and  fifteenth  centuries,  far  too  much  of  a  single  common  form  —  that 
of  the  Romance  of  the  Rose,  the  following  of  which  is  actually  con- 
ducted to  the  point  of  walking  down  the  river  before  the  adventure, 
such  as  it  is,  is  met.  But  beyond  this,  beyond  an  occasional 
expression  a  little  beyond  reason  in  carrying  out  the  minor  points  of 

1  Although  Saint  Helena  and  Saint  Juliana  have,  by  accident  probably,  the 
precedence  of  her  in  our  earliest  A.S.  documents,  Saint  Margaret  has  probably 
a  fuller  series  of  extant  Old  English  lives  of  nearly  all  periods  than  any  other 
saint.  No  name  was  commoner,  and  of  none  do  the  abbreviations  so  often  occur 
in  familiar  writing. 

Est  mea  mens  mota  pro  te  speciosa  Magota ! 
as  the  doggerel  leonine  has  it. 


CHAP.  Ill  SECOND    MIDDLE   ENGLISH   PERIOD  8i 

allegory  (it  is  in  this  that  Spenser  and  Bunyan  so  far  excel  their 
brother  allegorists),  and  beyond  an  occasional  succumbing  to  the 
temptations  of  alliteration,  there  are  singularly  few  weak  points  in  The 
Pearl.  The  exceeding  beauty  of  its  descriptive  passages,  especially 
that  of  the  strange  region  where  the  poet  awoke,  its 

Crystal  cliffs  so  clear  of  kind, 

and  the  mystic  woods  hanging  down  them,  with  their  purple  trunks 
and  silver  foliage ;  the  melancholy  clangour  of  the  verse,  never  de- 
scending to  a  mere  whine,  but  always  maintaining  dignity  and  sanity 
in  the  midst  of  its  sense  of  the  pity  and  the  loss  of  it,  —  these  can 
escape  no  fit  reader.  The  poet  who  could  give  such  expression  to 
pathos  in  The  Pearl,  to  passion  in  Cleamtess,  and  who  had  such  a 
mastery  of  the  descriptive  faculty  as  appears  in  all  three  pieces,  was 
no  mean  poet. 

G 


CHAPTER   IV 

EARLY   ROMANCES  —  METRICAL 

Sir  Tristrem  —  Havelok  the  Dane  —  King  Horn  —  King  AUsaunder  —  Arthour  an^ 
Merlin  —  Richard  Caeur  de  Lion  —  The  Seven  Sages  —  Bevis  of  Hatnpton  — 
Guy  of  Warwick — Ywain  and  Gawain — Lybeaus  Desconus  —  The  King  of 
Tars — Emare  —  Sir  Orpheo  —  Florence  of  Rome —  The  Earl  of  Toulouse  — 
The  Squire  of  Low  Degree  —  Sir  Cleges  and  Le  Fralne — Ipomydon  —  Amis 
and  Amiloun—  Sir  Amadas  —  Sir  Triamour  —  King  Athelstone,  etc.  —  The 
Thornton  Romances  —  Charlemagne  Romances 

There  has,  perhaps,  never  been  such  a  capital  example  of  the  danger 
of  indulgence  in  literary  satire  by  a  man  of  the  first  literary  genius 
as  the  comparative  disrepute  into  which  the  ever  (and  most  justly) 
increasing  estimate  of  Chaucer  has  thrown  the  Early  English  metrical 
romances.^  That  Chaucer  himself,  in  the  Rhyme  of  Sir  T/iopas, 
intended  to  pour  any  real  discredit  on  the  class  in  general,  I  do  not 

1  It  may  be  convenient  to  give  at  once  in  a  note  the  titles  and  contents  of  the 
chief  collections  of  these  romances  —  collections  which  in  themselves  fill  one  of  the 
most  satisfactory  of  book-shelves  :  — 

{a)  Ritson  (J.).  Ancient  Engleish  Metrical  Romancees  (spelling  was  one  of 
Ritson's  numerous  manias),  3  vols.  London,  1802,  containing  a  long  and  still, 
for  all  its  errors  and  crazes,  valuable  dissertation,  with  Ywain  and  Gawain, 
Launfal,  Lybeaus  Desconus,  King  Horn,  The  King  of  Tars,  Emare,  Sir  Orpheo, 
A  Chronicle  of  Englelond,  Florence  of  Rome,  The  Earl  of  Toulouse,  The  Squire 
of  Low  Degree,  The  Knight  of  Courtesy  and  the  Lady  of  Faguel,  with,  in  the  Ap- 
pendix, another  form  of  Horn  —  Horn  Child  and  Maiden  Rimnild. 

(b)  Weber  (H.).  Metrical  Rotnances  of  the  I'ith,  14th,  and  x^th  Centuries 
(3  vols.  Edinburgh,  i8ioj,  containing  a  less  valuable  introduction,  with  King 
AUsaunder,  Sir  Cleges,  Le  Frayne,  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion,  Ipomydon,  Amis  and 
Amiloun,  the  Seven  Sages,  Octavian,  Sir  Amadas,  and  the  Hunting  of  the 
Hare. 

(f)  Utterson  (R.).  Select  Pieces  of  Popular  Poetry  (2  vols.  London,  1817). 
The  first  contains  Sirs  Triamour,  Isenbras,  LJegore,  and  Gowghter. 

(d)  Hartshorne  (C.  H.).  Ancient  Metrical  Tales,  containing  among  other 
things  King  Athelstone,  King  Edward  and  the  Shepherd,  Florice  and  Blanche- 
flour,  and  part  of  the  alliterative  William  of  Paler  ne. 

{e)  Hallivvell  (J.  O.).  The  Thornton  Romances  —  Sirs  Perceval  of  Gales, 
Isumbras,  Eglamour  of  Artois,  and  Degravant  (Camden  Society,  1844). 

(/)   Hazlitt    (W.  C).     Ecirly   Popular    Poetry   of  England  (4   vols.  London, 

82 


CHAP.  IV  EARLY   ROMANCES  —  METRICAL  83 

myself  in  the  least  believe.  He  probably  had  at  most  two  or  three 
"awful"  examples  (upon  one  at  least  of  which  it  would  not  be 
difficult  to  put  the  finger  even  now)  before  him.  And  it  is  permis- 
sible to  be  equally  sceptical  in  respect  of  his  alleged  contempt  for 
the  matter,  especially  the  Arthurian  matter,  of  these  romances  —  the 
passages  usually  quoted  will  not  bear  the  construction  put  on  them. 
Chaucer's  own  adoption  of  different  styles  and  treatments  and  sources 
of  material  is,  at  best,  the  most  negative  of  arguments.  It  is  as 
natural  for  some  men  of  genius  to  prefer  to  take  new  ways,  to  strike 
into  the  path  worn  by  the  feet  of  none,  as  it  is  for  others  to  produce 
masterpieces  in  kinds  already  tried  by  their  contemporaries  and 
predecessors. 

However,  all  that  can  be  said  positively  is  that  if  Chaucer  did 
despise  the  romances,  he  merely  exhibited  that  not  infrequent  in- 
firmity even  of  noble  minds  which  makes  men  unjust  to  their  imme- 
diate forerunners  —  which  made  Coleridge  talk  absolute  foolishness 
about  Gibbon's  style,  and  which  induced  even  Dryden,  with  his 
admirable  critical  catholicity,  to  imagine  that  Restoration  verse  was 
not  merely  a  good  thing  in  another  way  from  that  of  the  Elizabethans, 
but  a  positive  improvement  upon  them.  No  such  mistake  can  prej- 
udice our  judgment. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  place  with  any  exactness  the  earlier,  still 
more  the  earliest,  examples  of  this  fascinating  form  of  composition 
in  English.  What  is  certain  is  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  genius  —  for 
reasons  too  hastily  pronounced  upon  by  some,  but  for  some  reason 
or  other  —  had  very  little  inclination  towards  it.  The  admirable  saga 
of  Beowulf,  though  well  enough  known  to  have  been  modernised 
and  copied  long  before  the  Conquest,  seems  to  have  found  no 
imitators,  or,  at  least,  none  that  have  survived  —  for  the  chance  of 
an  English  original  of  Havelok  is  very  strong.  The  enormous  pre- 
ponderance of  attention  given  to  sacred  subjects,  both  in  Anglo-Saxon 
itself  and  in  early  Middle  English,  must  have  had  something  to  do 
with  this;  but  the  general  decadence  of  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  after 
the  eighth  century  must  have  had  more.  For  in  no  country  of 
Europe,  except  Iceland,  was  prose  ready  for  the  task  until  far  later. 

It  has  therefore  to  be  admitted  fully  that  the  known  beginnings 
of  romance  in  English  all  came  from  French  in  point  of  substance, 
while  their  forms  could  not  be  evolved    till    the  '-shaking  together" 

1864)  contains,  among  a  great  many  other  things,  Robert  the  Devil  and  Robert  of 
Cisylle  [Sicityl. 

{^)  Hales  (J.W.)  and  Furnivall  (F.  J.).  Bishop  Percy's  Folio  MS.  (3  vols. 
London,  1867)  contains  many  variants  of  romances  named,  and  some  new  ones, 
notably  b.gcr  and  Grime. 

Separate  editions  are  noted  infra ;  for  collections  of  Alliterative  Romance  see 
first  note  to  next  chapter. 


84  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

of  English,  Latin,  and  French  itself  had  provided  the  new  prosody. 
The  earliest  examples  of  the  result  now  existing,  and  perhaps  the 
only  ones  which  can  be  reasonably  attributed  to  a  period  before  the 
year  1300,'  are  the  three  romances  of  Sir  Tristrem,  of  Havelok 
the  Dane,  and  of  King  Horn;  and  it  is  practically  admitted  that 
though  the  first  and  second  at  least  must  almost  certainly  have 
sprung  from  British  soil,  they  only  appeared  in  the  English  language 
as  translations  or  adaptations  from  the  French.  Each'  is  of  interest 
enough  for  separate  consideration  at  such  length  as  is  here  possible. 

In  sheer  intrinsic  literary  merit  Sir  Tristrem  ^  is  far  from  being  the 
best  of  the  three  ;  in  fact  it  is  certainly  the  worst.  But  its  adventitious 
attractions  are  of  the  most  unusual  kind.  It  is,  in  all  probability,  the 
first  English  romance  in  the  great  "matter  of  Britain"  — 
m.  ^j^^  ^^j^  rival,  Arthour  and  Merlin,  is,  I  think,  later. 
It  tells  a  story  which,  however  it  may  seem  to  some  to  yield 
in  poignancy,  as  in  nobility  of  interest,  to  the  companion  loves  of 
Lancelot  and  Guinevere,  was  even  more  popular  in  the  joint  days  of 
the  two,  and  which  has  maintained  itself.  It  is  identified  —  perhaps, 
indeed  probably,  by  mistake,  but  stiH  it  is  identified  —  with  the 
interesting,  if  legendary,  personality,  and  the  certainly  early  vernac- 
ular productions  of  "Thomas  the  Rhymer."  And  last,  but  by  no 
means  least,  in  almost  the  earliest  day  of  the  revival  of  Romance,  it 
had  the  honour  to  be  ushered  once  more  to  public  knowledge  by  Sir 
Walter  Scott. 

With  some  of  these  attractions  we  must  deal  here  in  cruel 
brevity.  The  argument  as  to  the  question  of  authorship  must  be 
sought  by  those  who  are  curious  about  it  in  the  editions  cited  in  the 
notes.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  the  "Thomas"  cited  by  Gottfried 
of  Strasburg,  the  chief  continental  handler  of  the  story,  can  hardly 
have  been  Thomas  of  Erceldoune ;  that  the  story  of  Sir  Tristrem  was 
certainly  current  in  French  long  before  the  date  either  of  the 
"Rhymer"  or  of  this  rhyme;  and  that  it  is,  all  things  taken  together, 
a  little  improbable,  to  say  the  least,  that,  considering  the  absence  of 
any  certain  Scottish  poetry  till  nearly  the  end  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  anything  so  elaborate  as  this  should  have  been  composed  in 
such  "Inglis"  by  a  Scot  before  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  — and 
according  to   the   dates   usually   assigned    to    Thomas    the    Rhymer 

1  By  fifty  years  after  that  date  many,  probably  most,  of  our  verse  romances 
must  have  come  into  existence.  The  famous  Auchinleck  MS.,  which  contains  a 
good  score,  is  of  this  time ;  and  in  the  Cursor  Mundi,  which  is  perhaps  as  early 
as  1320,  we  find  reference  not  only  to  these  but  to  others,  such  as  Sir  Isumbras, 
of  which  our  existing  copies  are  later. 

■^  Scott's  memorable  edition  of  this  can  never,  in  a  sense,  be  obsolete ;  but  more 
modern  apparatus  and  knowledge  are  added  in  those  of  Kolbing  (Heilbronn,  1882) 
and  M'Neill  (Scottish  Text  Society,  1886). 


CHAP.  IV  EARLY   ROMANCES  — METRICAL  85 


(c.  1280)  considerably  before  it.  At  any  rate,  the  poem  in  its 
present  form  can  hardly  have  come  from  any  one  who  wrote  north 
of  the  Tweed.  That  it  is,  as  its  latest  Scottish  editor  holds,  a 
southernised  version  of  a  work  of  Erceldoune  does  not  seem  to  me 
entirely  impossible.     But  it  rests  on  no  evidence. 

The  form  would  lead  us  to  believe  it  not  much,  if  at  all,  anterior 
to  the  fourteenth  century,  the  stanza  used  being  one  of  those  compli- 
cated and  bizarre  ones  which,  as  has  been  explained  in  the  last 
chapter,  came  from  the  attempt  to  adjust  Provenqal-French  metres 
to  English  rhythm.  It  resembles  one  previously  mentioned  in  the 
arrangement  of  the  rhymes  alternately  in  an  eleven-lined  stanza  broken 
by  a  short  fresh-rhymed  bob  at  the  ninth  line.  The  best  ar- 
gument for  its  being  older  than  1300  is  that  the  staple  line  is  of 
six  not  of  eight  syllables  —  for,  as  we  have  seen,  the  six-syllabled  line 
or  half-hne  somewhat  anticipated  its  longer  and  more  convenient 
amplification  into  eights.  After  the  plump  statement  that  the  author 
was  at  Erceldoune  and  spake  with  Thomas,  hearing  a  geste  of 
Tristrem  (which,  by  the  way,  is  an  odd  fashion  of  signature,  but  very 
likely  a  shift  to  father  work  on  a  well-known  name  indirectly),  it 
passes  to  a  stanza  of  gnomic  reflexion,  very  common,  as  we  shall 
see,  in  the  earliest  days  of  English  romance,  and  then  plunges  into 
its  story,  the  Tristram-saga  proper  —  the  famous  and  fatal  loves  of 
Tristrem  and  Yseult  being  preceded  in  true  saga  fashion  by  a  history 
of  the  unhappy  contest  of  Rouland  Rhys,  Tristrem's  father,  with 
Douk  Morgan. 

The  rather  unsuitable  nature  of  the  stanza  for  narrative  is  occa- 
sionally relieved  by  a  middle  rhyme  — 

They  ne  raught  [recked]  how  dear  it  bought, 

and  on  the  whole  does  fairly  well;  but  the  earliness  of  the  piece 
finds  a  certain  support  in  its  crudity.  The  repulsive  story  of  the 
fashion  in  which  Yseult  would  have  paid  her  maiden  Brengwain's 
self-devotion  is  not  in  the  least  softened,  and  the  poet  does  not  show 
himself  able,  as  his  German  predecessor  had  been  able,  to  bring  out 
the  unmatched  attractiveness  of  the  sylvan  life  of  Tri.strem  and  the 
Irish  princess.  But  there  are  good  touches,  at  least  not  lost  if  not 
actually  invented  by  the  minstrel,  such  as  that  when  the  luckless,  if 
unamiable,  .Mark  discovers  his  queen  and  Tristrem  with  the  sword 
between  them  — 

A  sunbeam  full  bright 

Shone  upon  the  queen, 
At  a  bore  [hole] 

On  her  face  so  sheen  — 

And  Mark  rewed  therefore. 


86  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ll 


It  is  not  always  that  later  poetry  has  succeeded  in  achieving  or 
retaining  a  phrase  so  simple,  sensuous,  and  passionate  as  that  last 
line,  which  is  almost  the  equal  of  Sappho's 

lyo)  8c  fiova  Karevoio. 

Horn  ^  and  Havelok  ^  are  in  less  elaborate  metrical  form.  The 
metre  of  both  comes  under  the  general  designation  of  the  octo- 
syllabic couplet  —  in  Havelok  lengthened  and  "swung"  by  the  ad- 
mission of  trisyllabic  feet,  in  Horn  shortened  so  as  to  show  that  the 
poet  was  still  hovering,  as  many  did  for  a  time,  between  sixes  (or 
sevens)  and  eights.  There  is  also  some  similarity  between  the 
general  subject  of  both,  which  is  that  favourite  romance  donnee  of  the 
heir  kept  out  of  his  own.     The  palm,  both  for  individuality  of  story 

and  for  spirit  of  narration,  decidedly  belongs  to  Havelok, 
the^Dane      which  has  all  the  notes  of  a  genuine  local  saga,  and  not 

merely  of  a  literary  composition  on  accepted  romance  lines. 
There  is  in  it  a  double  wrong  done  —  the  innocent  Havelok,  the  heir  of 
Denmark,  being  excluded  by  his  guardian  Godard,  while  Goldborough, 
heiress  of  England,  is  similarly  treated  by  her  tutor  Godric.  But 
Havelok,  being  as  a  male  heir  more  dangerous,  is  exposed  to  greater 
personal  danger  than  his  destined  bride,  for  Godard,  determining  to 
make  away  with  him  altogether,  hands  him  over  to  the  fisherman  Grim 
to  drown.  Grim  treats  him  roughly  enough,  but  a  night  fortunately 
intervenes,  and  before  the  actual  immersion  the  fisher's  wife  sees  the 
sacred  flame-aureole,  sign  of  kinghood,  on  Havelok's  brow,  and  her 
husband,  having  also  prudently  ascertained  by  a  trick  that  he  was  like 
to  have  traitor's  wages  for  his  crime,  gives  it  up  and  escapes  oversea  to 
England,  where  he  lands  at  the  future  Grimsby.  Havelok,  brought  up 
as  a  mere  fisher  boy,  seeks  service  at  Lincoln  Castle,  and  distinguish- 
ing himself  by  strength  and  athletic  proficiency  as  one  of  the  "  kitchen 
knaves"  dear  to  romance,  is  chosen  as  Goldborough's  husband  by  the 
usurper  Godric,  who,  milder-minded  or  more  economical  in  crime 
than  his  Danish  counterpart,  only  plots  to  degrade  not  to  slay  his 
charge.  Goldborough  is  naturally  enough  displeased  at  having  to 
marry  a  scullion,  but  at  night  the  mystic  flame  reconciles  her  to  her 
lot.  Right  thus  meets  right,  a  party  is  formed  for  the  young  pair, 
and  the  two  traitors  receive  their  proper  doom.  In  this,  of  course, 
there  is  a  certain  amount  of  romantic  stock-matter,  the  humours 
and  promotion  of  the  scullion  Havelok  being  a  very  favourite  and 
early  device  found  even  in  the  ancient  and  brilliant  French  chanson 

1  Two  versions,  as  noted  above,  in  Ritson ;  there  are  also  three  or  four  more 
modem  editions,  and  the  whole  is  given  in  Morris  and  Skeat's  Specimens,  vol.  i. 

2  Ed.  Skeat,  E.E.T.S. 


CHAP.  IV  EARLY   ROMANCES  — METRICAL  87 


de  geste  of  Aliscans.  But  the  general  tenor  is,  as  has  been  said, 
unusually  vigorous  and  fresh.  The  poet  strides  along  like  a  man 
who  has  a  real  story  of  his  own  to  tell,  and  is  not  merely  compounding 
one  out  of  dried  or  bottled  materials.  In  fact,  there  is  no  doubt  that 
the  tradition  as  to  the  origin  of  Grimsby  was  an  old  one  in  Lincoln- 
shire; and  we  find  Robert  Manning,^  a  Lincolnshire  man,  in  a 
rather  quaint  state  of  dubiety"  between  his  early  familiarity  with  the 
story  and  the  silence  of  his  graver  historical  authorities  on  the 
matter.  For,  as  has  been,  and  will  be  again  hinted  more  than  once, 
the  mediaeval  mind  —  naturally  enough,  considering  the  vast  surround- 
ing and  invading  seas  of  nescience  which  bounded  its  islands  of 
knowledge  —  rarely  seems  to  have  had  any  distinctively  critical  power 
of  distinguishing  fact  from  fiction,  and  could  at  most  attain  to  surprise 
at  not  finding  the  former  in  places  where  no  trained  historical  crit 
would  dream  of  looking  for  it. 

Horn,   though    a    good    poem,  and    preserved    in   various   forms 
which  have  made  it  one  of  the  best  known  of  its  kind,  is  less  racy 
either  of  any  particular  soil,  or  of  any  special  poetical  faculty.      A 
certain  King  Murray  —  the  locality  of  whose  kingdom  is    ^.^^   ^^^^^^ 
described   with   sufficient   vagueness  as  '•  biweste "  —  and 
his  wife  Queen  Godhild  had  a  son  Horn,  who  was  a  very  beautiful  child. 

Fairer  was  none  than  he  wjis,»  ^ 
He  was  bright  as  the  glass, 
He  was  white  as  the  flour, 
Rose-red  was  his  colour  — 

lines  which,  not  unfairly,  give  the  key-note  of  the  real,  but  rather 
conventional,  prettiness  which  marks  the  poem.  As  Murray  was 
riding  by  the  seashore  he  met  with  fifteen  shiploads  of  Saracens 
keen,  who  frankly  avowed  their  intention  — 

The  land-folk  we  shall  slay, 

and  began  with  the  king.  Horn's  extreme  beauty  saves  him  from 
slaughter,  but  he  is  put  in  a  boat,  with  his  two  companions  Athulf 
and  Fikenild,  and  .set  adrift.  By  luck  and  pluck  they  come  safe  to 
the  coast  of  Westernesse,  where  the  king  gives  him  protection ;  the 
king's  steward,  Athelbrus,  instructs  him  in  knightly  ways,  and  the 
king's  daughter  Rimenhild  falls  deeply  in  love  with  him.  Indeed 
Horn   Child  and  Maiden  Rimnild  is  tiie  title  of  one  of  the  actual 

1  In  a  long  passage  (ed.  Hearne  above  cited,  i.  pp.  25,  26)  ;  given  also  in 
Prof.  Skeafs  Introduction,  ix.,  x.  Manning,  after  duly  translating  Langtoft, 
who  barely  refers  to  Havelok,  bitterly  complains  that  neither  Gildas,  nor  Uede, 
nor  Henry  of  Huntingdon,  nor  William  of  Malniesbury,  nor  Pierce  of  Bridlington 
{j..e.  Langtoft  himself)  says  anything  about  the  incidents  of  the  romance. 


88  THE   MAKING  OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

versions  of  the  story.  Athulf  is  a  good  friend,  even  withstanding  the 
awkward  temptation  of  a  moment  when  Rimenhild,  mistaking  him 
for  Horn,  makes  the  most  undisguised  advances ;  Fikenild  is  a 
traitor,  but  his  machinations,  though  nearly  successful,  are  defeated, 
and  Horn,  of  course,  comes  to  his  own  in  love  and  kingdom. 

The  fifteen  hundred  short  lines  of  the  poem  do  not  allow  time  for 
it  to  be  tedious  —  the  great  danger  of  these  somewhat  identically  con- 
structed stories  —  and  there  are  passages  of  directness  and  vigour 
which  deserve  all  the  more  recognition  in  that  the  piece,  though 
probably  translated  from  the  French,  is  still  very  early,  and  can  have 
had  very  few  English  originals  to  furnish  the  writer  with  stock 
phrases  and  passages.  One  of  the  straightest  and  best  is  when  Horn, 
with  his  beloved's  ring  on  his  finger,  meets  the  slayer  of  his  father  — 

Before  him  saw  he  stand 
That  driven  him  had  from  land 
And  that  his  father  slew. 
To  him  his  sword  he  drew. 
He  looked  upon  his  ring, 
And  thought  on  Rimenhild, 
He  smote  him  through  the  heart 
That  sore  him-  gan  to  smart, 

which,  though  the  last  line  is  a  little  superfluous,  cannot  be  called 
contemptible  in  so  early  an  attempt.  It  is  worth  while  to  notice  the 
assonance  in  ring  and  hild.  Assonance  does  not  suit  the  English 
ear,  and  is  rarely  attempted  in  English ;  but  it  was  so  prevalent 
in  the  French  models  of  the  writers  of  the  thirteenth  century,  and 
it  is  such  a  help  to  a  novice  in  rhyming,  that  it  would  be  strange 
if  it  did  not  sometimes  occur. 

We  may  conveniently  take  next  a  group  of  romances,  in  all 
probability  not  much  junior  to  these,  that  is  to  say,  dating  at  latest 
but  a  little  within  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  century,  and 
attributed  by  a  German  scholar,  who  is  honourably  distinguished  for 
the  union  of  philological  and  literary  competence.  Dr.  Eugen 
Kolbing,  to  the  same  hand.  I  cannot  say  that  I  myself  see  any  strong 
probability  of  this,  but  at  the  same  time  I  cannot  see  any  very 
serious  argument  against  it ;  and  its  admission  would  add  to  the  list 
of  English  poets  a  figure  anonymous  indeed,  but  more  considerable 
in  quantity  of  work  than  any  other  before  Chaucer,  and  certainly  not 
inferior  to  any  except  the  equally  shadowy  personage,  to  whom,  as  has 
been  said  in  the  last  chapter,  the  other  quartette  of  The  Greene  Knight, 
The  Pearl,  Cleanness,  and  Patience  has  been  similarly  gifted.  At 
any  rate  the  four  romances  themselves.  King  Alisaunder^  Arthour  and 

,   1  Ed.  Weber,  as  above. 


CHAP.  IV  EARLY   ROMANCES  —  METRICAL  89 


Merlin^  Richard  Costir  de  Lion,'''  and  the  Seven  Sages,^  are  each 
and  all  among  the  most  interesting  of  their  kind,  among  the  oldest, 
among  the  most  considerable  in  scale  and  subject ;  and  whether  they 
had  a  common  author  or  not,  they  are  equally  worthy  of  con- 
sideration. 

The  history  of  the  formation  and  transformation  of  the 
mediaeval  legend-history  of  Alexander  belongs  to  another  story  than 
that  of  English  literature.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  here  that  the 
English  romance  in  question  follows  generally  the  lines 
of  the  great  French  Roman  d'  Alixandre,  but  assigns  AUsaunder. 
greater  proportionate  space  and  credence  to  the  initial 
fables  about  Nectanebus  (Neptanabus  in  the  English),  the  Egyptian 
enchanter-king  who  revenged  himself  upon  Philip  by  seducing 
Olympias  in  the  guise  of  the  god  Ammon.  The  wonders  and  episodes 
of  the  later  part,  the  Fountain  of  Youth,  and  the  rest  are,  on  the 
other  hand,  curtailed,  but  as  it  is  the  poem  extends  to  more  than 
8000  lines  in  octosyllabic  couplets  of  a  good  stamp.  These  coup- 
lets, which  form  the  measure  of  all  the  romances  now  in  question,  and 
supply  one  of  the  arguments  for  their  common  authorship,  show  a 
considerable  advance  in  ease  and  grip  over  the  respective  kinds  of 
Horn  and  Havelok.  The  writer  in  all  rejects,  or,  if  the  phrase  be 
thought  more  appropriate,  has  not  arrived  at,  the  hard  and  fast 
French  octosyllable,  and  allows  himself  Christabel  equivalence  in  a 
very  satisfactory  manner.  Another  very  noticeable  peculiarity  shared 
by  some,  though  not  all,  of  the  group  is  the  interposition  —  in  such  a 
manner  as  justified  Weber,  the  poem\s  editor,  in  taking  the 
phenomenon  as  implying  chapter  or  "  fytte  "  division  —  of  short  gnomic 
or  descriptive  prefatory  remarks,  which  have  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  the  narrative,  as  thus  — 

Merry  time  is  the  wood  to  sere, 
The  corn  ripeth  in  the  ear, 
The  lady  is  ruddy  in  the  cheer, 
And  maid  bright  in  the  lere, 
The  knights  hunteth  after  deer, 
On  foot  and  on  destrere, 

1  Ed.  Kolbing,  Leipzig,  1890.  It  had  already  been  printed  for  the  Abbots- 
ford  Club  (1838)  by  TurnbuU,  and  like  many  of  the  romances  in  this  chapter, 
abstracted  still  earlier  by  Ellis  in  his  famous  Spfcimens  of  Early  English  j\felrical 
Romances,  which  (despite  a  tone  of  persiflage  sometimes  though  seldom  inappropri- 
ate) is  still  the  best  introduction  to  the  subject,  and  easily  procurable  in  Bohn's 
Library. 

■'■  Ed.  Weber. 

8  In  two  forms,  one  given  by  Weber,  and  the  other  by  Wright  for  the  Percy 
Society  (1845)  with  a  valuable  introduction. 


90  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE  book  ii 


which  comes,  apropos  of  nothing  whatever,  between  the  story  of 
Alexander's  coronation,  as  Prince  Expectant  and  King-coadjutor,  and 
his  knighting.  The  whole  poem  is  one  of  the  most  spirited  of  the 
romances,  and  Webers  claim  for  it,  that  it  is  less  burdened  with 
expletives  than  others,  is  just,  and  even  within  the  mark.  These 
nuisances,  which  appear  with  the  very  rise  of  the  style,  which  are  not 
absent  even  in  Chaucer,  and  which  in  fifteenth-century  work  like  that 
of  Lonelich  become  a  mere  abomination,  are  quite  rare  in  it,  and  the 
author's  faculty  of  description  is  extremely  vivid  and  good.  Where 
he  fails,  as  all  English  and  most  mediaeval  poets  before  Chaucer  do 
fail,  is  in  character. 

Arthotir  and  Merlin  is  still  longer  than  Alisaunder,  extending  to 
not  much  fewer  than  10,000  lines,  not  dissimilar  in  character 
from  those  just  noticed,  bat  less  regularly  and  abundantly  provided 
with  gnomic  introductions  or  "fytte"  headings.  It  is 
^'"'^^^'^J^.^f'"'  a  verse  rendering  of  what  is  called  the  "Vulgate" 
Merlin,  an  early  history  of  the  court  of  Arthur,  pr.a- 
ceded  by  an  account  of  Merlin's  own  birth,  and  of  the  adventure  of 
Uther  with  Igraine,  which  seems  to  have  been  thrown  into  French 
prose  before  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century,  or  not  much  later,  and  of 
which,  besides  other  verse  renderings,  including  one  by  the  above 
Lonelich,  only  published  in  part  (see  Book  iv.),  there  is  a  good  prose 
English  version  published  by  the  Early  English  Text  Society.  The 
most  interesting  parts  of  the  Arthurian  story  are  not  here,  and,  as  in 
all  the  Merlins,  a  vast  amount  of  space  is  taken  up  by  battles  with 
the  Saxons  and  with  Arthur's  rival  kings,  which  Malory's  extraordinary 
literary  instinct  led  him  to  omit  or  cut  short.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
there  are  things  in  these  Merlins  which  we  miss  in  Malory,  especially 
the  earlier  and  comelier  version  of  the  enchanter's  enchantment  by 
his  lady-love.  Apart  from  the  subject  matter,  the  piece  deserves 
commendation,  inferior  indeed  to  that  allotted  to  the  Alisajinder,  but 
not  small.  Still,  if  they  had  the  same  author,  he  had  either  not  yet 
learnt  in  the  Arthour  to  do  without  expletives,  or  had  in  it  succumbed 
to  a  bad  habit  which  he  had  earlier  resisted ;  and  the  catalogues  of 
names  are  rather  tedious.  The  great  interest  of  the  piece  is  that  it 
is  the  first  setting  of  the  romance  of  Arthur  (for  Layamon  supposed 
himself  to  be  telling  history),  that  we  possess  in  English  —  the  king 
of  all  stories  of  the  land  having  at  last  come  to  his  own  after 
linguistic  exile  for  a  century  and  a  half  in  French.  Indeed  there  are 
touches  about  the  piece  which  might  justify  a  conclusion  that  it  is 
decidedly  older  than  the  Alisaunder,  and  may  even  belong  to  the 
thirteenth,  not  to  the  fourteenth  century. 

Richard  Coeur  de  Lion,  the  third  of  the  group,  is  pretty  certainly 
the  best.     It  has  not  merely  the  general  interest  of  being  "matter  of 


CHAP.  IV  EARLY   ROMANCES  — METRICAL  91 


Britain,"  but  the  more  direct  appeal  of  being  the  geste  of  a  great 
English  prince,  told  at  a  time  near  enough  to  his  own  to  have 
the  relish  and"*  savour,  of  popular  fancy  and  fondness. 
It  is  rather  more  than  7000  lines  long;  and  the  metre  *'^ dTuon^'*^ 
is  managed  with  a  spirit  of  which  we  find  few  exam- 
ples in  Arthoiir  and  Merlin^  and  though  more,  yet  fewer  than  here 
in  Alisannder  itself.  Even  the  finale,  "  common  form "  as  it  is,  will 
show*  this  — 

Thus  ended  Rychard  our  King, 

God  give  us  all  good  ending, 

And  his  soul  rest  and  roo, 

And  our  souls  when  we  come  thereto ! 

Here  is  the  real  diable  an  corps  of  the  ballad-romance  style  —  the 
combined  faculty  of  speaking  simply  and  straight,  and  metring  with 
vigour  and  variety.  Nor  is  the  matter  of  the  poem  inferior  to  the 
manner.  Sir  Walter  Scott  has  made  it  better  known  than  most  of 
our  romances  through  his  quotations  in  the  Talisman  notes,  referring 
to  the  grimly  humorous  episodes  of  the  cooking  of  the  Saracen's 
head  instead  of  a  pig's  jowl,  and  of  the  king's  ferocious  banquet,  on 
the  same  material,  to  the  Paynim  ambassadors.  A  recent  French 
historian  who  cried  affrightedly  over  a  certain  letter  of  Troubridge  to 
Nelson,  "  This  is  the  laughter  of  cannibals,"  might  be  better  justified 
here ;  yet  the  humour  of  the  thing  and  the  spirit  of  it  quite  carry  off 
■  the  savagery. 

Here  too,  almost  for  the  first  time  (save  in  that  very  likely  con- 
temporary proem  of  Robert  of  Gloucester  which  has  been  quoted), 
appears  really  English  patriotism,  the  triumph  in  the  Lion-heart's 
exploit  as  a  king  of  England,  which  (call  him  Angevin  or  anything 
else)  he  was.  The  refrain  "  Richard  our  King"  obviously  comes  from 
the  heart ;  the  malison  on  his  traitor  brother  — 

his  brother  John 
That  was  accursed,  flesh  and  bone  — 

is  equally  hearty.     Never  before  in  English  do  we  find  the  real  dare- 
devil tone,  rightly  associated  with  Romance,  as  here  — 

He  [Richard]  gan  cry,  As  arms!    Gare! 

Cceur  de  Lyon  — how  they  fare  ! 

Anon  lept  King  Richard 

Upon  his  good  steed  Lyard, 

And  his  English  and  hisTempleres 

Lightly  lept  on  their  destreres, 

And  flings  into  the  heathen  host 

In  the  name  of  the  Holy  Ghost. 


92  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

On  few  things  would  it  be  pleasanter  to  dwell  than  on  this  poem  of 
reiil  flesh  and  blood,  which  is  good  in  its  overture  as  to  the  fair  fiend 
''  Cassodorien  "  (who  takes  the  place  of  Eleanor  as  Henry's  wife  and 
Richard's  mother,  with,  no  doubt,  a  remembrance  of  the  Angevin 
house-fairy  iMelusine),  better  in  the  "lion's  heart"  episode,  but  best  in 
its  fighting  scenes.  Indeed  it  is  the  first  and  best  fighting  poem  in 
Middle  English.  But  we  must  pass  on,  only  observing  that  here  also 
the  heroic  couplet,  and  that  curious  English  fancy  for  winding  up  with 
it  at  a  marking  or  turning  point  which  is  so  noticeable  in  Shakespeare, 
make  their  appearance  — 

And  swore  |  by  Je  |  su  that  |  made  moon  |  and  star  | 
Ayenst  |  the  Sa  |  racens  he  |  should  learn  |  to  war  | 

(unless  indeed  this  is  an  embellishment  of  the  editor's).  The  gnomic 
insertion  occurs  now  and  then  in  this  poem. 

The  Seven  Sages  is  the  shortest  of  the  four,  not  much  exceeding 
4,000  lines,  and  like  all  the  versions,  prose  and  verse,  of  the  famous 
Eastern  collection  or  collections   from  which    it    is   derived,  it    is   in 

fact  a  mere  series  of  short  tales  bound  together  by  one 
Sazes!"    of  ^^^  usual  Straps  —  in  this  case  the  stories  are  told  by 

a  wicked  queen  to  support  her  false  accusation  of  her 
stepson,  and  by  his  Seven  Wise  Masters  on  his  behalf.  The  general 
literary  interest  of  these  things,  and  their  far  travel  from  the  East,  is 
great ;  but  though  in  the  piece,  and  still  more  in  the  later  Gesta 
Romanorum,  they  produced  noteworthy  books  in  English,^  their 
special  attraction  for  us  is  less,  inasmuch  as  they  were  but  transla- 
tions of  translations  of  translations,  having  been  beyond  all  doubt 
decanted  through  Latin  and  French,  and  perhaps  Greek  before  either, 
on  their  way  from  their  Eastern  homes  to  their  English  receptacles. 
They  are,  however,  interesting  as  the  earliest,  or  among  the  earliest, 
instances  in  our  language  of  the  short  verse-story  itself — the  fabliau 
which,  in  a  couple  of  generations  or  so,  Chaucer  was  in  the  Canterbury 
Tales  to  make  the  vehicle  of  one  of  the  capital  efforts  of  European 
poetry.  Although  there  is  no  doubt  some  general  resemblance,  of 
the  kind  almost  unavoidable,  to  the  other  three,  the  Seven  Sages 
seems  to  me  even  less  likely  than  Arthour  and  Merlin  to  be  the  work 
of  the  same  author  as  Alisaunder  or  as  Cmir  de  Lion,  for  there  is 
much  less  spirit  in  the  verse,  and  there  is  present  that  indefinite,  but 
to  careful  observers  very  noticeable,  inability  to  distinguish  between 
prosaic  and  poetical  incidents  which  marks  off  the  born  prose-writer 

1  The  actual  English  Gesta  may  not  be  very  early,  but  authority  seems  to  favour 
the  English  origin  of  the  Latin  original. 


CHAP.  IV  EARLY   ROMANCES  —  METRICAL  93' 

(in  the  bad  sense)  from  the  born  poet.  That  some  of  the  stories  in 
the  Seven  Sages  are  disgusting  does  not  so  much  matter ;  the 
Saracen's  head  episodes  of  Richard  are  not  precisely  delicious.  But 
the  poet  of  Richard  knew  how  to  carry  these  off,  the  poet  of  the 
Seven  Sages  did  not  know  how  to  carry  off  the  others  ;  and  the  differ- 
ence, though  not  very  easy  to  prove  by  example,  is  at  once  felt  in 
the  reading. 

All  the  metrical  romances  hitherto  noticed  are  beyond  doubt 
either  actually  of  the  thirteenth  century,  or  only  a  very  little  younger. 
But  it  is  a  matter  of  difficulty  and  guesswork  to  decide  which  of  the 
much  larger  number  that  remain  should  accompany  them,  and  which 
should  be  postponed  till  we  come  to  the  fifteenth  or  the  late  fourteenth 
century,  from  which  probably  the  larger  number  of  the  actual  manu- 
scripts date.  Thus,  as  noted  above,  we  have  a  notice  of  Sir  Isiimbras 
in  the  Cursor  Mtmdi,  or  about  1340  at  latest;  but  our  text  of  it  — 
that  in  the  Thornton  MS.  —  is  a  full  century  later.  On  the  whole, 
the  best  plan  will  probably  be  to  notice  here  all  the  metrical  romances, 
which  may  possibly  be  older  in  their  original  forms,  if  not  in  their 
present  texts,  than  the  death  of  Chaucer,  and  to  keep  for  the  com- 
pany of  Malory  those  which,  like  Sir  Laiiiifal  in  Chester's  version, 
and  the  work  of  Henry  Lonelich,  distinctly  belong  to  the  later  time 
by  authorship  if  not  in  substance. 

It  is  probable,  but  not  certain,  that  all  the  English  romances  — 
even  those  which,  like  Havelok  and  Horn  among  those  already  men- 
tioned, like  Bevis  of  Hamptoji  and  Guy  of  Warwick  among  those  to 
come,  rest  upon  English  traditions  and  deal  with  English  scenes  — 
were  directly  translated  from  French  originals.  Sometimes,  as  in  the 
just  mentioned  case  of  Sir  /siimbras,  we  have  no  knowledge  of  such 
originals,  and  sometimes,  as  in  the  case  of  Sir  Atnadas,  there  is  oppor- 
tunity for  confusion. 1  There  may  have  been  exceptions  to  the  general 
rule  of  translation  from  French  ;  but  there  is  no  reason  to  think  that  the 
rule  was  not  general.  And  it  was  probably  the  exigencies  of  the  transla- 
tion—  the  termination  of  the  original  sense,  leaving  part  of  a  line  still 
to  be  filled  up,  and  the  like  —  which  encouraged,  and  to  some  faint 
degree  excused,  that  practice  of  stuffing  and  padding  with  expletives 
and  stock  phrases  that  brought  the  whole  class  into  really  undeserved 
disrepute. 

Only  brief  observations  can  be  made  on  each  of  these  romances, 
but  except  by  oversight  none  shall  be  passed  over ;  and  in  face  of 
the  difficulty,  not  to  say  impossibility,  of  dating  them  with  any 
certainty,  they  shall  be  mentioned  for  the  most  part  in  the  company 

1  The  Cursor  Mundi  mentions  this  too,  but  with  the  addition  of  the  heroine's 
name,  Idoine.  This  identifies  if  for  us  with  an  existing  French  romance  of  the 
double  title,  quite  different  from  our  English  Sir  Amadas, 


94  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

and  order  in  which  they  appeared  in  the  printed  collections  of  Ritson, 
Weber,  and  others. 

Guy  of  Warwick  and  Bev/s  of  Hampton^  which  were  the  first 
except  Sir  Tristrem  to  enjoy  the  honours  of  separate  publication, 
owed  those  honours  in  all  probability  rather  to  their  traditional  fame, 
to  their  great  size,  and  to  the  fact  that  both  are  found  in  the  precious 
Auchinleck  MS.  —  which  Boswell's  father  gave  to  the  Faculty  of 
Advocates,  and  which  is  not  merely  the  largest  but  one  of  the  oldest 
of  existing  Romance  MSS.  —  than  to  their  intrinsic  merit  either  as 
poetry  or,  except  for  the  mere  adventures,  as  story.  In  these  last 
respects — to  speak  with  all  the  tenderness  due  to  such  famous  names 
—  they  are  rather  poor  things,  inferior  to  the  majority  of  their  com- 
panions, and  owing  almost  all  their  charm  to  the  mere  common  forjn, 
the  ready-bottled  herbs  and  essences,  of  the  average  romance  of 
chivalry.     Neither  has  anything  specially  English  about  it  except  the 

names,  and  the  adventures  of  both  are  carried  on  mostly 
Hampton      ^"^   couutrics    Other   than   England.     Bevis   of  Hampton, 

the  better  of  the  two,  owing  to  the  lively  characters  of 
Josiane  the  heroine  and  Ascapart  the  giant,^  rests  upon  the  well-worn 
theme  of  a  faithless  wife,  a  murdered  husband  and  father,  a  disin- 
herited son,  and  an  intruding  tyrant.  There  is  some  interest  in 
Bevis's  vengeance  on  his  father's  murderer  and  his  own  wrongdoer, 
appropriately  named  Sir  Murdour ;  and  his  horse  Arundel  and  sword 
Morglay  rank  well  among  those  favourite  properties  of  Romance. 
But  the  kindness  (somewhat  "  coming  "  and  forward,  but  legitimately 
imitated  from  the  conduct  of  all  Paynim  princesses  in  the  chansons  de 
geste)  of  Josiane,  her  courage,  her  fidelity,  are  really  the  salvation 
of  the  piece.  Guy  of  Warwick  (another  and  still  longer  tale  of 
adventures  ail  over  the  Romance  world,  with  a  huge  coda  telling 
those  of  Rembrun  or  Raynburn,  the  hero's  son)  lacks  this  attraction. 

Felice,  the  heroine  here,  is  a  cold  and  capricious  mistress 
Warwick,    (the  pattern  doubtless  of  the  Polisardas  and  Miraguardas 

of  Spanish  fiction),  who  is  indeed  useful  to  the  story  by 
constantly  requiring  new  exploits  from  her  suitor.  It  is  true  that  he  for- 
gets all  about  her  by  the  way  once,  and  only  the  sight  of  the  wedding- 
ring  that  he  is  about  to  put  on  another's  finger  reminds  him  at  the 

1  They  were  both  edited  for  the  Abbotsford  Club  by  TurnbuU,  Bevis  in  1838 
and  G«V  (a  mighty  quarto  of  black  letter)  in  1840.  The  eccentric  C.  K.  Sharpe 
furnished  both  with  frontispieces  in  the  Retzsch  style,  one  of  which,  that  to  Bevis, 
is  very  comic.  Guy  has  been  re-edited,  in  both  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  century 
forms,  with  immense  care  by  Dr.  Zupitza  for  the  E.E.T.S.,  and  Bevis  by  Dr.  Kol- 
bing  for  the  same  society. 

2  Ascapart  now  quietly  guards  the  gates  of  Southampton  with  his  victor  and 
benefactor ;  but  he  was  not  a  good  giant  to  the  end,  and  was  killed  after  turning 
traitor. 


CHAP.  IV  EARLY   ROMANCES  — METRICAL  95y? 


fifty-ninth    minute   and   second   of  the    eleventh    hour.      And   she   is' 
justly,  though  by  no   means  interestingly,  punished  when  Guy  after 
marriage  is  seized  by  a  craze  of  chastity,  and  determines  to  desert 
his  wife  and  unborn  child,  spending  the  rest  of  his  days  as  a  palmer 
and  hermit.     There  is  plenty  of  fighting  (for  he  has  not  abjured  that 
pleasure)  in  the  sequel,  including  the  famous  combat  with  Colbrand ; 
and  Guy,  at  last  coming  home,  is  not  recognised  by  Felice  till  at  thc/V 
point  of  death  he  sends  her  ring  to  her,  and    she  receives  his  last  / 
breath  and  dies  after  him.     The  story  appears  to  have  been  almost 
without  exception  the  most  popular  of  all  the  romances  in  England 
from  a  very  early  time,  and  its  immense  length  and  varied  incidents      ^' 
give,   of    course,   abundant   scope   for  successful   treatment.      But   in 
none  of  the  versions  which  have  come  down  to  us  (Ellis  would  make^^  . 
an  exception  for  the  Colbrand  part)  does  it  seem  to  have  fallen  into^'^  ,^ 
the  hands  of  a  poet  of  any  power.     The  crowning  moment  of  the^:- 
meeting  of  Guy  and  Felice,  the  latter  unknowing,  the  former  con- 
scious,   is    blundered    with    a    completeness    which    makes    us    think 
vividly  of  the  admirable  success  of  the  Scottish  poet  Henryson  at  the 
somewhat   similar  meeting  of  Troilus   and   the   lazar   Cressid.     The 
sheer  silliness  which  dogs  the  footsteps  of  Romance  shows  itself  in 
Guy's  forgetful ness,  which  is  as  absurd   as    his   conscious   succumb- 
ing to  new   charms  could   have   been   made   natural.     Almost   every 
chance  throughout  the  long  record   is   consistently  missed,  and   the 
undoubted  popularity  of  the  thing  in  verse  and  prose,  in  MS.  and 
print,  in  recitation  and  reading,  can  have  been  due  to  the  adventures 
alone.  1 

Of    Ritson's    collection,^  the    Chronicle    does    not    here    concern 
us,   Sir  Laimfal  we  postpone,  and  the  interesting   Lady  of  Faguel 
(Fayel)   is   rather   a   ballad   than  a   romance.     Yivain   and   Gawain 
is  a  free  adaptation  of  Chrestien  de  Troyes\s   Chevalier 
ail  Lyon,  one  of  the  earliest  poems  of  the  Arthurian  cycle,      cawaln. 
which,  having  been  also  paraphrased  by    Hartmann  von 
Aue,    has    the    advantage    of    appearing    in    English,    French,    and 
German.     The  English  poet,  though  unknown  (that  prolific  eidolon, 

iThe  point  where  the  poet  fails  least  is  perhaps  the  short  passage  describing 
the  revulsion  of  feeling  which  causes  Guy  to  quit  his  wife,  and  which  comes  from 
the  sudden  thought,  as  he  gazes  on  his  fair  heritage  from  the  towers  of  Warwick, 
of  the  carnage  and  devastation  he  has  wrought  — 

AU  for  the  sake  of  woman's  love, 
And  not  for  the  sake  of  God  above. 

But  even  this  is  not  very  well  done.     Guy,  it  should  be  said,  is  partly  in  couplet, 
partly   in   twelve-line   romance   stanza.      Bevis   has   the   same   partition,  but   the 
stanzas  take  the  shorter  six-line  form. 
'See  note,  p.  82. 


96  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

the  supposed  author  of  Arthour  and  Merlin,  has  been  credited  with 
this  also),  does  not  compare  ill  with  his  famous  fellows.     The  poem, 
which   is   about   4000   lines   long,  in   couplets,  has   spirit 
^^^'co^us^"'  ^"'^  merit  throughout.     Lybeaus  Desconus  (which  strange 
appellation  is  only  Le  Beau  Decontiu  with  its  Old  French 
form  misspelt)   is  also  a  Gawain  poem,  dealing  with  a  son  of  that 
courteous    knight.      It    is    about    half    the    length    of    the    last,    in 
stanzas  of  twelve  six-syllabled  lines.     This  is  not  a  very  good  romance 
medium,  but  the  poem  is  above  the  average.     Its  story  is  a  variant  of 
the  "  Daughter  of  Hippocrates " ;  but  Sir  Lybeaus  is  not  exposed  to 
the  danger  of  refusing  to  kiss  the  worm's  mouth,  for  she  takes  the 
initiative,  and  the  transformation  scene  is  very  gracious.     The  King 
of  Tars    (same   stanza,   but   in   fairly   regular   eights   for 
"^^^Tarf"'^  I  2  4  5  7  8  10  II,  and  sixes  for  lines  369  12)  gives  a 
Christian   and  Paynim  fighting  story  of  average  interest 
in   not   quite    1200   lines.     But   Emare    (trisyllabic,   Emarh),   in   the 
same   stanza,  but  200  lines  shorter,  is  one  of  the  best.     The  verse 
is  good ;    the   description  of  the    cloth    embroidered    in 
the    four    corners    with    the    stories     of    Amadas     and 
Idoyne,    Tristrem    and    Iseult,   Florice    and   Blanchefloiir,    and    the 
Sowdone    of    Babylone    is    one     of    the     best     stock-passages     of 
mediaeval    upholstery,    and    the     character    of    Emare     is     touched 
with  a  distinctness  and  a  tenderness  which  are  none  too  common  in 
these  poems.     It  is  one  of  the  class  of  stories  in  which  fathers  fall  in 
love  with  their  daughters  and  are  resisted.     That  Emare  should  be 
set  afloat  in  a  boat  by  her  father,  blown  to  a  friendly  shore,  married 
to  the  king,  plotted  against  by  her  mother-in-law,  again  floated  forth 
with  her  little  child,  once  more  succoured  by  good  Samaritans,  and 
finally  restored  to  her  proper  place  and  to  the  chastened  affection  of 
her  repentant  father,  is  all  common  form,  if  not  commonplace.     What 
is  not  commonplace  is  the  graceful  fashion  in  which  the  tale  is  told, 
and  the  writer's   abstinence   from   the  long-windedness  which   is   so 
r--   ^  .,       frequent  a  fault.     Sir  Orpheo  is    Orpheus  arid  Eurydice 
With  a  happy  endmg,  for  which  the  Middle  Ages  had  a 
possibly   childisli,    but   certainly   healthy   liking.      It    has    some    500 
lines  in  couplets. 1     Florence  of  Roine  (over  2000  lines  in  the  twelve- 
lined  stanza)    is   the   daughter   of  the  Emperor.     She   is 
"RTme.       "^o^^  unseasonably  courted  by  Sir  Garcy,  Emperor  of  Con- 
stantinople,   who   was   a   hundred   years   old,   and   whose 
disqualifications  are  spiritedly  told  in  this  stanza  — 

1  The  Auchinleck  version  of  this,  which  Laing  printed  (see  first  note  of  next 
chapter),  is  called  Orfeo  and  Heiirodu.  Both  contain  charming  descriptions  of 
Fairyland,  which,  with  the  parting  of  husband  and  wife  and  other  passages,  make 
the  piece  one  of  the  most  delightful  of  the  whole  class. 


CHAP.  IV  EARLY   ROMANCES  — METRICAL  97 

His  flesh  trembled  with  great  eld,  ^-^^ 

His  blood  cold,  his  body  unweld,  y^ 

His  lippes  blue  forthy;  ' 

He  had  more  mister  of  a  good  fire, 
Of  right  brands  burning  shire. 

To  beik  his  bones  by, 
A  soft  bath,  a  warm  bed, 
Than  any  maiden  for  to  wed. 

And  good  encheason  why  — 
For  he  was  bruised  and  all  to-broken. 
Far  travelled  in  harness  and  of  war  wroken, 

He  told  them  readily. 

Florence  and  her  father  naturally  object.  Sir  Garcy,  who  is  not  too 
old  to  fight,  attacks  Rome  and  brings  it  to  great  straits.  Florence, 
to  spare  bloodshed  and  misery,  offers  to  sacrifice  herself,  but  her 
father  will  not  hear  of  it,  and  dies  in  a  sally.  Two  brothers,  Sir 
Miles  and  Sir  Emere,  get  the  better  of  Garcy,  and  Florence  marries 
Emere ;  but  his  brother  plays  the  traitor  during  Emere's  absence, 
carries  off  the  faithful  Florence  after  a  false  report  of  Emere's  death 
has  proved  useless,  hangs  her  to  a  tree  and  beats  her,  like  the  Counts 
of  Carrion  in  the  Cid  story.  Nor  is  this  the  last  of  her  trials,  though, 
of  course,  all  comes  right.  This  piece  is  rather  unequal,  and  the 
Earl  of  Toulouse  (1200  lines  in  the  same  stanza)  is 
rather  slight.  But  the  Squire  of  Low  Degree  (#  happy  '^^roulZL"-^ 
title,  and  one  which  made  its  fortune)  comes,  in  about 
the  same  length  of  couplets,  up  to  its  promise.  The  famous  distich 
with  which  it  opens  — 

It  was  a  squire  of  low  degree 

That  loved  the  king's  daughter  of  Hungary —  ' 

obeys,  unconsciously  no  doubt,  the  maxims  of  authority  as  to  the  ad- 
vantage of  plunging  the  reader  straight  into  the  subject, 
and  he  is  never  let  go.     The  introduction  of  the  valiant  1^^fi,"pj{ 
squire  (who,  for   all    his    '-low   degree,"   was   marshal   of 
the  king's  hall)  is  cunningly  managed,  not  too  soon  after  the  opening 
nor  too  late  for  the  refrain  to  rinsr  in  the  ear  — 


't« 


And  all  was  for  that  ladye  — 
The  king's  daughter  of  Hungary  ! 

The   garden,   with   the   favourite   mediaeval   catalogues   of  trees   and 
flowers,  and  the  references  to  other  romances,  follows,  and  still 

The  king's  daughter  of  Hungari^ ! 

rings  agreeably  now  and  then.      The  squire  tells  his  love,  and  the 


98  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

lady  accepts  it  in  all  honour,  with  stated  conditions,  and  a  warning 
against  the  steward — stewards  are  generally  wicked.  But  cautious 
as  she  is,  she  ends  with  "  kisses  three " —  one  less  than  the  pale 
knight  gave  La  Belle  Dame  Sans  Merci,  but  not  made  more  lucky  by 
their  sacred  number.  The  steward  sees  them,  and  vows  mischief. 
The  king  will  not  believe  his  calumny,  but  the  steward  undertakes  to 
show  the  lovers  together,  and  unluckily  the  squire,  after  taking  leave 
of  the  king  to  seek  adventures,  returns  under  cover  of  night  — 

To  take  leave  of  that  lady  free, 
The  king's  daughter  of  Hungary ! 

The  interview  takes  place,  but  the  enemy  is  upon  them.  The  squire 
cuts  the  steward's  throat,  but  is  overcome  by  numbers  and  im- 
prisoned, his  lady  thinking  him  dead,  because  her  father's  men  have 
cunningly  changed  his  clothes  with  the  dead  steward's  at  her  door. 
Her  father  offers  her  a  curious  catalogue  of  delights^  if  she  will  leave 
off  mourning ;  but  she  will  not,  and  after  seven  years  the  relenting 
king  sends  the  squire  to  make  him  a  name  in  Lombardy  and  gives 
him  his  daughter  at  his  return.  A  fairy  tale  without  fairies,  but  a 
pleasant  one  and  well  told. 

The  chief  constituents  of  the  next  collection  (Weber's,  in  1810), 
Alisaunder,  Coeur  de  Lion,  and  the  Seven  Sages,  have  been  already 
noticed ;  but  it  contains  others  which  must  not  be  passed  over,  and 
one  at  least  which  is  of  great  merit.  The  makeweights  of  the  great 
Alexander  poem  in  the  first  volume  are  Sir  Cleges,  a  short  piece  in 

not  quite  fifty  twelve-lined  stanzas  —  respectable,  but  of  no 
^Le^Frain7.    gt'cat  notc  —  on  the  favourite  mediaeval  motive  of  the  knight 

who  spends  his  all,  not  in  riotous  living,  but  in  generous 
housekeeping,  and  recovers  it.  This  in  the  present  case  is  partly  by 
divine  mercy  (which  gives  him  cherries  at  Christmas),  and  partly  by 
his  own  shrewd  wit  and  stout  heart,  avenging  him  on  the  court 
officials,  who  strive  to  hinder  or  blackmail  his  present  of  these 
cherries  to  the  king.  The  other  is  a  translation  of  the  Lai  le  Fraine 
of  Marie  de  France,  rather  a  fabliau  than  a  romance.  The  second 
volume,  which  contains  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion,  contains  also  two 
romances   of  great   excellence,   Ipomydon   and    Amis   and  Amiloun. 

The  former  is  one  of  the  best  stories,  and  not  the  worst 

Ipomydon.  i  i         r      i  ,      ,  ,  . 

told,  01  the  whole  class.  It  is  m  some  2400  hnes  of 
couplets,  and  bears  a  remarkable  analogy  to  the  at  present  untraced 
"Sir  Beaumain's"  episode  of  Malory.     The  hero  is  the  heir  of  Apulia 

1  This  list  of  all  the  things  the  Middle  Ages  loved  best  —  finery  and  music, 
wines  and  foods,  sports  and  pastimes,  castles  and  yachts,  with  crews  singing 
heyho  and  rumbelow,  "  gentyle  pottes  with  ginger  green,"  and  "  blankets  of 
fustyane  " —  fills  over  100  lines. 


CHAP.  IV  EARLY   ROMANCES— METRICAL  99 

("  Pouille "  or  "  Poile,"  as  it  meets  us  in  French  and  English 
romance),  the  pupil  of  Sir  Tholomew,  one  of  the  good  old  knights  so 
common,  and  the  suitor  of  the  heiress  of  Calabria.  He  deter- 
mines to  rest  only  on  his  own  merits,  visits  her  court  incognito, 
makes  himself  conspicuous  and  attractive  by  the  usual  mediaeval 
virtue  of  lavish  giving  and  skill  in  the  hunting  art,  and  then  retires  to 
let  his  charms  work.  After  a  time  he  goes  to  the  (then)  adjacent 
court  of  Saxony,  obtains  the  post  of  honorary  and  honourable  lover 
to  the  queen,  and  from  this  point  of  vantage  enters  for  the  tourna- 
ment which  is  to  decide  the  spousals  of  the  Calabrian  Princess. 
He  puts  on  daily  fresh  disguises  of  white,  red,  and  black  armour,  with 
all  tnings  to  suit ;  overcomes,  of  course,  but,  in  true  romance  fashion, 
is  not  satisfied  with  so  easy  a  victory.  Difficulties  with  foes  or  un- 
known friends,  Sir  Camys  and  Sir  Campanys,  have  to  follow  before 
all  is  as  it  should  be. 

As  for  Amis  and  Aviilotm,  no  Middle  Age   story  is  the  superior 
of  this  for  pathos  and  beauty ;  but  it  is  only  an  adaptation  of  a  much 
older  French  chanson  de  geste,   and   so   interests   us   less  here   than 
those  romances  which   are   either  English   by  origin,  or 
have    no    known    French    original,   or    are    adapted   with     AntiUon 
some  special   difference.     The   third  volume,  which  con- 
tains the  Seven  Sages,  contains  also    Odovian  Imperator   (a  story   of 
some  liveliness,  but  a  very  bad  poem,  in  317  six-lined  stanzas,  syllabled 
888484  and    rhymed   aaabaU),   Sir    Amadas,   and    The   Hunting  of 
the  Hare.     This  last,  like  the   Tournament  of  Tottenham  and  some 
others,    is   a   burlesque   of  some,    but   no   extraordinary,   merit.     Sir 
Arnadas,  which  has  nothing  to  do  with  Amadas  and  Idoyne,  but  is 
found,  as  we  shall  see,  in  another  version,  has  rather  less  than  800 
lines  in  the  twelve-lined  stanza.     It  is  a  sort  of  variant  of  Sir  Cleges, 
but  the  knight  recovers  his  fortunes   not  by  shrewdness  _..     . 
but   by  his   charity  to  a  dead   corpse  which  he  finds  in 
ghastly   conditions,    it    having    been    kept   from    burial    by    a    brutal 
creditor.     The   general    poetical   merit   of  Sir   Amadas  is  not   great, 
but  the  situation  is  good,  and  there  is  one  couplet  which  only  wanted 
a  little  trimming  to  make  it  a  sublime  one.     The  knight,  having  seen 
the  festering  debtor,  is  at  a  feast  of  much  splendour  — 

[But] 
Sir  Amadas  made  little  cheer, 
For  the  dead  corse  that  lay  on  bier 
Full  mickle  his  thought  was  than  [then]. 

The  first  three  of  the  Utterson  Romances  —  Sir  Triamour,  Sir 
Isenbras,  Sir  Degorl  —  are  taken  from  early  printed  copies  and  are 
in  very  lamentable  state  —  the  twelve-lined  stanzas  of  Sir  Tria/nour, 


loo  THE   MAKING   OF  ENGLISH   LITERATURE         book  ii 

for  instance,  appearing  by  the  grace  of  the  copyist  or  the  printer  in 

irregular  batches  of  threes,  varying  from  six  lines  to  eighteen.     And 

the    curse    of   prose,    which,  with  such    rare    exceptions, 

tr   riamour.  ^^^^^^^^^  jj^  ^\^^   fifteenth   century,    is   heavy   on  it.     But 

the  story,  which  is  one  of  the  class  of  queens  wronged  by  stewards, 
is  touching.^  Still  better  in  this  respect,  though  even  worse  off  in 
others,  is  the  beautiful  legend  of  Sir  Isenbras  or  Isumbras,  who  in 
his  domestic  happiness  and  worldly  pride  forgot  God,  and  was 
punished  by  the  successive  loss  of  possessions,  children,  and  wife, 
to  have  them  restored  after  he  was  purified  by  much  suffering  and 
gallant  daring  in  deed.  Sir  Degori  (supposed  to  be  =  L'^gare,  but 
unfortunately  responsible  for  "  Diggory ")  is  a  short  romance  in 
about  looo  lines  of  couplets  celebrating  the  prowess  of  a  '"love- 
child."  Sir  Gow^hter,  which  Utterson  was  the  first  to  print,  is  a  very 
interesting  and  spirited  variant  of  the  story  of  "Robert  the  Devil," 
in  between  fifty  and  sixty  twelve-lined  stanzas. 

Hartshorne's  book,  containing  much  interesting  matter,  and 
possessed  of  all  the  attractions  of  the  Pickering  Press,  has  always 
been  a  trial  to  students  from  its  confused  arrangement,  its  present- 
ment of  shreds  and  patches,  and  its  careless  editing.  But  it  gave 
from  different  Cambridge  MSS.  King  At  heist  one,  a  spirited  story  of 
the  ordeal  by  fire,  dating  from  the  fourteenth  century, 
King Athel-  jj^    j-j^g    twclvc-lined     stanza;    King    Edward    and    the 

stone,  etc.  '  <=> 

Shepherd,  one  of  the  innumerable  variants  of  the 
favourite  donnee  of  a  king  guesting  incognito  with  his  subjects ;  an 
extract  from  Florice  and  Blancheflour,  nearly  the  most  popular  of  all 
medieval  stories ;  one  from  William  and  the  Werewolf,  which  being 
alliterative  is  reserved  for  the  next  chapter;  and  a  great  number  of 
small  burlesques  or  fabliaux,  the  Tournament  of  Tottenham,  the  Boy 
and  the  Basin,  the  Cokwolds'  Dance,  etc. 

The  Thornton  Romances  -  give  the  English  version,  not  a  very 
valuable  or  extensive  one,  of  the  great  story  of  Sir  Percevale  (143 
twelve-lined  stanzas)  ;  another  version  in  better  condition  of  Sirlsum- 
bras;  Sir  Eglajnour  (also  twelves),  the  nearest  to  Sir  Thopas  of  all 
the  romances  in  faults,  and  chiefly  salvandum  because  it  contains  the 
name   "  Christabel" ;    and  Sir  Degravant,   in  the   same   stanza,   but 

1  Mr.  Halliwell  printed  a  MS.  version  for  the  Percy  Society,  and  there  is  another 
in  the  Percy  Folio.  The  editors  of  this  last  seem  to  think  better  than  I  do  of  the 
execution  of  this  tale  of  King  Aradas  and  Queen  Margaret  and  the  wicked  steward 
Marrock;  but  I  quite  agree  with  their  praise  of  its  spirit  and  substance. 

2  So  called  from  their  transcriber,  a  Yorkshireman,  who  a  little  before  the 
middle  of  the  fifteenth  century  included  them  (with  much  of  the  most  noteworthy 
work  of  or  attributed  to  Hampole,  and  other  things)  in  one  of  the  omnium 
gatherum  MS.  books  so  fortunately  fashionable  in  the  Middle  Ages.  It  belongs 
to  Lincoln  Cathedral. 


CHAP.  IV  EARLY   ROMANCES  —  METRICAL  loi 


an   altogether   rougher,  older,  and   less   mawkish   composition.     The 

companion  Camden  Society  volume  by  Mr.  Robson,  which  is  chiefly 

noteworthy  for  the  alliterative   Aiintyrs  of  Arthur    (see 

next    chap.),   also    contains    a    different    version    of    Sir  ^RomanTJs™ 

Amadas,    and    a    non-alliterated    Arthurian    romance    in 

sixty  stanzas  of  a  rather  peculiar  metre,  sixteen-lined,  each  quatrain 

consisting  of  a  monorhymed  octosyllabic  triplet  and  a  six. 

Lastly,  we  may  mention  a  group  of  Romance  which  in  subject  has 
least  interest  of  all,  while  of  its  most  attractive  members  the  alliter- 
ative story  of  Raiif  Coilyear  belongs  to  the  next  chapter,  and  Lord 
Berners's  Huon  of  Bordeaux  (prose)  to  the  next  Book  but  one.  These 
are  the  English  Charlemagne  Romances,  of  which  some  at  least,  if 
not  most,  in  their  earlier  form  must  date  from  our  present 
period.  These  are  Sir  Feriimbras,  a  long  version  of  the  SRomlnce^^ 
French  Fierabras  in  some  9000  lines  of  the  six-lined 
stanza ;  the  Sowdone  of  Babylone,  another  version  of  the  same  in  an 
early  kind  of  the  ballad  quatrain  of  eights  and  sixes  —  early  and  long 
(3000  and  odd  verses)  for  this  form ;  the  Siege  of  Milan  and  Roland 
and  Otiiel,  each  in  the  twelve-lined  stanza  and  each  about  1600  lines 
long;  a  fragment  of  an  English  Song  of  Roland.  All  these,  with 
Caxton's  prose  Charles  the  Great  and  Four  Sons  of  Aymon,  which 
will  fall  like  Huon  to  be  noticed  hereafter,  have  been  printed  for  the 
Early  English  Text  Society.  None  of  the  romances  just  named  is 
of  the  first  merit  or  interest.  Indeed,  the  Carlovingian  epic,  when 
stripped  of  the  intense  idiosyncrasy  of  the  chanson  form,  hardly 
tolerates  any  other  save  prose. 


CHAPTER  V 

EARLY   ROMANCES  —  ALLITERATIVE 

Gawain  and  the  Green  Knight— The  Awntyrs  0/  Arthur  —  William  of  Palerne 
—  Joseph  of  Arimathea  —  The  Thornton  Morte  d ' Arthur e  —  The  Destruction 
of  Troy  —  The  Pistyl  of  Susan 

The  interesting  phenomenon  of  the  revival  of  alliteration,  the  facts 
and  causes  of  which  in  the  early  fourteenth  century  have  been 'more 
than  once  referred  to,  naturally  had  its  chief  exercising  ground  in  the 
field  of  Romance.  The  most  remarkable  of  all  English  alliterative 
poems  later  than  Anglo-Saxon  times,  the  Vision  co/icertiitig  Piers 
the  Ploivinan,  falls  for  treatment  in  the  next  Book,  and  a  good  many 
others  date  only  from  the  fifteenth  century.  But  not  a  little  interest- 
ing work  belongs  to  the  time  of  this  chapter. 

The  most  intrinsically  interesting  examples  of  Alliterative  Romance  ^ 

1  The  greater  part  of  the  work  mentioned  in  this  chapter  will  be  found  in  the 
following  collections,  some  of  which  include  much  else.  One  or  two  pieces  which 
occur  by  themselves  will,  as  before,  be  noted  later:  — 

(a)  Pinkerton  (J.).  Scottish  Poems,  Edinburgh,  1792,  which  gives  a  version, 
with  altered  title,  of  the  Awntyrs  of  Arthur. 

(i)  Laing  (D.).  Ancient  and  Popular  Poetry  of  Scotland,  Edinburgh,  1822, 
and  tlirice  reprinted  since,  including  the  Pistyll  of  Susan  and  the  Awntyrs. 

{c)  Madden  (Sir  Frederick).  Sir  Gawayne  (Bannatyne  Club,  1839),  giving 
Gawayne  ar  i  the  Green  Knight,  the  Awntyrs,  etc. 

{d)  Robson  (J.).  Three  Metrical  Romances  (Camden  Society,  1842),  con- 
taining a  third  text  of  the  Awntyrs. 

(<?)  Amours  (F.  J.).  Scottish  Alliterative  Poems  (Scottish  Text  Society,  1897), 
containing  the  Pistyl  of  Susan  and  the  Awntyrs. 

Much  of  the  introductory  matter  of  these  books  is  occupied  with  a  discussion 
of  the  authorship  of  these  poems,  into  which  it  is  impossible  here  to  enter  fully, 
but  of  which  so  much  has  been  made  that  a  slight  notice  of  it,  with  the  present 
writer's  own  conclusions,  mny  justly  be  expected.  Wyntoun,  the  verse  chronicler 
{vide  Book  iv.),  dealing  with  a  disputed  point  in  Arthurian  matters,  cites  a  certain 
"  Huchowne,"  describing  him  as  "of  the  Awle  Ryale,"  and  saying  that 

He  made  the  great  geste  of  Arthure, 
And  the  Awntyrs  of  Gawane, 
The  Pistyl  also  of  sweet  Susane. 

This  has  set  the  speculative  commentators  off  at  almost  interminable  score. 
Huchowne  (Hutcheon,  Huchon,  the  usual  French  accusative-diminutive  of  Hugh 

102 


CHAP.  V  EARLY   ROMANCES  — ALLITERATIVE  103 

are  beyond  doubt  Gawain  and  the  Green  Knighf^  and  ]Villia>n  of 
Falerne  or  VVilliani  and  the  Werewolf.  The  former  may,  like 
the  latter,  have  had  a  French  original,  but  none  such  is  . 

'  ,         ,       ^  .  .  Gawain  ana 

known,  and  it  stands  at  the  head  of  an  interestmg  group  i/ie  Green 
of  Gavvain  Romances,  which  it  is  not  fantastic  to  asso-  f<^"'i''i- 
ciate  with  Cumbrian  rather  than  Welsh  or  Armorican  traditions,  but 
which  are  certainly  Celtic  in  character.-  Of  Gaivain  I  have  already 
observed  that  the  identity  of  its  author  with  him  of  the  interesting 
Pearl  group  is  not,  according  to  my  notions  of  literary  evidence, 
proven;  but  it  is  not  impossible.  The  poem  consists  of  rather  more 
than  2500  lines,  in  a  curious  irregular  sort  of  stanza,  consisting  of 
an  uncertain  number  (from  sixteen  to  twenty),  mostly  unrhymed, 
unmetred,  but  somewhat  dactylically  rhythmed  "four-accent"  lines 
regularly  alliterated,  terminating  with  what  Guest  has  made  it  usual 
to  term  a  "  bob  and  wheel,"  that  is  to  say,  a  single  foot  iambic  and 
an  eight-  or  six-syllabled  quatrain  —  the  five  rhymed  ababa.  This 
scheme,  which,  with  variations,  is  not  uncommon,  seems  to  show 
that  some  revivers  of  alliteration  themselves  felt  that  it  could  not  be 
depended  upon  entirely  alone  —  that  it  must  be  backed  by  the  charms 
of  metre  and  rhyme. 

Even  in  this  poem,  the  best  of  its  kind,  the  fatal  dancrer  of  allitera- 
tion  — that  the  selection,  or  at  worst  invention,  of  the  "rhyme-words" 
is  too  often  solely  determined  by  their  sound,  not  their  sense  —  makes 
itself  painfully  felt.  But  the  author's  power  is  very  much  greater 
than  that  of  most  of  his  competitors  in  metre  or  in  alliteration,  and 
the  story  is  one  of  singular  interest  and  force.  It  opens  with  a  few 
touches    suggesting   the   very  old   and  popular  piece  (also  a   Gawain 

or  Hugues)  has  been  erected  into  a  great  poet  of  the  thirteenth  century,  the  earliest 
(or  the  earliest  next  to  Thomas  the  Rhymer)  of  known  Scottish  poets,  and  has 
been  endowed  with  all,  or  more,  or  fewer  of  such  early  alliterative  poems  as  are 
known  to  be  or  may  possibly  be  of  his  time,  the  amplest  appanage  including 
Gawayne  and  the  Green  Knight,  the  three  alliterative  religious  pieces  noticed  at 
the  end  of  chap,  iii.,  the  Pistyl,  the  Awntyrs,  an  alliterative  Morte  d'Arfhure, 
also  contained  in  the  Thornton  MS.,  and  what  not.  In  argument  for  and  against 
this  the  stores  of  dialect,  allusion,  diction,  and  the  like  have  been  literally  ransacked, 
with  the  most  contradictory  results.  Those  interested  in  the  matter  may  be 
referred  to  the  introductions  in  question.  We  may  here  safely  say  three  things  — 
(i)  Nothing  is  known  of  "  Huchowne  "  save  from  Wyntoun,  and  VV^yntoun  does 
not  say  whether  he  was  Frenchman,  Englishman,  or  Scot,  nor  in  wliat  language 
he  wrote;  (2)  It  is  not  impossible  that  he  may  have  written  some  of  the  poems 
in  question,  especially  the  extant  Pistyt  0/ Susan,  which  {vide  infi-a)  is  at  least  as 
old  as  1380  ;   (3)  There  is  no  evidence  that  he  wrote  this  or  any  other. 

1  Re-edited  after  Madden  by  Professor  Skeat  for  the  E.E.T.S. 

2  Gawain,  unlike  Lancelot,  appears  in  the  earliest  handling  of  the  story;  and 
Welsh  authorities  always  strive  to  put  him  above  his  rival.  This  is  most 
curiously  illustrated  in  the  late  Welsh  version  of  the  Graal  story,  Y  Seint  Greal 
(London,  1876). 


I04  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE  book  n 

one)  of  the    Chevaliey  an  Lyon  or  Ywain,  but  soon  all  resemblance 

ceases.     Gawain  (who  in  all  this  group,  as    in   the  earlier  romances 

generally,  is  not   represented   as   the   light  o'  love  which   the  French 

"aful  Uermans  made  him)  unciertaKes,  when  others  quail,  the  "adventure 

of  a   perilous   "  Greeir  Knight "   who   enters   Arthur's   hall  unbidden 

and  challenges  any  one  to  give  him   a   buffet   and  bide  one  in  turn. 

The  king's  nephew  fetches  a  swashing  blow  with  his  battle-axe  and 

beheads  the  knight  clean,  but  the  trunk  picks  the  head  up,  mounts 

the  green  steed  with  it  in  hand,   and   departs,  after  the  lips  of  the 

severed  head  have  given  Gawain  his  venue  at  the  Green  Chapel  on 

NevvJYear's  Da^^twelvemojrth.     When  the  appointment  draws  near 

Gawain  arms  himself  splendidly  and  rides  alone  through  England  to 

North  Wales  in  quest  of  his  doom.     He  is  royally  guested  at  a  castle 

where  the  knight  welcomes  him  warmly,  and  the  lady  even  more  so, 

and  where  he  is  told  that  the  Green  Chapel  is  close  at    hand.     His 

host   proposes   a   bargain  —  that   they  shall   exchange   whatever  they 

gain  in  hunting  or  otherwise — and  Gawain  grants  it.     The  host  hunts 

with   great   success,   but  Gawain  stays   at  home,     He  is  tempted  by 

the  chatelaine,  but  resists  so  far  as  only  to  take  a  kiss.     He  keeps  his 

word  on  receiving  the  host's  game  by  giving  him  a  kiss,  though  he 

will  not  (as  indeed  he  need  not)  tell  him  where  he  got  it.     A  second 

day  witnesses  the  same  events ;  but  on  the  third  the  lady,  who  now 

very  nearly  overcomes   the  knight's  steadfastness,  forces  on  him  her 

girdle,  which  has  the  virtue  of  making  the  wearer  invulnerable.     This 

temptation    is   too    much   for    him  when    he   thinks   of  his   perilous 

adventure,  and  he  takes  it    (with  "kisses  three")   under  promise   of 

secrecy.     Accordingly  when  swapping-time  ^  comes  he  gives  his  host 

the  kisses,  but  says  nothing  about  the  girdle.     The  reader  anticipates 

the  result.     The  host  is  the  Green  Knight,  though  not  even  at  the 

last,    when   in   his   fantastic  garb   he   meets    Gawain   and   deals    the 

deadly  blow,  does  he  reveal  this.     Gawain  flinches  ("shunts")  at  the 

first  stroke,  but  manfully  bides  another,  which  only  gives  him  a  flesh 

wound.     He  draws  his  sword,  prepared  to  fight  it  out  as  the  wager 

is  accomplished,  but  the  knight  leans  calmly  on  his  axe  and   reveals 

the  truth.     He  and  his  wife  agreed  to  tempt  Gawain,  who  came  out 

scatheless  except  in  his  acceptance,    through   caution,  if  not  exactly 

cowardice,  of  the  girdle-lace,  and  his  failure  to  give  it  up  according  to 

compact.     Therefore    he    saved    his   life,    but   lost    his    blood.     The 

knight,  Bernlac  de  Hautdesert   (who   is   one  of  Morgane  la  Faye's), 

forgives  him,  gives  him    the   lace,  and  all  ends  happily.     The   high 

and  yet   not  mawkish  morality  of  the  piece  is  well  matched  by  the 

telling,  and  the  romance  is  certainly  one  of  our  very  best. 

1  This  is  no  slang  —  the  word  "  swap  "  is  in  the  text. 


CHAP.  V  EARLY   ROMANCES  — ALLITERATIVE  105 

The  still  more  curious,  though  as  literature  inferior,  Antiirs  or 
Awntyrs  (adventures)  of  Arthur  at  the  Tame  Watheling  (Tarn 
Wadling  in  Cumberland),  but  for  its  strong  and  regular 
alliteration,  might  have  been  put  in  the  last  chapter.  ^^  ^A^thiV 
For  here  the  unrhymed  tirades  of  the  Green  Knight 
become  regular  nine-lined  stanzas,  rhymed  (rather  imperfectly,  it 
is  true)  abbababc.  There  is  no  "  bob,"  but  the  ''  wheel "  consists 
of  a  triplet  and  singleton  rhymed  dddc.  The  story  opens  in  a  strange 
and  promising  manner  with  the  apparition  to  Gawain  and  the 
Queen  of  a  specially  loathly  spirit,  the  ghost  of  Guinevere's  mother, 
to  give  her  good  advice,  and  this  is  told  with  some  power ;  but  the 
romance  then  declines  into  an  ordinary  fight  between  Gawain  and 
Sir  Galleron  of  Galway.  We  have  three  texts  of  it  in  the  Douce, 
Thornton,  and  Ireland-Blackburne  MSS.  respectively ;  and  all  three 
have  been  printed  in  the  collections  referred  to  in  the  note  at  the 
beginning  of  this  chapter.  The  language  is  in  no  case  "Scots"  — 
indeed,  as  we  shall  see  later,  it  could  not  be ;  but  it  is  in  all  Northern, 
like  that  of  almost  the  whole  of  the  poems  of  this  group,  and  in  at 
least  one  form,  that  of  the  Ireland-Blackburne  version,  it  is  distinctly 
uncomely,  not  to  say  barbarous,  though  this  rather  suits  the  grisliness 
of  the  ghost. 

William     and    the     Werewolf,     or     William    of    Palerne^    less 
original,  so  far  as  we  know,  than  the  Greeti  Knight,  but  pretty  freely 
adapted  from  its  extant  French  model,  is  in  plain  and  unadulterated 
"  four-accent "    verses,    directly    comparable     with     Piers 
Plowman,  of  the  oldest  version  of    which   it  may  be  ten    ^^Paier^f^ 
or  fifteen  years  the  elder.     The  story  of  a  missing  heir 
fostered  by  a  werewolf,  who  is  himself  the  victim  of  machinations, 
is  interesting,  and  the  execution   sometimes   capital.      Indeed,  it  is 
superior  to  the  Green   Knight   itself  in   one   point,  the   rejection  of 
uncouth  or  manufactured  words  for  the  mere  sake  of  alliteration. 

Two    important    Arthurian    poems,   one    certainly  and    the    other 
very  probably  dating  from  this  period,  belong  to  the  plain  unrhymed 
and   unstamped   variety  of  alliterative   verse.     One    of    the.se    is    on 
Joseph     of    Arimathea,^    and     the    other    is    the     long 
alliterative  Morte  d'Arthure  of  the  Thornton  MS.,  which  AHmathla. 
has    had    its    claims    put    in    as    the    "  great    geste "    of 
Huchowne.     The  date  of  this  manuscript  is,  as  has  been  said,  much 
later  than  our  present  period  ;  but  in  view  of  its  other  contents  this  is 
no  argument.     The  Joseph  is  contained  in  the  Vernon  MS.,  and  there- 
fore certainly  ours  here. 

It  is  of  no  great  length  —  about  700  lines  —  and  does  not  seem, 

1  Ed.  Skeat,  E.E.T,S. 


io6  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book  ii 

though  it  is  incomplete,  to  have  been  ever  much  longer ;  it  is  only  a 
paraphrase  of  the  constantly  reworked  legend  of  its  subject,  and  it 
has  no  special  literary  characteristics.  Yet  it  has  interest  for  us,  like 
so  much  else,  because  it  shows  the  set  of  the  tide  —  not  in  this  case 
the  main  set  but  an  important  "overfall "  —  in  the  alliterative  direction, 
and  the  way  in  which  the  great  "  matters  "  of  mediaeval  interest  were 
being  at  the  moment  handled  in  England. 

/     The  alliterative  Morte  tVArthjire'^   is   a   much    bigger  thing,  ex- 
tending to  over  4000  lines,  and  possessed  of  distincter  literary  char- 
acter.    It  belongs  in  point  of  matter  to  what  may  be  generally  called 
The  Thornton  ^^'^  "  ^''"'-  "  rather  than  the  romance  type  of  the  Arthurian 
Morte        story,  and  busies  itself,  like  the  older  versions  of  that  story 
generally,  with  the  king's  wars  against  the  Romans  chiefly, 
ignoring  the  more  romantic,  and  even  the  more  mystical,  parts  of  the 
legend  almost  or  altogether.      But  it  is  a  vigorous  piece,  employing 
its  somewhat  rugged  and  clumsy  implement  of  verse  with  a  sort  of 
sword-  or  rather  axe-play  which  is  refreshing  and  effective,  and  calling 
to  its  aid  a  vocabulary  well  suited  to  the  subject  and  style,  and  sufifi- 
ciently  individual.      Few  will  wish  for  a  complete  literature  of  such 
poems ;    but  we  could  endure  several  more  as  good  as   this  Morte 
\d'  Arthiire. 

Among  its  actual  companions  it  seems  to  have  had  pieces  dealing 
with  both  the  great  classical  subjects  of  mediaeval  romance,  Alexander 
and  Troy ;  but  the  alliterative  poems  on  the  first  subject  which  can 
The  ^^  probably  referred  to  this  period  are  but  fragmentary. 
Destruction  It  is  Otherwise  with  the  great  Destruction  of  Troy^  which 
'^''^'  we  possess  in  plainly  alliterated  verse,  and  which  is  not 
impossibly  older  than  1400.  This  is  a  huge  poem  of  over  14,000 
lines,  translated  with  a  certain  amount  of  freedom  from  the  popular 
compilation  on  the  subject  by  Guido  Colonna,  written  in  a  Northern 
or  North  Midland  dialect,  and  containing  no  sort  of  identification  of 
author  or  time  of  composition,  though  attempts  have  been  made  to 
father  it  on  the  usual  Huchowne.  It  is  less  rugged  than  the  Morte 
d^ Art/litre,  and  a  good  deal  less  picturesque,  though  appearances  are 
unfairly  against  the  poet  when  he  says  in  his  penultimate  line  "  Now 
the  proses  is  put  plainly  to  end,"  for  he  only  means  '•  process."  On 
the  whole,  it  is  by  no  means  unreadable,  long  as  it  is,  and  every  now 
and  then,  in  some  of  the  interminable  fighting,  in  some  storm  passages, 
in  the  account  of  the  death  of  Ulysses  at  the  hands  of  Telegonus, 
and  in  the  Troilus  and  Briseida^  episodes,  the  writer  contrives   to 

1  Ed.  Perry,  E.E.T.S, 

2  E.E.T.S.,  ed.  Panton  and  Donaldson. 

8  The  retention  of  this  form  of  the  name  is  perhaps   an   argument  for  an 
early  date.     For  by  1400  the  authority  of  Chaucer  would  most  probably  have 


CHAP.  V  EARLY   ROMANCES  —  ALLITERATIVE  107 

acquit  himself  very  fairly.  But  it  does  not  compare  well  with 
its  chief  rival  in  the  same  "  matter  "  on  the  metrical  side,  King 
Alisannder . 

And  so  we  come  to  the  Pistyl  of  Susan,  one  of  the  smallest  in 
bulk,  but,  for  reasons  already  given  and  others,  one  of  the  most  remark- 
able.    It   is  a  versification  of  the  pleasant  piece  of  poetical  justice 
which,  as  "not  found  in  the  Hebrew ''  of  the   Book    of 
Daniel,  was  turned  out  from  the  Canon  into  the  Apoc-    1/SuTS/ 
rypha    of    the    English    Bible,    but    is   still    to    be   found 
there,  and  was,  until  recent  tamperings  with  the  Lectionary,  regularly 
read  as  First  Lesson   at   Even-song   in   the   Church    of  England  on 
22nd  November.     The  earliest  version  (there  are  four  others  dating 
from    the  fifteenth    century)    is  found   in   the   great   Vernon   MS.  of 
the  Bodleian  Library,  one  of  the  hugest  of  its  kind,  containing  some 
800  very  large  pages  filled  with  religious   compositions,  and  put  by 
experts  at  not  later  than  1380. 

Susan  contains  exactly  366  verses  (a  number  perhaps  not  fortui- 
tous) arranged  in  one  of  the  varieties  (the  eight-line  with  bob  and 
wheel)  of  the  peculiar  alliterated  and  rhymed  stanzas  already  described. 
The  alliteration  is  heavy — four  alliterated  words  being  often,  and  I 
think  five  sometimes,  crowded  into  a  not  very  long  line.  But  it  is 
very  well  managed,  and  the  poem  is  distinctly  above  the  average  not 
merely  of  its  class,  but  of  mediaeval  verse  generally.  The  author 
follows  the  Vulgate  narrative  closely  as  a  framework,  but  amplifies 
and  embroiders  in  the  usual  fashion,  and  occasionally  breaks  in  with 
a  completely  original  addition.  The  two  chief  of  these  (of  unequal 
value)  are  one  of  the  stock  mediaeval  gardens,  with  apples  and 
pomegranates,  parrots  and  goldfinches  as  serenely  mingled  as  in 
the  Swiss  Family  Robinson,  and  a  most  beautiful  stanza  describing 
the  parting  of  Susanna  and  her  husband  Joachim :  — 

She  fell  down  flat  on  the  floor,  her  fere  when  she  found, 
Carped  [spoke]  to  him  kindly,  as  she  full  well  couthe  (could)  : 
"  Iwis  I  thee  wrathed  never  at  my  witand  (witting), 
Neither  in  word  nor  in  work,  in  eld  nor  in  youth." 
She  cowered  up  on  her  knees  and  kissed  his  hand  — 
"  For  I  am  damned,  I  not  dare  disparage  thy  mouth." 
Was  never  more  sorrowful  segge  (man)  by  sea  nor  by  sand, 
Ne  never  a  sorrier  sight  by  north  ne  by  south. 

Then  there 
They  took  the  fetters  off  her  feet, 
And  ever  he  kissed  that  sweet. 
"  In  other  worlds  shall  we  meet," 
Said  he  no  mair. 

whelmed  "  Briscis  "  and  "  Briseida  "  once  for  all  in    '  Cressid."      Yet  some  think 
that  Chaucer's   Troilus  is  referred  to. 


io8 


THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE 


BOOK  I] 


Huchowne  or  no  Huchowne,  the  man  who  wrote  that  was  a  poet 
in  form  and  in  fact.  Nor  does  his  dealing  "disparage"  the  mouth  of 
Daniel  when  that  youthful  prophet  comes  to  judgment  and  ad- 
dresses the  elders  (indeed  they  richly  deserved  it)  in  language  of 
extreme  directness. 


INTERCHAPTER   II 

The  incorrectness,  or  at  least  the  insufficiency,  of  that  view  of  literature 
and  literary  criticism  which  despises  the  historic  estimate,  and  bids 
us  look  only  to  "  the  best  and  principal  things,"  is  perhaps  nowhere 
illustrated  in  a  more  complete  and  damaging  fashion  than  by  the 
period  of  which  I  have  endeavoured  to  give  some  account  in  the 
foregoing  Book.  With  exceptions,  rare  in  number  and  almost 
infinitesimal  in  proportional  bulk,  it  contains  nothing  that  can,  by  the 
widest  inclusion  and  the  kindliest  judgment  that  retains  critical 
competence,  be  described  as  "  best "  or  •'  principal "  in  relation  to 
literature  at  large.  Whether  even  these  exceptions  —  a  lyric  gr  two  of 
the  calibre  of  yl/isoti,  a  passage  here  and  there  in  Layamon  and  the 

l^lliMiiL'fcsT^he  flashes  of  intensity  in__lhe   author  of  Cleanness,  tlie 

melancholy'music  of  Tlie  Pearl  and  some  of  the  Harnpolian  ppems, 
the  simple  and  palheticparting  of  Susanna  and  Joachim  quoted  just  now 
—  whether  even  theyTeach  the  fringe  of  the  best  things  may  be  questioned 
without  excessive  severity.  Under  a  still  lower  and  more  accommo- 
dating standard  this  Early  Middle  English  literature  demands,  in 
order  to  enjoy  much  of  it  as  literature,  a  kind  of  pre-established 
harmony  of  taste  in  the  reader,  not  a  little  acquaintance  with  other 
letters,  and  a  certain  though  not  a  very  great  amount  of  patience 
and  preparation  in  the  mere  rudiments.  Every  now  and  then, 
especially  in  the  alliterative  poems,  the  strange  combination  of 
elaborate  pains  and  insufficient  accomplishment  or  taste  will  posi- 
tively disgust ;  in  almost  every  case  an  impatient  temper  must  know 
how  to  avoid,  or  a  patient  one  how  to  endure,  vast  overdoses  of  ill- 
baked  bread  to  a  modicum  of  sack,  vast  stretches  of  literary  desert 
to  a  few  not  always  quite  paradisaical  oases.  I 

And  yet   there  is   no   portion  of  English   literature   the   study   of 
which  can  be  wholly  pretermitted  with  greater  danger,  none  the  study 
of  which  is   repaid   by  greater  increase  of  understanding,  and  even   of   ; 
enjoyment,  in  regard  to  the  rest.     It  is  desirable,  no  doubt,  that  the 
student  —  even    that    tlie    reader,     who.    though    he     may    not     call    ; 
himself  a  student,  wishes  to  read  intelligently  —  should  read  Anglo-    , 

109  ' 


no  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book 


Saxon  literature ;  but  it  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  necessary.  In 
certain  points,  and  those  of  the  most  importance,  some  acquaintance 
with  Middle  English  literature  before  Chaucer  may  be  said  to  be  an 
absolute  necessity.  Fortunately  we  now  only  preach  to  the  converted 
when  we  insist  on  the  necessity  of  understanding  Chaucer  in  order 
to  understand  what  follows  him  ;  before  long,  let  us  hope,  it  will  be 
equally  unnecessary  to  dwell  much  on  the  hopelessness  of  understand- 
ing Chaucer  unless  we  have  some  understanding  of  what  he  followed. 

Let  us  see,  then,  what  the  three  hundred  years  which  passed  since 
the  date  of  our  last  summary,  in  the  first  of  these  interchapters,  had  done 
for  English  literature,  what  they  had  put  ready  as  accomplished  facts 
for  acceptance  or  rejection  in  the  way  of  materials  and  in  the  way  of 
tools  for  any  one  who  felt  the  vocation  of  writing  about,  or  a  little  after, 
_the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century. 

In  the  first  place,  thmigir  this  concerns  us  least,  and  is  moreover 
a  now  generally  accepted  fact,  they  had  provided  a  language  which, 
disguised  a  little  by  the  occasional  retention  of  obsolete  forms  of 
letters,  by  unsettled  and  capricious  spelling,  and  by  d^ectic 
variations,  possessing  still  a  considerable  number  of  obsolete  Wrds, 
and  lacking  as  yet  some  of  the  terms  of  art  and  thought  which  the 
translators,  and  especially  the  prose-writers,  of  the  fifteenth  century 
were  to  add,  was  to  all  intents  and  purposes  English  —  not  Old 
English,  not  Middle  English,  but  English,  with  still  a  chip  or  fleck 
of  shell  in  the  shape  of  an  inflection  only  half  discarded  upon  it,  but 
about  to  cast  even  these  off.  The  notion  of  Chaucer  as  having 
flooded  the  language  with  French  words  ip^-cSntradistinction  to  the 
sound  Saxon  vocabulary  of  his  contemporary  Langland  died  hard, 
and  perhaps  simulates  life  even  yet ;  but  its  obstinacy  in  surviving  is 
merely  Partridgean. 
/  If  less  general  adhesion  be  given  to  the  proposition  that  English 
metre  was  also,  in  the  rough  at  least,  fully  created,  that,  I  believe,  is 
chiefly  due  to  the  much  inferior  attention  which  has  been  given  to 
the  subject.  It  is  true  that  the  formative  period  of  prosody  had  not 
yet  ceased,  and  that  the  genius  of  the  four  masters,  Chaucer  himself, 
Spenser,  Shakesj^eare,  and  Milton  (to  whom  it  is  perhaps  but  just  to 
add  Surrey  and  Marlowe),  had  to  be  applied  before  all  the  resources 
of  English  in  this  respect  were  at  the  command  of  whosoever  chose  — 
and  chooses  —  to  use  them.  It  is  true  that  at  the  actual  time  a  revolt, 
and  a  rather  formidable  one,  was  being  made  by  alliterative  rhythm 
against  metre..  This  went  some  way,  and  if  Langland  had  had 
variety,  flexibiHty,  range,  equal  to  his  intensity  —  especially  if  he  had 
had  anything  like  Chaucer's  command  of  phrase  —  it  might  have  gone 
farther.  But  the  truth  is  that  alliteration,  with  its  tyrannous  restriction 
to  the  word  which  must  be,  not  the  word  which   ought  to  be,  chosen, 


n 


INTERCH AFTER   II  iii 


is  the  deadly  foe  of  phrase  itself,  and  consequently  of  style,  and  could 
not  have  triumphed.  On  the  other  hand,  English  metrical  writers 
themselves  had  to  unlearn  something  and  to  learn  much.  They  had 
to  get  rid  of  the  final  e,  a  live  thing  once,  but  now  somewhat  like  a  half- 
dead  but  not  severed  branch  on  a  tree.  They  had  to  get  rid  of  the 
superstition  of  the  central  pause,  and  of  strict  syllabic  number, 
which  they  derived,  though  they  fought  against  both,  from  their 
French  models,  and  in  the  first  case  from  the  grasp  of  the  "dead 
hand"  of  Anglo-Saxon  itself.  But  150  J-ears  at  least  of  steady\ 
practice,  of  constant  pressure  of  metrical  form,  on  the  yielding  but 
by  no  means  merely  passive  body  of  older  rhythm,  had  got  the 
poetical  capacities  of  the  language  into  real  shape,  had  made  not  a 
merely  mechanical  junction,  but  a  true  graft.  The  ortosyllable  and 
iecasyllable,  with  the  trisyllabic  variance  in  each,  were  already 
established,  a  crowd  of  ballad  and  romance  combinations  of  eights 
and  sixes  was  in  existence,  the  rhymed,  loose-pivoted  line  of  the  Moral 
Dde  and  Robert  of  Gloucester,  with  the  unrhymed  double  stave 
0?^^  alliterators,  were  ready  between  them  to  produce  a  family  of 
me^^  of  greater  compass  than  the  decasyllable  —  the  Alexandrine, 
the  iambic  or  trochaic  fourteener,  the  tetrameter  anapaestic.  It  is  true 
that  the  actual  production  of  these  in  any  satisfactory  form  was 
postponed  for  a  century  and  more ;  but  that  is  merely  one  of  the 
constant  accidents  of  literary  history,  and  we  shall  perhaps  be  able  to 
give  some  explanation  of  it  when  we  come  to  sum  up  the  fifteenth 
century  itself. 

Of  advance  in  the  direction  of  kinds  and  subjects  we  have  to 
speak  with  more  reserves  and  allowances.  In  some  cases  there  is 
even  a  falling  back  ;  thus  Early  Middle  English  is  entirely  destitute 
of  the  sound  and  valuable,  if  not  extremely  accomplished,  original 
historic  prose  that  we  find  in  Anglo-Saxon,  tgdeed.^  in  *hp  ^^^i^ 
domain  of  prose  there  is  at  best  a  stationary  state,  at  most  and  more 
commonly  a  distinct  decline!  Nor  is  this  in  the  least  surprising. 
Prose  IS,  lar  more  than  ver.se,  a  matter  of  practice  and  copying;  and 
by  the  tentTi  century  —  the  Tjest  age  of  Anglo-Saxon  prose  —  that 
language  had  had  experience  plentiful  in  bulk  and  extensive  in  time, 
if  a  little  restricted  in  kind.  The  disorganisation  which  necessarily 
attended  the  remaking  of  the  language  made  this  practice  to  at 
least  some  extent  useless  and  obsolete,  while  there  were  no  models 
for  the  new  tongue  except  Latin,  inasmuch  as  none  of  the  modern 
vernaculars  (except  Icelandic)  had  any  prose  worth  speaking  of  to^ 
give  it.  We  shall  indeed  see  that  no  really  good  Englisli  prose 
appeared  till  a  long  apprenticeship  in  translating  Latin  and  French 
had  supplied  this  want.  Meanwhile,  such  prose  as  there  was,  was 
more  than  ever  exclusively  religious. 


112  THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE  book 


This  meant  in  its  turn  that  all  new  kinds  and  subjects,  whether 
suitable  or  not,  had  to  be  treated  in  verse,  and  they  were  so  treated. 
It  has  been  often  enough  pointed  out  that,  to  compensate  for  its 
drawbacks,  verse  had  at  least  one  merit,  that  in  a  non-reading  age  it 
was  better  suited  for  reading  or  reciting  aloud  to  others.  At  any 
rate,  its  predominance  is  an  undisputed  fact,  and  one  on  which  it  is 
not  necessary  to  dwell.  Homilies  and  paraphrases  of  the  Bible, 
narrative  historical  and  narrative  fictitious,  rudimentary  science, 
political  satire,  anything  and  everything  found  a  vehicle  in  verse  of 
kinds  nearly  as  various  as  the  subjects,  but  with  the  skipping 
octosyllable  or  the  swinging,  if  not  yet  very  smoothly  swinging, 
fourtgener  for  preference.  Much  of  this  verse  (and  that  not  merely 
in  the  Romance  section)  is  pleasant  and  profitable  to  read  even  now. 
But  comparatively  little  of  it  can  be  said  to  be  fully  accomplished  as 
literature,  and  almost  the  whole  of  it  is  pervaded  by  a  characteristic 
not  new  (for  it  confronts  us  almost  equally  in  Anglo-Saxon)  ;  not  in 
the  least  surprising,  for  it  was  practically  inevitable ;  but  necessarily 
aflfecting  the  interest  and  merit  of  the  whole  in  an  unfaveurable 
way. 

This  characteristic  comes  from  the  fact  that  the  great  majority  of 
the  literature  of  the  period  is  certainly,  and  that  all  but  an  infinitesimal 
gaiiLiiLit  is  probably,  not  original  literature  at  all  but  jtranslation.  It 
is  true  that  translation  was  not  then  so  entirely  unoriginal  a  thing  as 
it  is  —  as  it  prides  and  boasts  itself  upon  being  —  now.  Unkind 
critics  have  suggested  that  at  least  one  reason  why  the  medizeval 
translator  allowed  himself  such  liberties  was  that  he  had  not  the 
scholarship  to  be  faithful ;  kind  ones  may  prefer  to  see  in  it  at  least  some- 
thing of  native  literary  aspiration,  and  the  desire  not  merely  to  tread 
in  the  exact  footsteps  of  another.  But  what  is  certain  is  that  in 
Eijglishand  at  this  time  really  original  writing — writing  "out  of  a 
man's  ow^n  head"  —  is  so  rare  as  to  be,  in  important  instances,  almost 
unknown.  When  a  man  did  not,  as  the  enormous  majority  of  the 
romance-writers  and  not  a  few  others  certainly  did,  merely  translate  more 
or  less  loosely  a  single  precedent  work,  he  either  compiled  from  several 
or  (as  must  have  been  the  case  with  even  the  more  original  religious 
writers  from  him  of  the  Ancren  Riivle  downwards)  wrote  on  subjects 
which  had  been  so  frequently  handled,  and  which  had  such  a  large 
stock  of  prescribed  and  expected  commonplaces  and  common  forms 
appertaining  to  them,  that  his  work  has  almost  the  character  of  a 
translation,  or  at  least  compilation.  Nothing  is  more  singular,  more 
characteristic,  or  more  puzzling  in  mediaeval  literature  than 
the  immense  mass  of  its  additions  to  the  literary  stock  of  the 
world,  not  merely  in  mere  bulk  of  writing,  but  in  new  themes,  new 
touches,  new  handling  of  all  sorts  — -  contrasted  with  the  almost  impos- 


II  INTERCHAPTER   II  113 


sibility  of  attributing  any  large  original  increments  of  the  kind  to 
single  persons.  It  is  not  made,  it  grows.  The  great  Arthurian 
legend  itself  is  only  the  crowning  example  of  the  kind.  In  a  few 
years  this  passes  from  the  barest  and  most  unpromising  scantlings 
first,  and  then  from  an  ingenious  but  -not  specially  poetical  sham 
history  like  a  hundred  others,  to  the  stateliest  and  most  elaborate 
structure  of  romance  that  exists.  And  how,  from  whom,  exactly 
when,  exactly  where  all  this  comes  nobody  knows,  though  in  the 
desperation  of  craving  for  knowledge  men  have  constantly  thought 
and  asserted  that  they  knew.  Nor  is  this  the  only  point  of  the  kind 
in  which  the  Middle  Ages  resemble  the  enchanted  forests  of  which 
they  were  so  fond.  Nothing  happens  as  it  might  be  expected  to 
happen :  the  land  which  pretty  certainly  furnished  the  materials  of 
the  legend  does  not  furnish  the  language  in  which  it  is  first  told ; 
the  language  decoys  the  investigator  away  from  the  real  fatherland  of 
the  story.  ''  Everything  is  somebody  else's,"  as  the  pathetic-humorous  J 
complaint  of  later  fiction  has  it. 

Yet  to  those  who  can  be  content  to  acquiesce  in  ignorance  of  an 
authorship  which  is,  after  all,  a  matter  of  very  little  consequence,  and 
in  whom  the  artificial  thirst  for  Quellen,  for  origins,  does  not  master 
the  natural  one  for  the  water  or  wine  of  literature,  whether  fresh- 
drawn  from  spring,  fresh-pressed  from  grape,  or  transfused  through  a 
dozen  vesseLs,  provided  only  it  be  clear  and  well-tasted  —  there  is 
little  disappointment  and  much  satisfaction  in  the  literature,  even  the 
English  literature,  of  this  period.  If  the  writers  seldom  absolutely 
created  for  themselves,  they  are  as  a  rule  careful  never  to  leave  any 
capital  that  may  come  into  their  hands  entirely  unimproved,  if  it  be  " 
only  by  fresh  borrowings  and  combinations.  And  it  is  perhaps  not 
less  reasonable  and  more  fair  to  suspect  that  their  additions  were,  in 
many  cases  at  any  rate,  not  borrowings  at  all  but  original  gifts  — 
that  the  creative  fancy,  too  shy  and  distrustful  of  itself  to  go  alto- 
gether alone,  took  its  opportunity  of  exercise  under  cover  and  with 
the  assistance  of  what  existed  already.  At  any  rate,  till  we  know  to 
the  contrary,  there  is  no  harm,  for  instance,  in  giving  Layamon  the 
credit  of  Argante  and  the  elves ;  and  if  it  should  unluckily  turn  out 
after  all  that  he  does  not  deserve  it,  why,  we  can  at  worst  transfer  that 
credit  to  somebody  else,  frhe  thing  is  important  in  literature,  not  the 
man.  If  V 

Arcreover,  for  those  at  least  who  are  fortunate  enough  to  take 
interest  not  merely  in  the  thing,  but  in  the  way  in  which  it 
is  treated,  the  manner  in  which  it  is  done,  this  Middle  English 
period  has  plenty  of  attraction  besides  that  chief  one  of  prosody, 
which  has  been  sufficiently  brought  out.  Not  only  is  the  mere  word- 
hoard  regularly,  if  at  first  slowly,  increasing,  but  the  uses  of  it  are 
I 


114 


THE   MAKING   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE 


BOOK  11 


varying,  multiplying,  acquiring  deftness  and  artistic  value  with  every 
author  and  in  every  book.  Here  we  have  the  rough  draft  of  a  word- 
play or  a  conceit  familiar  in  Elizabethan  writers.  There  we  see  (in  a 
pamphlet  published  by  Wynkyn  de  Worde,  and  translated  from  the 
French,  it  is  true,  but  no  doubt  much  older  in  both  languages)  an  early 
form  of  the  trap  by  which  Goldsmith  for  once  avenged  himself  on 
Johnson,  and  actually  obtained  an  acknowledgment  of  his  victory. 
Here  again  a  familiar  cadence  in  verse,  there  (it  is  true  very  rarely 
as  yet)  a  memorable  rhythm  in  prose,  connects  itself,  for  those  who 
have  the  fortune  to  recognise  the  connection,  with  better  things,  or  at 
least  other  things,  to  come.  We  are  still  in  the  workshop,  and  hardly 
any  master  workman  has  yet  appeared,  but  opus  fervet  and  the 
master  himself  is  at  haad. 


z' 


BOOK    III 

CHAUCER   AND    HIS   CONTEMPORARIES 

CHAPTER    I 
Chaucer's  life  and  poems 

Life — Probably  spurious  Tales  —  Other  questioned  work  —  The  arguments  for  and 
against  it  —  Admittedly  genuine  work  —  Tlie  three  periods  —  The  Roinaunt  of 
the  Rose  —  The  Minor  Poems —  Troilus  and  Cressid  —  The  House  of  Fame  — 
The  Legend  of  Good  li'omen  —  The  Canterbury  Tales 

It  was  somewhat  past  tlie  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century  when  the 
long  process  of  incubation  and  experiment  which  we  have  followed 
from  the  cessation  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  C/ironicle  to  Hampole,  Minot, 
and  the  revival  of  alliterative  verse,  culminated  in  a  generation  of 
positively  accomplished,  and  in  some  cases  positively  known, 
poets  and  prose-writers.  Chaucer  is  not  the  earliest  of  these ; 
he  is  not,  as  is  sometimes  still  openly  said,  and  perhaps  much 
more  frequently  thought,  the  only  one  worthy  of  attention.  But 
he  is  by  so  much  the  greatest  figure,  that  he  deserves  to  give,  as 
he  has  always  given,  name  to  the  period,  and  to  have  precedence  of 
those  who,  like  Gower  possibly,  Langland,  if  Langland  it  was,  and 
Wyclif  pretty  certainly,  had  the  start  of  him  in  literary  performance. 
The  life  of  Chaucer  has  fo*"  the  greater  part  of  a  century  had  its 
full  share  of  that  touching,  if  not  always  intelligent,  devotion  which 
justifies  the  theory  that  tlie  human  race  is  not  after  all  indifterent  to 
its  heroes.  We  know  indeed  very  little  about  him  that 
has  even  the  slightest  connection  witii  literature;  and 
we  are  bidden  to  give  up  the  idea  that  he  once  beat  a  Franciscan 
friar  in  F"leet  Street  —  which  is  picturesque  and  not  impossible. 
We  know  that  Cecilia  de  Chaumpaigne  pardoned  him  or  released 
him   de   raptu   nteo ;   but  we  have    no    portrait    of  Cecilia,  we  know 

>i5 


Ii6  CHAUCER  AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  iii 

nothing  about  her,  and  there  is  no  more  interesting  probability  about 
the  matter  itself  than  that  raptus  metis  was  one  of  those  abductions 
of  heiresses  for  purely  mercenary  reasons  which  were  extremely 
common  in  mediaeval  times  and  later,  perhaps  as  late  as  the  days  and 
experiences  of  Henry  Fielding.  We  know  the  pots  of  wine  assigned 
as  Chaucer's  allowances,  the  details  of  his  court  suits  as  a  page,  and 
a  great  many  other  even  less  interesting  details ;  but  for  the  real 
Chaucer,  the  man,  the  poet,  we  are  left  to  the  poems  and  our  own 
imagination,  being  perhaps  not  the  more  unhappy  therefor. 

There  is  no  positive  evidence  of  the  date  of  Chaucer's  birth ;  ^  for 
that  of  his  death,  1400,  we  have  not  only  tradition  but  the  strong 
circumstantial  proof  that  his  pensions  ceased  to  be  paid  at  that  time. 
The  birth  date  used  to  be  fixed  at  1328,  and  is  now  shifted  to  1340, 
for  reasons  which  must  be  sought  in  the  biographies.  The  older 
date  suits  better  with  the  acknowledged  fact  that  Chaucer  was  an  old 
man  when  he  died ;  the  new  with  most  known  circumstances  of  his 
life.  He  was  pretty  certainly  the  son  of  John  and  Agnes  Chaucer, 
the  former  a  citizen  and  vintner  of  London,  who  had  a  house  in 
Thames  Street.  The  separation  between  Court  and  City  was  not  in 
mediaeval  days  by  any  means  sharp  or  total,  and  John  Chaucer  was 
not  only  a  citizen  and  vintner,  but  held  a  post  in  the  Royal  House- 
hold which  necessitated  his  accompanying  King  Edward  and  Queen 
Philippa  to  the  Continent  in  1338.  Nor  is  there  any  doubt  that 
Geoffrey  Chaucer  himself  was  in  close  and  constant  connection  with 
the  Royal  Family. 

The  first  link  of  this  connection  has  been  presumably  found  in 
some  accounts  for  the  household  of  Lionel,  Edward's  son,  which  record 
the  provision  of  cloth,  etc.,  and  money  allowances  to  a  Geoffrey 
Chaucer  in  1357.  Two  years  later  he  served  in  the  army  which 
invaded  France,  was  taken  prisoner,  and  ransomed  in  March  1360. 
In  1367  he  had  a  pension  of  20  marks  as  valet  of  the  King's 
chamber.  In  1370,  1372,  1377,  and  1378  he  was  employed  on 
diplomatic  missions  abroad,  the  second  and  fourth  extending  as  far 
as  Italy,  with  practically  certain  results  on  his  literary  work.  We 
cannot  find  space  here  for  the  successive  grants,  from  pitchers  of 
wine  to  pensions,  which  he  received  for  those  and  other  services,  with 
their  cessations,  restorations,  diminutions,  and  augmentations,  all 
which  the  biographers  record  to  the  uttermost  farthing.  The  most 
important  and  interesting  of  these  details  are  that  in  1374  he  received 
from  the  Corporation  of  London  a  lease  for  life  of  the  gate-house  at 
Aldgate,  which    he   actually  held  for  many  years ;    and  that  a  little 

1  Editions  are  extremely  numerous ;  the  standard  library  form  is  that  of  Pro- 
fessor Skeat's  work  (Clarendon  Press),  in  six  volumes,  with  a  seventh  containing 
what  modern  philological  scholarship  regards  as  the  Chaucerian  Apocrypha. 


CHAP.  I  CHAUCER'S   LIFE  AND   POEMS  117 

later  he  was  appointed  Comptroller  of  Customs  in  the  port  of  London. 
His  prosperity  ebbed  and  flowed  with  that  of  the  sections  of  the  royal 
house  to  which  he  was  more  particulaily  attached,  and  was  at  its 
worst  during  the  predominance  of  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  under 
Richard  II.  But  though  Chaucer  was  faithful  to  the  latter,  the 
accession  of  Henry  of  Bolingbroke  did  him  no  harm,  as  he  had  been 
attached  of  old  to  John  of  Gaunt.  It  seems  that  he  probably  died  at 
Westminster,  where  he  had  taken  a  house  not  long  before.  He  was 
certainly  married;  his  wife  pretty  certainly  died  in  1387;  and  he  had 
a  son  named  Lewis,  to  whom  in  1391  he  very  agreeably  dedicated  his 
Treatise  on  the  Astrolabe.  But  his  wife,  whose  name  was  apparently 
Philippa,  is  rather  a  shadowy  personage,  her  identification  as  sister 
to  Katherine  Roet  or  Swinford,  last  wife  of  John  of  Gaunt,  being 
rather  probable  than  proved.  Nor  is  there  much  positive  evidence 
of  Chaucer's  formerly  alleged  connection  with  Woodstock  or  of  his 
fatherhood  of  the  Thomas  Chaucer  who  became  a  person  of  wealth 
and  importance  later. ^  Nor  is  it  superfluous  to  add  a  word  of 
caution  on  the  attempts  made  to  take  the  personal  descriptions  in 
the  Prologue  to  Sir  Thopas  as  authentic.  Nothing  apparently  will 
cure  commentators  of  this  rashness,  not  even  the  diminutive  figure 
which  Thackeray  has  subjoined  to  his  own  pretty  faithful  delinea- 
tion of  the  face  of  Michael  Angelo  Titmarsh.  What  manner  of 
man  Chaucer  was  mentally  we  can  see,  with  infallible  certainty 
from  his  work;  what  he  was  physically  is  quite  unimportant  and 
utterly  uncertain,  though  there  is  a  fair  chance  that  the  so-called 
Occleve  portrait,  occurring  in  a  MS.  of  that  writer's  work,  may  be 
genuine. 

On  the  work  itself  (and  in  this  case  much  more  reasonably) 
infinite  pains  have  also  been  spent ;  but  here  also  we  meet  with 
difficulties.  There  was,  of  course,  in  Chaucer's  time  no  regular 
"  publication  "  of  literature ;  and  not  only  in  that  time,  but  for  long 
afterwards,  precise  dating  of  work  was  an  exception  and  an  accident, 
while  precise  attribution  of  it  was  rarer  still.  In  the  fifteenth  and 
sixteenth  centuries,  both  in  MSS.  and  early  printed  copies,  a  very 
heterogeneous  mass  of  material  came  to  pass  under  Chaucer's  name 
which  it  has  been  the  business  of  the  last  century  to  sift.  This  mass 
may  be  conveniently  found  in  Chalmers's  Poets.,  and  it  may-  stopping 
short  for  the  moment  of  all  controversial  matter  whatever,  be  divided 
into  four  classes  :  — 

1  At  the  same  time,  it  is  not  to  be  too  lightly  rejected,  for  the  authority  is 
Thomas  Gascoigne  (the  author  of  the  Liber  Veritatum,  partly  edited  by  the  late 
Mr.  Thorold  Rogers),  who  was  born  but  a  year  or  two  at  most  after  Chaucer's 
death,  was  later  Chancellor  of  Oxford,  in  which  University  he  resided  almost  all 
his  life,  and  was  a  man  interested  in  letters,  inquisitive,  and  usually  well-informed. 


Ii8  CHAUCER   AND    HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  iii 


I.  What  is  certainly,  or  so  probably  as  to  amount  to  certainty, 
Chaucer's. 

II.  What  is  certainly  not  Chaucer's. 

III.  What,  on  grounds  which  can  be  admitted  by  strictly 
literary  and  comparative  criticism,  is  probably  not  Chaucer's. 

IV.  What,  on  grounds  doubtful  to  such  criticism,  has  been 
rejected  by  some. 

With  the  matter  contained  in  the  second  class,  such  as  Lydgate's 
Tale  of  Thebes  and  Henryson's  Testametit  of  Cressid,  we  need  not 
trouble  ourselves.  It  never  had  any  business  where  it  was,  and  such 
of  it  as  deserves  notice  will  have  that  notice  elsewhere.  The  third 
Probably  division,  though  containing  some  interesting  work  also, 
spurious  may  be  briefly  dismissed.  The  Tale  of  Gamelyn,  a 
^""  capital  ballad-romance  in  rough  but  spirited  eights  and 
sixes,  containing  a  version  of  the  story  on  which  Shakespeare  founded 
As  Voti  Like  It,  is  the  best  of  the  division  and  an  excellent  thing. 
But  neither  metre,  language,  dialect,  style,  nor  anything  else  about  it 
is  in  the  very  slightest  degree  Chaucerian.  It  belongs  distinctly  to 
the  class  of  poetry  which,  whether  he  contemned  it  or  not,  he 
certainly  eschewed  ;  and  it  could  only  be  his  as  a  literary  toiir  de  force 
entirely  out  of  character  with  the  age.  So  too  the  less  excellent 
Plowman's  Tale,  in  eight-lined  stanzas  of  eights  rhymed  ababbcbc, 
though  less  good  than  the  Gamelyn,  is  equally  or  even  more 
un-Chaucerian.  It  is  a  half-mystical  satire,  evidently  written  by  some 
one  who  had  both  Chaucer  and  Langland  before  him,  and  who  chose 
to  throw  the  matter  (as  far  as  he  could  catch  it)  of  the  one  into  the 
form  (as  far  as  he  could  conceive  it)  of  the  other.  Here  again 
Chaucer  could  only  have  written  the  thing  as  a  tour  de  force, 
as  a  kind  of  parody,  in  the  spirit  of  the  nineteenth,  or  at  farthest 
back  of  the  eighteenth,  century,  not  of  his  own  time.  There  is  no 
such  strong  and  absolute  improbability  about  the  Pardoner  and  the 
Tapster  or  the  Tale  of  Beryn,  but  their  external  attribution  to  Chaucer 
is  late,  and  the  internal  evidence  is  far  from  strong. 

The    case   is   very   different   with    another  class    of  work,   which, 

unlike  this  last,  passed  the  vigilant  and  eminently  literary  scrutiny  of 

Tyrvvhitt,    but   has   during   the  past  thirty   years  been   black-marked 

owing    to    the    operation   of  a   class  of  argument  which 

questioned     was,    I    believe,   started    by    the    late    Mr.    Henry    Brad- 

*°''''-  shaw,  and  which  has  been  perfected  by  Dr.  Skeat.  The 
power  of  literary,  or  at  least  bibliographical,  divination  which  Mr. 
Bradshaw  possessed  does  not  seem  to  have  been  exaggerated,  any 
more  than  the  "  magnetic "  force  of  his  personal  character.  And 
it  is  impossible  for  any  one  who  has  the  slightest  knowledge  of 
the   immense   erudition   and   the  unwearied   kindness   of  the  present 


CHAP.  1  CHAUCER'S   LIFE  AND   POEMS  Ii9 


Professor  of  Anglo-Saxon  at  Cambridge  to  speak  of  him  witli  dis- 
respect. Furtlier,  there  is  the  difficulty  that  the  class  of  argument  in 
question,  itself  resting  on  extremely  minute  points  of  linguistics,  pho- 
netics, and  other  '■  sciences  of  the  border,"  as  we  may  perhaps  call 
them,  seems  to  demand  an  equal  specialism  from  those  who  would 
attempt  to  meet  it.  Yet  the  criticism  which  would  exclude  from  the 
Chaucerian  canon  such  things  not  merely  as  the  Court  of  Love  and 
The  Flower  and  the  Leaf  but  in  whole  or  in  part  the  existing  English 
version  of  the  Romance  of  the  Rose,  which  we  know  that  Chaucer  did 
translate,  cannot  be  allowed  to  pass  quite  unchallenged  by  those 
whom  it  does  not  satisfy.^ 

This  criticism  rests,  as  I  understand  it,  upon  two  points  — alleged 
differences  of  language,  which,  in  the  Court  of  Love  especially,  is  said 
to  be  much  later  than  Chaucer's  time ;  and  still  more,  alleged  dilTer- 
ences  of  rhyme.  Few  can  lay  much  real  stress  on  such  arguments 
as  that  The  Flower  and  the  Leaf  must  have  been  written  by  a 
woman  because  the  supposed  narrator  is  addressed  as  "daughter" 
—  an  argument  which  would  prove,  among  ten  thousand  other 
agreeable  absurdities,  that  Fathna  was  not  written  by  the  author 
of  Locksley  Hall,  and  that  Sir  David  Lyndsay  was  a  four-legged 
creature. 

It  is  said  more  seriously  that  Chaucer  in  his  certain  works  never 
rhymes  such  a  word  ?i?,  grene,  in  which  the  final  e  still  existed,  to  such 
a  word  as  been,  where  it  was  not ;  that  he  never  rhymes  y  and  ye,  and 
.so  forth.  And  upon  pleas  of  the  kind  an  injunction  against  ticket- 
ing the  incriminated  poems  as  even  possibly  Chaucer's  has  been 
sought,  and  commonly  taken  as  granted. 

This  question,  of  course,  cannot  here  be  argued  at  length,  but  it 
is  far  too  important  to  be   passed   over  altogether.     And  as  similar 
arguments,   mutatis   mutandis,   are   applied   to    much    in- 
teresting   work   of  others  before  the    Restoration,  I   may     arguments 
be  allowed  briefly  to  state  three  demurrers,  in  ascending      agJi^"t''it_ 
order    of    what    seems    to    me    cogency,    which    justify, 
again   as   it   seems   to  me,  suspension  of  judgment  in  all  the  cases 
where  these  arguments  are  brought. 

A.  The  first  and  weakest  (being  merely  ad  homines, hut  still  stronger 
than  others)  is  that  the  black-markers  should  agree  a  little  better 
among  themselves.  The  English  Rose,  for  instance,  has  been  split 
up,  and  the  very   parts  which  are  granted    to  Chaucer  by  one  critic 

1  It  docs  not  seem  necessary  to  dwell  on  all  the  Apocrypha,  many  of  the 
pieces  having  very  small  interest.  T/i/-  Cuckoo  and  the  A'ij^/itii/i^a/e  has  a  little, 
chiefly  from  its  possible  connection  with  T/ie  Owl  and  the  A'ighlin^ale,  and  its 
possible  influence  on  Milton's  first  sonnet  later.  It  is  now  attributed  by  the 
Separatists  to  one  Sir  Thomas  Clanvowe. 


120  CHAUCER   AND    HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  hi 

on  these  principles  are  denied  to  him  by  another.  A  calcukis  which 
brings  out  contradictory  results  is  not  quite  a  calculus  to  accept  with- 
out reservation. 

B.  The  second  and  much  stronger  is  that  the  malcontents 
practically  beg  the  question.  They  exclude  certain  work  from  con- 
sideration to  get  at  Chaucer's  rhymes ;  they  draw  an  inference  from 
the  remainder ;  and  then  they  argue  back  to  the  excluded  parts  and 
declare  them  not  genuine,  when  they  have  not  themselves  been 
allowed  to  give  evidence.  We  might  as  well  exclude  the  "classical" 
experiments  in  the  ajDpendix  to  Enoch  Arden,  because  there  is  no 
trace  of  such  scansion  in  the  •  mass  of  Tennyson's  voluminous 
work. 

But  the  third  argument,  and  by  far  the  strongest  of  all,  is 
this  :  — 

C.  If  a  poem  be  in  metre,  rhyme,  or  language  distinctly  older 
than  its  alleged  author's  time,  then  it  may  fairly  be  pronounced  not 
his,  unless  the  habits  of  the  age  permit  the  supposition  of  deliberate 
archaism.  But  if  it  be  younger,  no  argument  can  be  founded  upon 
that  fact  alone,  because  copyists  may  always  have  been  responsible 
for  the  modernisation.  And  as  a  matter  of  fact  we  have  but  one 
MS.  for  the  Court  of  Love  and  none  for  The  Flower  and  the  Leaf — 
facts  of  which  the  importance  cannot  be  exaggerated. 

These  arguments  do  not  appear  to  me  to  have  received  sufficient 
answer,  and  they  are  therefore  put  on  record  here,  with  the 
caution  that  I  do  not  by  any  means  assert  that  Chaucer  wrote  the 
English  Rose,  or  The  Flower  afid  the  Leaf  or  the  Cotirt  of  Love. 
There  is  not  evidence  enough  for  that.^  Moreover,  Chaucer  can  do 
more  than  well  without  the  poems,  and  the  poems  are  quite  pretty 
enough  to  stand  by  themselves. '-^  If  The  Flower  and  the  Leaf  is 
middle  fifteenth  century,  the  Court  of  Love  early  sixteenth,  as  the 
prevailing  opinion  holds,  supported  by  at  least  a  general  consensus 
of  the  chief  authorities  in  the  philological  treatment  of  English,  then 
there  are  two  unknown  English  poets  of  those  two  dates  who  have 
each  left  nothing  else,  and  who  were  not  every-day  poets. 

The  works  which,  by  the  severest  modern  criticism,  are  left  as 
indisputably  Chaucer's  are  as  follows:  — 

1  There  is  even  evidence,  of  a  much  stronger  kind  than  that  on  which  the 
Separatists  rely,  against  it.  For  instance,  it  may  fairly  be  questioned  whether 
Chaucer  would  have  compared  grass  to  "green  wool,"  as  the  author  of  The 
Flower  and  the  Leaf  is  made  to  do.  He  was  the  less  Chaucer  for  the  time  if  he 
did. 

2  The  Flower  and  the  Leaf  is  put  by  the  Separatists  about  1440,  in  the  dead 
waste  and  middle  of  the  night  of  English  poetry ;  the  Court  of  Love  at  about  1500, 
when  that  night  saw  only  the  broken  dreams  of  Hawes  and  the  cockcrow  of 
Skelton. 


CHAP.  I  CHAUCER'S   LIFE   AND    POEMS  121 

A  translation  (whether  it  be  in  whole,  in  part,  or  in  no  part,  that 
still  existing)  of  the  Roman  de  la  Rose. 

A  considerable  body  of  Minor  Poems,  original  and  translated  — 
The  Book  of  tlie  Duchess,  The   Complaints  of  Mars  and 
Venus,  The  Farliament  of  Fowls,  An{7i)elida  and  Arcite,      g^'uine^ 
with  about  a  score  of  short  pieces,  ballads,  and  what  not.        ^°^^- 

The  House  of  Fame. 

The  Legend  of  Good  Women. 

Troilus  and  Cressid. 

The  Cattterbury  Tales. 

Besides  the  prose  translation  of  Boethius  and  the  Treatise  on  the 
Astrolabe,  which  will  be  dealt  with  in  the  next  cnapter  bui  on*. 

Further,  an  ingenious,  and  by  no  means  improbable,  though  not 
absolutely  certain,  theory  has  divided  all  this  work  into  three  Periods 
—  in  the  first  of  which,  represented  by  the  Romaunt  of  the  Rose  and 
most  of  the  minor  poems,  French  influence  predominates ;  in  the 
second  of  which  this  is  exchanged  for  Italian,  as  shown  in  Troilus 
(adapted  from  Boccaccio),  the  House  of  Fame  (at  least  possibly 
suggested  by  Dante),  and  the  first  draft  of  the  Knighfs 
Tale  (again  from  Boccaccio)  ;  while  in  the  third,  of  which  ^triods^*^ 
the  Canterbury  Tales  are  the  great  outcome,  the  poet, 
except  for  themes  and  motives  merely,  discards  all  foreign  influence 
and  becomes  substantially  English,  though  retaining  his  literary 
scholarship,  both  in  the  modern  literary  tongues,  French  and  Italian, 
and  the  ancient,  his  proficiency  in  the  latter  as  far  as  Latin  is  con- 
cerned being  very  considerable,  and  extending  not  merely  to  the  com- 
pilations of  the  Dark  and  Middle  Ages,  but  to  a  very  fair  share  of 
the  Classics  proper.  This  arrangement  corresponds  very  well  with 
the  known  procession  of  the  facts  of  Chaucer's  life  and  with  the 
probabilities  of  the  case,  but  it  is,  to  use  the  word  which  Mr.  Matthew 
Arnold  godfathered  in  English,  "  facultative,"  it  can  be  taken  or  left ; 
the  examination  of  the  work  itself  is  necessary. 

The  translation  of  the  Roman  de  la  Rose,  though  it  is  incomplete 
and  stops  far  short  of  the  enormous  length  of  the  French  original, 
yet  extends  to  the  very  respectable  number  of  7700  lines,  in  octo- 
syllabic couplets.  One  great  literary  reason  for  accepting  it  as 
Chaucer's  lies  in  the  nature  and  conduct  of  these  octosyllajjles.  We 
have  seen  that,  as  was  unavoidai)le,  they  were  early  imitated  from 
French,  and  were  for  some  time  the  favourite  romance-metre,  tliough 
they  gradually  gave  place  to  more  complicated  arrangements,  especi- 
ally the  six-  or  twelve-lined  stanza,  with  sixes  at  regular  intervals 
between  the  eights.  Before  Chaucer,  however,  the  octosyllabic 
couplet,  in  its  stricter  form,  had  not  been  well  mastered  by  English 
writers,  who  either  availed  themselves  more   or  le.ss  of  the  license  of 


122  CHAUCER   AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  hi 

equivalence  (which  at  its  full  stretch  gives  us  the  Christabel  rhythm) 
or  else  fell,  as  indeed  most  French  mediaeval  writers  themselves  fell, 
into  a  staccato  stiffness  on  the  one  hand  or  an  over-fluent  and  in- 
significant sing-song  on  the  other.  We  shall  find  that  Chaucer's 
exceedingly  ingenious  and  scholarly  contemporary  Gower  did  not 
avoid  this  latter  danger.  But  in  the  English  RoDiaunt  of  the  Rose  a 
distinct  command  of  the  measure  is  observable,  not 
"^i/Mriw' ^"'^^^'^  1"'*^  *°  ^^^  same  extent  as  in  the  probably  later 
House  of  Fame  (one  of  the  capital  examples  of  the 
metre  in  English),  but  sufficiently  like  that  and  sufficiently  unlike 
others  to  justify  the  attribution  of  the  two  to  the  same  hand.  Fortu- 
nately the  English  includes  the  whole  of  the  first  part  of  the  original 
—  that  written  by  William  of  Lorris  —  and  it  renders  very  well  the 
exquisite  touch  of  that  original,  uniting  as  it  does  the  languid  charm 
of  moonlight  and  dream  with  the  fresh  vividness  of  morning  and 
movement.  Nor  need  we  very  bitterly  regret  the  loss  of  a  version  of 
the  far  more  prosaic  pedantries  and  pleasantries  of  Jean  de  Meung. 

Of  the  Minor  Poems,  all  display  in  various  ways  the  learning,  and 
in  different  stages  and  degrees  the  accomplishment  of  language  and 
metre,  which  make  Chaucer  so  delightful,  while  some  have  interest 
certain  or  probable  of  a  biographical  or  historical  kind. 
Poems'"^  The  Book  of  the  Duchess,  for  example,  which  is  cer- 
tainly on  the  death  of  Duchess  Blanche  of  Lancaster, 
first  wife  of  John  of  Gaunt,  gives  us  a  date  —  she  died  in  1369  —  and 
has  been  —  on  the  1340  theory  of  the  poet's  birth  —  plausibly 
enough  conjectured  to  be  one  of  his  earliest  works,  the  Complaint 
of  Fit y  (which  appears  to  enshrine  some  unlucky  love  affair)  being 
perhaps  earHer  still.  The  Book  is  in  octosyllables  much  less  perfect 
than  those  of  the  Roviaunt,  and  evidently  the  work  of  a  novice, 
while  its  substance  is  rather  clumsily  made  up  of  classicism  and 
allegory  in  the  less  happy  manner  of  the  Rose  itself.  Chaucer'' s 
A  B  C  (a  sort  of  acrostic  in  which  each  stanza  opens  with  a  letter  of 
the  alphabet  in  order)  is  said  to  have  been  written  for  the  same 
Blanche.  These  stanzas  are  eight-lined  {ababbcbc),  religious  in  tone, 
and  of  no  great  poetical  merit.  Much  better  in  the  eyes  of  literature, 
if  not  in  those  of  morality,  are  the  Complaints  of  Mars  and  Venus. 
In  the  first,  and  probably  in  both,  the  well-known  story  is  applied  to 
personages  who  are  pretty  certainly  identified  with  John  Holland, 
Earl  of  Huntingdon  and  Duke  of  Exeter,  and  Isabel  of  Castile, 
daughter  of  Peter  the  Cruel,  and  wife  of  Edmund  Duke  of  York,  son 
of  Edward  III.  Isabel  was  more  famous  for  beauty  than  for  strict 
propriety  of  conduct.  But  there  is  no  open  attribution  in  the  poem, 
and  the  "Venus"  part  at  any  rate  was  translated  or  adapted  from  a 
French  original  by  Otes  de  Granson.     The  Complaint  of  Fity,  Queen 


CHAP.  I  CHAUCER'S   LIFE   AND   POEMS  123 

Annelida,  and  the  Parliament  'of  Fowls  are  all  mainly  in  the 
seven-lined  stanza  ababbcc,  which  was  Chaucer's  favourite  among 
these  combinations,  and  which  acquired  the  name  of  rhyme-royal 
perhaps  from  that  circumstance,  though  the  usual  explanation  is  that 
it  was  because  of  the  use  of  the  stanza  in  the  King's  Quair. 

Of  these  three  poems,  the  Complaint,  though  the  least  accomplished 
in  form,  is  genuine  in  tone ;  and  Queen  Annelida,  though  ostensibly 
fiction,  rings  as  of  a  personal  sorrow.  But  the  Parliament  or 
Assembly  of  Fowls  is  by  far  the  best  of  the  three,  and  indeed  of  all 
the  minor  poems.     Here  in  the  very  opening  — 

The  life  so  short,  the  craft  so  long  to  learn, 

The  essay  so  hard,  so  sharp  the  conquering, 

The  dreadful  joys  always  that  flit  so  yerne  [eagerly], 

All  this  mean  I  by  love  — 

we  feel  at  once  the  grip,  the  thrill,  the  sense  of  mastery  and  mystery 
which  are  so  rare  in  earlier  poetry.  And  the  rest  of  the  piece,  which 
some  would  have  to  show  already  Italian  influence,  announces 
Chaucer  quite  unmistakably  in  the  catalogue  of  trees  afterwards 
copied  by  Spenser  — 

The  builder  oak  and  eke  the  hardy  ash  — 

and  that  other  of  the  birds  themselves.  These  catalogues  he  was 
fond  of  applying  afresh  in  various  forms  and  matters,  and  they  dis- 
play his  then  unexampled,  and  seldom  since  approached,  still 
seldomer  outdone,  faculty  of  making  the  epithet  fit  the  noun,  and 
transforming  the  bald  enumerations  which  are  one  of  the  curses  of 
mediaeval  poetry  into  broad  and  varied  examples  at  once  of  keen 
observation  and  masterly  expression. 

The  smaller  poems  do  not  seem  to  require  any  very  special 
notice.  Some  of  the  ballads,  such  as  the  newly  recovered  one  To 
Rosamond,  are  pretty ;  the  late  and  sad  Flee  from  the  Press 
has  dignity  and  truth ;  and  others  are  interesting.  But  Chaucer, 
who  was  for  so  great  a  poet  curiously  deficient  in  strictly  lyrical  gift, 
shows  better  in  long  poems  than  in  short,  and  better  in  narration 
than  in  reflection.  Indeed,  it  is  scarcely  wrong  to  say  that,  as 
regards  the  tone  and  substance  of  his  work,  he  is  rather  a  dramatist 
and  a  novelist  than  a  poet,  though  he  applied  to  the  subjects  which, 
there  being  as  yet  no  novel  and  no  play,  he  treated  in  poetic  form, 
an  unsurpassed  and  rarely  equalled  power  of  poetic  expression. 
His  expression  is  the  exprL'ssion  of  the  poet ;  his  thought  the  thought" 


Hence  it  is  —  a  matter  rare  and  certainly  not  to  be  grumbled  at  — 
that,   ns    has    been    just    remarked,    his    long   poems    are   better  than 


124  CHAUCER   AND    HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  hi 


his  short.     In  the  long  poems  of  his  supposed  middle  period  he  was 

indeed  still  hardly  out  of  leading-strings  —  or  rather  he  chose  to  wear 

them,   for    Troilus    and    Cressid    is  translation   in   little 

^'crissiT"^  more    than    name,   the    House    of  Fame    owes    nothing 

more  than  hints  to  its  original,  and  the  Legend  of  Good 

Women  handles  the  classical  stories,  which  it  takes  chiefly  from  Ovid, 

with  nearly  as  much  freedom  as  that  shown  in  the  Canterbury  Tales 

themselves. 

Each  of  the  three  has  a  charm  of  its  own,  and  Troilus  has  the 
additional  one  of  forming  a  link  in  a  chain  of  writing  on  the  same 
subject  by  a  succession  of  writers  all  eminent  in  the  history  of  litera- 
ture, and  most  of  them  possessing  far  more  than  merely  historical 
importance.  The  figure  of  Cressida  (Briseida,  Griseida,  etc.),  which 
the  trouvere  Benoit  de  Sainte-More  had  extracted  from  the  dustbin  of 
Dares  and  had  partially,  but  only  partially,  vivified,  passed,  a  very 
little  further  modernised,  into  the  Historia  Trofana  (mostly  pillaged 
from  Benoit)  of  Guido  Colonna  or  delle  Colonne  at  the  end  of  the 
thirteenth  century.  Hence  Boccaccio  in  his  Filostrato,  applying 
his  genius  as  a  novelist  and  his  talent  as  a  poet,  took  Cressid,  but 
made  her  something  far  more  interesting  than  the  passive  love- 
thrall  of  Benoit.  Chaucer,  in  turn  taking  her  from  Boccaccio, 
softened  and  complicated  her  traits  a  little,  but  added  to  the  story 
the  wonderfully  vivid  and  individual  figure  of  Pandarus.  Chaucer's 
Scottish  follower,  Henryson,  not  meddling  with  his  master's  actual 
matter,  completed  the  story  unequally,  but  with  marvellous  touches 
in  parts,  by  the  Testament  of  Cressid  in  the  fifteenth  century  ;  Shake- 
speare in  the  sixteenth  dramatised,  with  variations,  the  Chaucerian 
part ;  and  Dryden  in  the  seventeenth  refashioned  Shakespeare. 
Perhaps  there  is  no  other  instance  in  literary  history  of  so  many 
persons  of  such  distinction  taking  and  handing  on  the  same  torch  so 
long.  Nor  need  we  hesitate  to  give  Chaucer's  own  contribution  to 
the  series  the  credit  of  the  most  accomplished  long  poem  yet  written 
in  English.  The  rhyme-royal  stanzas  are  thoroughly  beaten  out; 
the  passionate  side  of  Cressid's  character  is  fully  developed,  yet 
with  a  delicacy  which  is  not  always  associated  with  the  idea  of 
Chaucer;  the  comic,  and  yet  not  farcical  presentation  of  Pandarus  is 
the  first  of  its  kind  in  English ;  and  the  scene  where  the  lovers  are 
made  happy,  though  somewhat  too  much  elaborated  (as  indeed  is  the 
whole  poem)  with  the  "  Court  of  Love  "  scholasticism  of  the  time,  is 
a  masterpiece.  Nothing  but  want  of  technical  originality  and  a  certain 
absence  of  incident  could  be  charged  against  Troilus,  and  the  first 
of  these  charges,  as  we  have  seen,  is  more  formally  than  really  true. 

The  House  of  Fame,  a  much  shorter  poem,  in  rather  more 
than  2000  lines  of  octosyllabic  couplet,  adds  to  the  presentation  of 


CHAP.  I  CHAUCER'S   LIFE   AND   POEMS  125 

Chaucer  as  master  by  this  time  of  whatsoever  metre  he  chose  to 
adopt,  and  strengthens  the  suggestion  (already  given  by  Pandarus) 
of  his  peculiar  and  hitherto  unexampled  humour.  The 
piece  is  one  of  the  dreams,  curiously  compounded  of  The //okj^-  of 
learning,  satire,  and  other  things,  which  flowed  from  the 
never-failing  fountain  of  the  Rose  for  some  three  centuries ;  and  it 
affords  opportunity  for  much  shrewd  criticism  of  life.  But  the  most 
Chaucerian  touches  of  all,  perhaps,  are  put  in  the  mouth  of  the  eagle 
who  carries  the  poet  up  to  Heaven  to  see  the  House.  This  eagle  is 
a  very  humorous  as  well  as  powerful  fowl,  and  his  remonstrances 
with  the  wriggling  bard  at  his  being  so  "  noyous  "  to  carry,  together 
with  his  cool,  dry  comfort  and  reassurance  against  any  danger  of  his 
burden's  being  made  cupbearer  to  the  Gods,  or  '•  stellified  "  or  other- 
wise inconveniently  honoured,  exhibit  the  English  thing  called 
Humour  in  almost  as  full  development  as  the  Canterbury  Tales 
themselves. 

The  LegendMf  Good  Women,  besides  the  general  interest  of  all 
Chaucer's  verse,  besides  its  own  intrinsic  attraction  (for  the  "good 
women  "  are  the  most  hapless  and  blameless  of  Ovid's  Heroides^,  and 
the  remembrance  of  its  suggestion  of  what  is  perhaps, 
all  things  considered,  the  most  perfect  example  of  Tenny-  "^GZd'fvlmei. 
son's  verse,^  has  the  additional  charm  of  presenting  to 
us  Chaucer's  first  experiment  in^the  heroic  couplet,  the  mair 
withblankyerse,  of  later  English  poetry,  and  the  medium 
own  greatest  work.  The  faint  foreshadowings  of  this  in  earlier  verse, 
the  ways  in  which  the  uncertain  crystallisation  of  our  prosody,,  now 
takes  this  form,  now  loses  it  again,  have  been  already  indicated. 
But,  as  is  generally  the  case  when  a  poet  of  the  first  genius  hits  upon 
a  metre  of  the  first  importance,  the  thing,  after  being  almost  unbodied, 
certainly  embryonic,  in  its  first  appearance,  presents  itself  practically 
full-grown.  The  pathetic  subjects  of  the  Legend  do  not  indeed  give 
the  author  much  opportunity  for  showing  that  marvellous  suitableness 
of  the  form  for  comic  portraiture  and  description  which  the  Canterbury 
Tales  display.  But  it  is  noticeable  that  he  opens  the  collection 
with  one  of  those  ironic  or  agnostic,  rather  than  positively  scejjtlcal, 
references  to  things  beyond  the  present  life  which  are  found  elsewhere 
{e.g.  in  the  Kniglit^s  Tale),  and  which  indeed  may  be  said  without 
parodox  to  form  not  so  much  a  reaction  from  the  piety  of  the  iMiddle 
Ages  as  a  complement  or  even  an  integral  part  of  it.     After  this  and 

1  I  read,  before  my  eyelids  dropt  their  shade, 
,      "  The  Legend  of  Good  Women,"  long  ago 
Sung  by  the  morning  star  of  song,  who  made 
His  music  heard  below. 

A  Dream  of  Fair  Women, 


id  Women. 

in   pillar,  i 
n   of  his/ 


126  CHAUCER   AND   HIS  CONTEMPORARIES  book  in 

some  of  that  passionate  praise  of  the  Daisy  which,  common  as  it  is 
in  fourteenth-  and  fifteenth-century  poetry,  always,  or  almost  always, 
hides  or  discloses  affection  for  some  living  Margaret,  one  of  the  usual 
allegorical  overtures  (here  specially  interesting  because  it  refers  to 
the  poefs  own  works)  conveys  a  rebuke  to  him  from  the  God  of  Love 
and  Alcestis  his  servant  for  the  sacrilegious  remarks  contained  in  the 
Kose  and  in  Troihis.  So  he  undertakes  a  palinode,  and  tells  in  turn 
of  Cleopatra  and  her  faithfulness  to  Antony,  of  Thisbe  and  Dido,  of 
Hypsipyle  and  Medea,  how  true  they  were  to  the  false  Jason,  of 
Lucrece,  Ariadne,  Philomene  (Philomela),  Phillis,  and  Hypermnestra 
—  all  examples  of  truth,  deserved  or  undeserved,  in  woman.  It  is 
pleasant,  as  it  always  is,  to  receive  the  old  classical  stories  set  out 
with  the  new  romantic  charm,  but  the  chief  attraction  of  the  poem  is 
the  new-born  metre  —  the  strength,  command,  and  freshness  which 
Chaucer  shows  in  it,  his  penetration  at  once  of  the  secrets  of  enjambe- 
nient  or  overlapping,  of  paragraph  arrangement,  of  the  merits  of  a 
fijll  stop  at  the  end  of  the  first  line  of  a  couplet,  his  mastery  of  lift 
and  swing,  the  eddying  internal  swirl,  and  yet  the  constant  onward 
progress  of  his  whole  rhythm. 

The  most  like  in  tone  to  the  Legend  of  all  the  minor  poems  are 
the  chief  "  doubtfuls,"  the  Court  of  Love  and  The  Flower  and  the 
I^eaf,  though  they  are  in  the  Chaucerian  stanza  or  rhyme-royal,  not  in 
heroics,  and  though  the  Court  of  Love  expresses  the  libel  as  well  as 
the  palinode.  It  is  difficult  to  say  which  of  the  two  is  the  more 
charming  —  the  Court  of  Love  with  its  statutes  half  ironical,  half 
passionate,  and  the  delightful  concert  of  the  birds  at  the  end,  with 
their  amorous  descants  founded  on  psalm-motives ;  or  the  dreamlike 
vision  of  The  Flower  and  the  Leaf  with  the  white  and  green  parties  of 
Diana  and  Flora,  and  the  fantastic  allegory  of  a  not  extravagant 
virginity.  Of  the  two,  the  sentiment  is  the  more  Chaucerian  in  the 
■  Court  of  Love.,  the  expression  and  arrangement  in  The  Flower  ajtd 
the  L^eaf.  Perhaps  the  best  argument  for  the  non-Chaucerian  author- 
ship is  that  if  they  be  later  they  take  away  the  almost  unintelligible 
reproach  of  England  during  the  ensuing  century. 

There  is,  however,  no  doubt  that   common  fame  has   even   more 

than  that  measure  of  reason  which  (to  do  her  the  justice  too  seldom 

done)  she  often,  though  not  always,  has  in  such  cases  in  considering 

Chaucer  as  the  poet  of  the  Canterbury  Tales.     In  these 

^tr/ra/^r  ^^  ^^^^  "°^  °"^y  ^^^  "^^^^  considerable  work  (even  if  the 
English  Rose  be  .wholly  his)  in  bulk;  not  only  his  latest  ; 
not  only  work  which  includes  in  one  part  or  another  of  it  all  the 
merits  and  beauties  which  can  be  discerned  elsewhere,  but  work  dis- 
playing a  variety  and  a  vigour  nowhere  else  to  be  found,  as  well  as 
evidences  of  original  genius  which  do  not  appear  even  in  the  best  of 


CHAP.  I  CHAUCER'S   LIFE  AND   POEMS  127 


the  other  works.  Although  the  Decameron  may  have  furnished  the 
bare  suggestion  of  alternate  tale-telling,  although  many,  perhaps 
most,  of  the  tales  are  founded  in  subject,  and  even  in  some  details 
of  treatment,  on  previous  work,  classical,  Italian,  or  French,  yet  the 
whole  as  a  whole  is  distinctly  •'  new  and  original "  in  a  very  different 
sense  from  that  of  the  play-bills.  The  entire  framework,  and  very 
much  of  the  inset  tales,  is  studied  directly  from  the  English  life  of 
the  time :  the  gracious  lunar  rainbows  of  the  Rose  have  given  place 
to  sunlight ;  the  abstractions  of  scholastic  philandering  retire  in 
favour  of  beings  of  flesh  and  blood.  For  Dangler  and  Bialacoil, 
even  for  Cressid,  the  fair,  frail  type,  and  Troilus,  the  amoiireux  transi  of 
all  time,  we  have  the  bouncing  Wife  of  Bath  and  the  mincing  Prioress, 
the  stout  carle  of  a  Miller,  and  the  Summoner  as  full  of  reality  as  he 
is  wanting  in  delicacy.  Even  the  pieces  like  the  famous  Knights 
Tale,  which,  like  the  earlier  poems,  are  taken  from  others,  and  deal 
with  literary  tradition  rather  than  with  English  contemporary  fact, 
wear  a  new  guise  and  breathe  a  new  spirit.  We  pass  from  con- 
vention to  direct  impression  and  expression,  from  pageantry  to 
conduct,  from  allegory  to  fact.  There  is  not  less  art;  there  is,  in 
fact,  more  art  than  ever,  but  there  is  infinitely  more  matter,  and 
the  matter  and  the  art  have  not  the  slightest  difficulty  in  joining 
hands. 

We  must  neglect  as  usual,  or  at  least  notice  only  by  reference,  a 
great  deal  of  the  matter  which  a  praiseworthy  zeal  has  accumulated 
in  reference  to  the  Canterbury  Tales.  It  is  evident  on  the  face  of  it 
that  they  were  not  finished,  and  it  is  very  probable  that  the  successive 
instalments  were  never  arranged  even  in  a  provisional  order  by  the 
author.  Industrious  editors  have  accordingly,  by  the  help  of  the 
Prologue,  the  interpreted  introductions,  and  other  real  or  imaginary 
hints,  regrouped  the  tales,  calculated  how  many  more  were  to  be  told, 
and  adjusted  the  stages  of  the  journey.  This  is  good  matter  for 
whoso  likes  it ;  whoso  does  not,  may  neglect  it  without  scathe  or 
demur.  It  is,  however,  not  unimportant  to  bear  in  mind  that,  as  the 
sure  evidences  of  style  and  metre  show,  the  book  represents  work  of 
very  different  periods,  and  probably  includes  not  a  little  which  was 
originally  composed  without  a  distinct  view  to  the  whole  scheme  as 
we  have  it. 

The  simplest  literary  facts,  as  distinguished  from  what  classical 
scholars  call  '•  hariolations,"  are  that  the  Canterbury  Tales  consist 
of  about  seventeen  thousand  and  odd  lines  of  verse,  and  two  pieces, 
the  Tale  of  Melibee  and  the  Parson's  Tale,  of  prose,  the  former  hav- 
ing, in  parts,  odd  indications  or  remnants  of  blank  verse  in  it.  The 
poetical  part  is,  with  the  exception  of  the  burlesque  romaunt  of  Sir 
Thopas,   either  in   rhymed   couplets   of  the    kind  just    described    or 


128  CHAUCER  AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  in 

in  stanza.  It  is  divided  in  point  of  matter  into  a  prologue,  which 
describes  tlie  cavalcade  of  the  Pilgrims  to  the  shrine  of  Becket,  and 
depicts  each  in  a  series  of  wonderful  vignettes  or  kit-cat  portraits. 
There  are,  besides  Sir  TJiopas  and  the  two  prose  tales,  twenty-one 
tales  in  verse  of  very  different  lengths,  ranging  from  the  two  thousand 
lines  of  the  Knighfs  Tale  to  mere  fragments  like  the  Cook''s.  Between 
the  Tales  there  are  lesser  prologues  which  keep  up  the  framework, 
and  very  commonly,  if  not  invariably,  display  the  dramatic  power  of 
the  author,  and  his  intensely  vivid  observation  of  contemporary  life 
at  their  highest.  In  point  of  subject,  the  Tales  now  vary  in  the 
widest  and  freest  manner.  The  Knighfs  Tale  is  a  regular  romance 
of  chivalry,  not  on  the  smallest  scale,  and  belonging  to  the  antique 
matter.  So  is  the  Man  of  Law's  Tale,  which  handles  in  rhyme-royal 
a  variant  of  the  story  of  Emare  (p.  96).  So  is  the  Clerk'' s,  which 
tells  the  story  of  Griselda  (rhyme-royal)  ;  the  Squire'' s,  which  "  leaves 
half  told  The  story  of  Cambuscan  bold."  The  Prioress,  the  Monk, 
and  the  Nun  sedately  tell  legends  of  Saint  Cecilia,  of  Hugh  of 
Lincoln,  or  moralised  stories  of  Scriptural  or  classical  lore.  All 
the  rest  2Xt  fabliaux  oi  one  kind  or  another  —  that  is  to  say,  Englishings, 
in  the  most  original  and  least  second-hand  fashion,  of  the  peculiar 
verse-stories,  often,  but  not  always,  distinctly  "  free "  in  incident  and 
language,  and  almost  always  containing  a  more  or  less  satirical 
criticism  of  life,  which  had  become  popular  in  France  about  two 
centuries  before. 

The  prologues  are  equally  various  in  length  and  in  immediate 
subject,  though  the  tone  is  pretty  much  the  same  in  all.  The  longest, 
the  most  famous,  and  on  the  whole  the  happiest,  is  the  celebrated 
discourse  of  the  Wife  of  Bath,  which  suggested  Dunbar's  only  less 
brilliant  (though  more  bitter)  The  Twa  Maryit  Wemen  and  the  Wedo, 
and  which,  like  it,  is  bitter  satire  on  women  put  into  the  mouth  of 
a  woman,  and  arranged  there  with  the  curiously  artful  faculty  of 
making  the  speaker  unconsciously  a  self-satirist.  All  these  prologues 
are  full  of  direct  and  personal  touches,  and,  with  their  prior,  the  opening 
piece,  contain  such  a  gallery  of  pictures  from  the  life  as  no  mediaeval 
writer  had  ever  attempted.  The  last  Shakespearian  touch  —  that  which 
at  once  makes  a  character  personal  and  individual  for  all  time,  and 
conveys  to  it  the  abiding  characteristics  of  humanity  which  belong 
to  no  time  in  particular —  is  indeed  not  quite  Chaucer's.  His  characters 
are  rather  astonishingly  brilliant  types,  individualised  by  the  freshness 
and  sharpness  of  the  impression,  than  absolutely  individual  persons. 
It  was  indeed  almost  impossible,  till  the  clutch  of  allegory  had  been 
finally  shaken  off,  that  the  complete  tyranny  of  the  type  should  be 
shaken  off  likewise.  But  no  poets'  characters  that  still  partake  of 
the  type  are  so  free  from  its  drawbacks  and  blemishes  as  Chaucer's; 


CHAP,  i  CHAUCER'S   LIFE   AND   POEMS  129 


and  many  as  are  the  great  English  humourists  who  have  followed 
him,  hardly  one  has  succeeded  in  making  more  out  of  humour.  This 
naturally  shows  itself  in  the  comic  tales  and  in  the  prologues,  but 
it  is  not  absent  anywhere  —  not  in  the  stately  chivalry  of  the  Knighfs 
Tale,  not  in  the  pathos  of  the  stories  of  Constance  and  Griselda. 

Next  to  this  almost  omnipresent  humour  the  great  feature  of  the 
Canterbury  Tales  is  the  extraordinary  vividness  and  precision  of  the  pre- 
sentment of  images,  whether  complicated  or  simple.  Of  the  former,  the 
poem  bears  in  its  very  forefront  — in  the  figures  of  the  prologue  and 
the  temple-descriptions  of  the  KnighVs  Tale  —  unsurpassed  instances. 
And  in  such  phrases  as  the  famous 

Smiler,  with  the  knife  under  the  cloak, 

we  meet,  and  meet  almost  for  the  first  time,  that  gift  of  putting 
Multum  in  parvo  which  only  the  greatest  men  of  letters,  perhaps  in 
perfection  only  the  greatest  poets,  possess.  Pursuing  this  faculty 
still  closer,  we  can  bring  it  down,  in  at  least  some  instances,  to  that 
unsurpassed  power  of  making  the  epithet  suit  the  noun  which  has 
been  noticed  already.  It  is  evident,  and  interestingly  evident,  that 
this  magical  power  of  Chaucer's  own  words  impressed,  as  it  deserved 
to  impress,  his  contemporaries  and  scholars  more  than  anything 
else.  His  astonishing  command  of  "  rhetorique  "  (which  the  next  age 
unluckily  endeavoured  to  rival  by  searching  for  the  most  "aureate" 
words  instead  of  the  most  appropriate),  his  "gold  dewdrops  of  speech," 
were  then  the  things  that  struck  them  most.  It  is  true  that,  even 
in  the  Canterbury  Tales,  he  has  not  quite  escaped  the  curse  of  the 
cliche,  of  the  expletive.  But  he  has  it  far  less  than  his  predecessors, 
and  often  for  long  passages  he  escapes  it  altogether. 

Lastly  (for  even  Chaucer  must  be  handled  summarily  here),  we 
perceive  in  the  Canterbury  Tales  the  completion  of  his  command  of 
verse.  On  the  subject  of  this  verse  there  are  many  opinions,  which 
often  depend  on  preconceived  theories.  The  old  seventeenth-  and 
eighteenth-century  notion  that  he  could  not  scan  is,  of  course,  now 
held  by  no  instructed  person.  But  there  are  some  who  hold  that 
Chaucer  allowed  himself  nine-syllable  lines,  and  others,  or  the  same, 
that  he  adhered  to  a  strictly  decasyllabic  basis,  as,  it  is  pretty  certain, 
his  immediate  successors  tried  (in  their  floundering  attempts  to  follow 
him)  to  do.  My  own  opinion  is  that,  although  Chaucer  had  not,  as 
till  after  the  great  dramatic  period  it  was  practically  impossible  for 
any  man  to  do,  realised  the  full  powers  of  equivalence  in  the  English 
decasyllabic,  and  the  full  advantage  derivable  from  extending  the 
license  of  pause  to  every  place,  he  had  yet  made  great  strides  in  this 
direction.     I  believe  that  wherever  only  nine  syllables,  even  with  the 


I30  CHAUCER  AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  iii 

final  e,  occur,  there  is  probably  ^  a  fault  in  the  reading ;  that  there  are 
occasional  Alexandrines;  and  that,  although  in  many  instances  "the" 
or  "  to "  was  intended  to  coalesce  with  a  succeeding  initial  vowel, 
there  are  also  instances  of  unquestionable  trisyllabic  feet.  I  am  quite 
sure  that  the  balance  of  the  verse  is  managed  with  an  almost  (not 
perhaps  a  complete)  freedom  from  that  prejudice  about  the  middle 
pause  which,  derived  from  the  antediluvian  prosody  of  Anglo-Saxon, 
and  accidentally  strengthened  by  the  caesura  of  French  and  Latin 
verse,  weighed  even  upon  some  Elizabethans,  and  has  never  been 
entirely  shaken  off  by  a  few,  even  among  artists  and  scholars  in 
verse,  to  the  present  day.  And  I  am  sure  also  that  this  mobile  and 
sensitive  prosody  is  the  second,  just  as  the  inexhaustible  freshness 
and  propriety  of  his  phrase  is  the  first,  great  secret  of  the  fact  that 
Chaucer  is  the  earliest  English  poet  who  can,  without  reservations  and 
allowances,  be  called  great,  and,  what  is  more,  one  of  our  greatest, 
even  to  the  present  day. 

1  I  insert  this  "  probably  "  because,  though  I  think  that  the  nine-syllable  line 
is  never,  even  in  Chaucer  or  in  Milton,  a  success,  I  think  it  just  possible  that 
Chaucer,  as  it  is  most  probable  that  Milton,  may  have  tried  it,  deceived  by  the 
analogy  of  the  octosyllable. 


Jpjf\  rrv^Uya^AU.^ 


CHAPTER   II 


LANGLAND    AND    GOWER 


Piers  Plowman  —  Argument  of  the  B  Poem  —  Gower  —  The  Confessio  Ama?iHs  — 

Gower's  reputation 

Almost  exactly  contemporary  with  Chaucer  were  two  other  poets, 
both  of  more  than  ordinary  mark  —  one  of  them  Chaucer's  own  equal, 
if  not  superior,  in  intensity,  though  far  his  inferior  in  range  and  in 
art,  both  curious  contrasts  in  more  ways  than  one  with  him,  and  with 
each  other.  The  first  was  the  author  of  the  Vision  of  Piers  the 
Plowman  ;  the  second  was  John  Gower. 

The  now  generally  accepted  identification  of  the  first  with  William 
Langley  or  Langland  (the  latter  being  the  preferred  form)  rests  on 
no  very  definite  evidence,  but  it  has  fair  probability  in  its  favour. 
And  the  adoption  of  it  (with  a  caution)  saves  us  from  the  incon- 
venience of  constantly  using  a  clumsy  periphrasis  for  a  person  who 
will  have  to  be  often  named.  It  is  well,  however,  to  stop  short  of 
the  further  adventurousness  of  identifying  all  the  personal  details 
that  can  be  got  out  of  the  Vision  with  Langland  himself— of  giving 
him  a  wife  named  "Kitty,"  and  a  daughter  named  "Calote"  (Colette  ? 
Nicolette  ?),  of  placing  him  in  London,  of  conferring  on  him  those 
minor  orders  which  did  not  necessarily  comport  celibacy,  and  so 
forth.  Once  more  the  "prosaic  heresy,"  as  we  may  conveniently 
call  that  which  takes  poetic  and  dramatic  utterances  for  statements 
of  biographical  fact,  is  to  be  sedulously  eschewed.  The  allusion  to 
Malvern  Hills  in  the  opening  of  all  versions  of  the  poem  is  less 
questionable,  though  it  is  even  here  to  be  observed  that  the  famous 
and  almost  proverbial  extent  of  the  view  therefrom  would  make  it  a 
fitting  imagined  scene  for  the  sort  of  survey  of  England  which  was 
coming.  }5ut  fair  presumption,  though  not  certainty,  may  be  drawn 
from  the  facts  that  the  varying  legends  about  Langland's  birth 
locate  it  either  at  Cleobury  Mortimer  in  Shropshire,  or  at  Wychwood 
in  Oxfordshire,  both  of  which,  though  at   opposite  sides,  may  be  said 

i3> 


132  CHAUCER   AND    HIS  CONTEMPORARIES  book  hi 


to  be  in  the  remoter  Malvern  precincts,  and  that  the  dialect  of  the 
poem  is  said  to  be  West  Midland. 

Its  extreme  popularity  is  shown  by  the  great  number  of  MSS.  which 
remain  of  it,^  and  by  the  earliness,  if  not  the  number,  of  the  printed 
editions. 2     It  went  out  of  favour  in  the  late  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 

centuries,  neither  more  nor  less  than    other   books  of  its 
Ph'uman.    ^"^^^  ^"^  time  ;  but   it  was   recalled  to  attention   rather 

earlier  than  most  of  them  by  Whitaker''s  edition  (1813), 
the  editio  princeps  of  the  "  C "  or  longest  text.  Not,  however,  till 
the  more  thorough  study  of  it  during  the  last  thirty  years,  in  which 
Professor  Skeat  has  been  the  main  worker,  was  it  discovered  that  this 
"  C  "  text  was  not  the  only  variant  on  the  accepted  or  "  B  "  text  which 
had  up  to  that  time  been  printed. ^  There  are,  in  fact,  three  families 
of  MSS.,  comparison  of  which  has  established,  as  fairly  as  such  things 
can  be  established,  the  fact  that  the  poem  was  rehandled  by  its 
author  with  remarkable  thoroughness  at  two  separate  times  after  the 
appearance  of  the  first  version  ;  that  that  first  version  itself  was  not  the 
receptus  or  B,  but  an  earlier,  shorter  A ;  and  that  this  earliest  version, 
from  allusions  in  it,  may  very  probably  have  been  written  as  early  as 
1362.  The  B  or  main  text  is  similarly  assigned  to  1377  or  there- 
abouts, and  the  C  or  longest  to  1393,  or  thirty  years  after  text  A. 
Yet  further,  if  Langland  was,  as  seems  extremely  likely,  the  author  of 
the  alliterative  poem  on  the  deposition  of  Richard  II.,  which  Dr. 
Skeat  calls  Richard  the  Redeless,  he  must  have  been  alive  in  1399. 
This  would  give  him  a  literary  life  of  not  much  less  than  forty  years, 
and  assuming,  as  we  may  fairly  do  (for  there  are  no  marks  of  extreme 
juvenility  even  in  the  first  version),  that  he  was  about  thirty  when  he 
wrote  it,  this  would  carry  his  life  from  about  1330  to  about  1400. 
The  latter,  it  is  to  be  remembered,  is  the  year  of  Chaucer's  death 
pretty  certainly,  while  if  the   first  version    of  Piers  Plowman   dates 

1  The  "  A"  form  {vide  infra)  appears  in  the  great  Vernon  Collection  (see  p.  107). 
Professor  Skeat  —  whose  repeated  studies  and  editions  of  the  poem  culminated 
in  the  issue  (2  vols.  Clarendon  Press)  which  is  uniform  with  his  Chaucer,  and 
ranks  as  the  standard  —  enumerates  nearly  fifty  others. 

2  1550,  in  three  different  forms,  and  1561.  Spenser,  who  refers  to  the  poem 
in  the  Shepherd's  Calendar,  must  have  read  one  of  these,  unless  his  allusion  at  the 
end  of  December  is,  as  some  have  thought,  to  the  Plowman's  Tale.  This  is  to  the 
last  degree  unlikely,  as,  if  he  knew  this  at  all,  he  would  have  known  it  as  Chaucer's 
with  whose  works  it  was  then  printed,  and  Chaucer  has  been  already  disjunctively 
referred  to  in  the  preceding  line. 

3  Among  others  by  Wright  1842,  revised  1856,  and  again  reprinted  1887, 
This  edition  (to  which  Professor  Skeat  does  that  justice  by  which  he  is  so  admi- 
rably distinguished  in  comparison  with  too  many  so-called  scholars  when  they  deal 
with  predecessors)  would  be  the  best  of  all  for  general  reading,  if  it  were  not 
Drinted  in  half  lines.  It  also  contains  Piers  Ploivman's  Creed,  an  ill-tempered  but 
vigorous  Wyclifite  lampoon  in  some  850  lines,  which  the  critics  will  not  allow  to 
be  Langland's,  though  they  put  it  as  early  as  1394. 


CHAP.  II  LANGLAND   AND   GOWER  133 


from  the  year  mentioned  above,  it  is  earlier  by  some  years  than  any- 
thing that  we  can  date  with  probability  as  among  the  still  existing 
works  of  Chaucer. 

At  first  sight  nothing  can  well  be  more  different,  not  merely  from 
the  Canterbury  Tales,  but  from  all  Chaucer's  work,  than  the  Vision 
concerning  Piers  the  Plowman.  It  is  in  alliterative  verse,  according 
to  the  revived  form  of  that  rhythm  so  often  mentioned  in  the  last 
Book.  The  lines  are  tolerably  equal  in  length,  and  they  not  un- 
frequently  fall  —  urged  by  the  inevitable  pressure  of  the  growth  of  the 
language  and  the  literature  —  into  Alexandrines,  fourteeners,  and 
other  constructively  metrical  shapes.  But  they  do  not  aim  at  any 
such  structure,  they  rigidly  abstain  from  rhyme,  and  they  derive 
their  whole  poetical  form  from  the  middle  pause,  the  fairly  corre- 
sponding accents,  and  the  three  alliterated  words,  two  in  the  first  half 
and  one  in  the  second.^  The  appearance  of  much  greater  antiquity 
than  Chaucer's  which  this  gives,  and  which  used  to  mislead  the 
unwary,  is  assisted  by  a  somewhat  greater  allowance  of  archaic 
words.  But  it  is  entirely  false  that,  as  used  also  to  be  said,  Langland 
is  more  '•  Saxon  "  in  his  vocabulary  than  Chaucer.  It  has  even  been 
calculated  by  patient  industry  that  his  percentage  of  Latin  and 
Romance  words  is,  if  anything,  a  little  larger  than  Chaucer's  ;  it  is  quite 
certain  that  if  both  were  printed  in  modernised  spelling,  it  would  be  at 
once  seen  not  to  be  smaller. 

The  poem,  despite  its  merit  and  the  pains  that  have  been  spent  on 
it  of  late  years  by  interpreters,  is  by  no  means  a  very  easy  one  to 
understand ;  and  there  are  few  that  are  more  in  need  of  an  argument 
or  a  running  marginal  commentary.  This  arises  from  the  fact  that 
it  is  not  one  vision,  nor  even  two,  but  a  series  of  visions  dissolving  one 
into  the  other,  often  without  any  more  attempt  at  coherence  —  of 
completion  even  in  the  dream-integer,  such  as  it  is  —  than  actual 
dreams  exhibit.  It  would  seem  as  if  the  author,  whether  owing  to 
his  mysticism  and  its  accompanying  vagueness,  or  to  his  satiric 
intent,  and  the  wholesome  sense  of  danger  which  accompanied  that, 
deliberately  avoided  rounding  off  his  chapters  and  driving  home  his 
meanings.  But  the  general  scheme  of  the  poem,  which  is  divided 
'\w\.o  passus'^  or  cantos,  is  as  follows  in  the  central  or  B  text. 

A  prologue  of  rather  more  than  two  hundred  lines  tells  how  the 
Dreamer,  in   "  a  summer  season  when  soft   was  the  sun,"   put   on   a 

1  Langland  sometimes  indulges  in  four,  but  I  think  never  puts  himself  out  of 
the  way  for  them,  or  for  the  extravagant  and  overloaded  alliteration  of  five  or 
even  six  words  which  we  find  elsewhere. 

2  Of  these  A  has  twelve  (perhaps  originally  only  eight),  B  twenty,  and  C 
twenty-three ;  but  even  where  the  three,  or  two  of  them,  coincide  there  are  often 
great  variations.  Wright's  13  text— Professor  Skeat  does  not  number  his  con- 
tinuously—  has  14,696  short  or  half  lines. 


134  CHAUCER   AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  hi 


shepherd's  smock  like  "a  hermit  unholy  of  works,"  and  wandering 
on  Malvern  Hills,  slept  by  a  brook  side,  and  saw  a  strange  vision  —  a 
high  tower  (Heaven)  on  one  side,  a  deep  dungeon  (Hell) 
fheTlw  beneath,  and  a  "  fair  field  full  of  folk "  between  (Middle 
Earth).  And  he  describes  the  folk  and  their  occupations 
with  much  veri'c,  digressing,  in  the  bewildering  kaleidoscopic  fashion 
which  characterises  the  whole  poem,  to  a  very  shrewd  and  early  vision 
of  the  "  Bell-the-Cat  "  story.  Indeed,  no  simile  is  at  once  so  apposite 
or  so  illuminative  for  Piers  Plowman  as  that  of  the  kaleidoscope, 
in  respect  of  the  way  in  which  elaborate  arrangements  of  word  and 
thought  suddenly  and  without  warning  fall  into  something  as  elabo- 
rate, but  quite  different.  The  first  passus  proper  opens  with  a  promise, 
not  too  exactly  kept,  to  expound  the  meaning  of  the  tower,  dungeon, 
and  field ;  and  their  obvious  interpretations  are  given  by  a  lovely  lady 
in  linen  clothed,  who  is  Holy  Church.  Her  speech  is  allegorical  and 
digressive  in  the  Rose  manner  —  indeed,  diflferent  as  is  his  spirit, 
Langland  is  as  full  of  the  Rose  inspiration  as  Chaucer  himself.  The 
second  passus  introduces  —  in  sharp  contrast  to  this  figure,  and  in 
answer  to  the  Dreamer's  request  to  be  told  of  Falsehood  as  she  has 
said  so  much  of  Truth  —  another  lady  far  more  gorgeously  clothed. 
This  is  "Meed  the  maid"  —  reward  in  the  good  sense,  bribery,  etc. 
in  the  bad  —  daughter  of  False  (Falsehood),  and  betrothed  to  Favel 
(Fauvel,  the  hero  of  an  allegorical  French  romance  of  the  preceding 
age,  and  here  signifying  Flattery).  Here  Holy  Church  vanishes,  and 
the  current  of  the  story  is  deflected  in  the  usual  odd  manner  to  the 
marriage  of  Meed,  which  it  is  decided  ought  to  take  place  in  London. 
The  bridal  party  set  out  thither  under  the  escort  of  Simony  and  Civil 
Law,  but  Soothness  anticipates  them,  tells  Conscience,  who  tells  the 
King,  and  a  warm  reception  being  prepared  for  the  party,  they  dis- 
perse, leaving  Meed  the  maid,  who  stands  her  ground,  weeping. 
She  is  at  the  beginning  of  the  third  passus  courteously  taken  by  the 
middle  and  brought  before  the  King.  The  natural  seductiveness  of 
Meed,  and  the  fact  that  she  fiiay  be  honestly  gained,  are  here  glanced 
at.  She  confesses  her  sins,  uses  great  largesse  to  the  court 
generally,  and  the  King  promises  that  she  shall  marry  Conscience, 
who,  however,  refuses  utterly,  giving  his  offered  bride  the  worst  pos- 
sible character,  and  belabouring  her  with  Latin  quotations,  against 
which  she  very  naturally  and  indignantly  protests.  At  the  beginning 
of  the  fourth  passus  this  uncompromising  knight  declines  even  to  kiss 
her,  "but  Reason  rede  me  thereto."  The  King  thereupon  bids  him 
fetch  Reason,  who  comes,  supports  Conscience,  and  brings  over  the 
King,  who  at  the  end  of  the  fytte  says  "As  long  as  our  life  lasteth 
live  we  together." 

At  the  beginning   of  the  fifth  passus   the  dream   is   broken   and 


CHAP.  II  LANGLAND   AND   GOWER 


135 


once  more  joined.  A  notice  of  the  Rule  of  Reason  leads  or  falls, 
after  the  mediaeval  fashion,  into  a  long  and  vigorous  passage  on  the 
Seven  Deadly  Sins,  containing  one  of  the  most  famous  and  brightly 
coloured  passages  of  the  poem,  the  description  of  a  London  tavern 
and  the  bibbers  there.  Only  at  the  end  of  this  passus,  which 
includes  some  curious  anticipations  of  Puritan  nomenclature,  does  the 
personage  who  gives  name  to  the  poem,  Piers  the  Plowman,  make  his 
appearance ;  and  even  then  he  has  a  double  portion  of  the  floating 
phantasmagoric  character  that  marks  the  whole.  At  one  moment  he 
is  a  simple  plowman  who  digs  and  delves,  and  does  what  Truth 
might,  who  has  often  an  acre  to  ear,  and  cannot  leave  his  work.  But 
he  is  also  a  guide  to  Godliness,  and  has  a  wife  Dame  Work-while-it-is- 
time,  a  daughter  "  Do-right-or-thy-dame-shall-beat-thee,"  and  a  son 
with  a  longer  title  still.  After  dialogues  and  doings  in  the  sixth 
with  Hunger  and  others,  he  emerges  in  the  seventh  passus  as  Christ 
Himself,  opposing  the  venal  priests  of  the  day,  and  teaching  a  better 
way  to  salvation.  This  is  a  sort  of  epilogue  to  the  passus,  and  to  the 
first  part  of  the  poem,  which  resolves  itself  in  the  Dreamer's  own  words 
into  a  counsel  to  seek  the  help  of  "  Do-well." 

But  where  is  "  Do-well "  to  be  found?  That  is  the  question  with 
which  the  eighth  passus  ^  opens,  and  the  second  part  of  the  poem. 
Certain  friars,  though  they  are  quite  sure  he  dwells  among  them,  give 
no  help,  and  a  fresh  dream  brings  to  the  poet's  side  Thought,  who 
informs  him  that  not  only  Do-well  but  "  Do-bet  "(ter)  and  Do-best 
must  be  sought.  But  he  cannot  tell  where  to  find  them,  though  Wit 
may.  Wit  in  the  ninth  passus  is  prodigal  of  information  about  the 
three,  about  their  relation  to  Lady  Anima,  and  about  the  fact  that 
Do-well  is  Obedience,  Do-bet  Love,  and  Active  Benevolence  Do-best. 
In  the  tenth  passus  Study  the  wife  of  Wit  takes  up  the  tale  and  con- 
fuses the  Dreamer  "sternly  staring"  with  more  theology,  sending 
him  moreover  to  Clergy,  who  talks  still  more  ("  This  is  a  long 
lesson,"  says  the  Dreamer,  "  and  little  am  I  wiser.  Darkly  ye  show 
where  Do-well  is  or  Do-bet "),  and  to  Scripture,  who  similarly  occupies 
the  eleventh.  Kind  and  Reason  follow,  and  at  the  end  of  this 
passus  the  Dreamer,  thoroughly  bemused,  meets  one  of  the  most 
original  characters  of  the  whole  shadowy  procession,  Ymaginatif — 
his  own  mother-wit  apparently,  or  human  reason,  not  antithetic  to 
but  stopping  short  of  theology.  The  thirteenth  adds  others,  especially 
"Hawkyn-  the  Active  Man,"  who  cannot  keep  his  clothes  unspotten 
for  his  daily  work  —  an  allegory  more  open  than  some.  Hawkyn 
discourses  with    Patience   throughout   this  passus   and  the   next,  the 

1  The  numbers,  it  must  be  remembered,  ace  those  of  the  B  text :  in  A  this 
passus  is  the  ninth,  and  in  C  the  eleventh. 

2  Hawkyn=Henrykin  =  Harry. 


136  CHAUCER   AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  III 

fourteenth,  but  the  Dreamer,  waking  yet  again  at  the  beginning  of  the 
fifteenth,  renews,  and  with  reason,  his  wailing  how  it  was  wonder  long 
ere  he  could  kindly  know  Do-well.  Nor  ip  the  long  fifteenth  passus, 
though  according  to  the  title  "  Do-well "  is  finished  and  "  Do-bet " 
begun,  can' the  process  be  said  to  be  at  all  clear  or  satisfactory.  We 
find,  however,  that  the  scholastic  allegory  of  the  last  five  passus  is 
passing  into  simple  Scripture-history  and  Christian  teaching,  and  in  the 
sixteenth  Piers  Plowman  reappears,  while  both  this  passus  and  the 
seventeenth  shape  themselves  more  and  more  into  a  plain  life  of  Christ 
Himself,  leading  in  the  eighteenth  to  the  finest  poetry  of  the  whole  —  a 
splendid  paraphrase  of  the  Entry  into  Jerusalem,  the  Passion,  and  the 
Harrowing  of  Hell.  This  completes  Do-bet  =  Love  =  Christ,  and 
"  Incipit  Do-best,''''  which  also  occupies  the  last  or  twentieth.  But 
this  is  the  vaguest  and  most  unfinished  part  of  the  whole,  Piers 
Plowman  after  Christ's  death  seeming  to  become  the  Church,  and  the 
two  cantos  leading  to  no  conclusion  whatever. 

The  so-called  A  text  is  much  shorter  than  this.  Not  only  are 
there  but  twelve  passus,  the  work  stopping  at  the  end  of  the  so-called 
Vita  de  Do-well,  but  the  individual  treatment  of  the  different  points 
is  much  less  developed.  Not  a  few  of  the  more  striking  episodes  of 
the  B  text,  svich  as  the  Bell-the-Cat  fable,  do  not  appear.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  are  some  things  in  A  which  were  afterwards  left 
out  or  completely  refashioned,  including  almost  the  whole  of  the  last 
passus.  C  is  longer  even  than  B,  tliough  the  extension  to  twenty- 
three  passus  is  rather  misleading,  the  old  Prologue  now  ranking  as 
Passus  /.,  and  some  of  the  earlier  divisions  of  B  being  split  up  and 
redistributed.  And  there  are  again  some  omissions.  These,  however, 
are  compensated  by  long  insertions,  sometimes  of  the  perhaps 
treacherously  biographical  kind,  especially  one  in  Passus  VI.  on 
which  the  biography-builders  do  much  rely  for  Langland's  London 
life ;  sometimes  on  "  Lolling  "  and  Friardom ;  sometimes  of  the  more 
abstract  philosophical  kind.  Indeed  this  later  tendency  has  dis- 
tinctly got  the  upper  hand  in  C,  as  where,  for  instance,  the  quaint 
and  vivid  personality  of  "  Hawkyn  the  Active  Man  "  is  changed  into 
a  Lorrisian  abstraction  called  "  Activa  Vita." 

On  the  whole,  the  presence  of  this  abstraction  in  Piers  Plowinan 
has  been  too  little  allowed  for  by  some  of  its  eulogists,  who  have 
been  seduced  by  the  pictorial  and  dramatic  force  of  the  opening  of 
the  "Meed"  scenes  and  others  to  put  it  rather  in  competition  with 
the  Pilgrim's  Progress  ^  than  with  the  Roman  de  la  Rose.     There  is 

1  Guillaume  de  Deguillevile,  from  whose  Pilerhiage  de  V Ame  Humaine  Banyan, 
through  whatever  channel,  certainly  did  derive  not  a  little,  was  as  a  dreamer 
before  Langland  also,  just  as  he  was  before  Chaucer,  who  adapted  from  him 
the  ABC. 


CHAP.  II  LANGLAND   AND   GOWER  137 


vivid  portraiture  in  it,  and  there  is  a  good  deal  of  sharp  and  practical 
satire.  But  even  in  the  vision  proper  to  some  extent,  and  in  Do-well^ 
Do-bet,  and  Do-best  to  a  very  much  greater,  the  reflective,  theological, 
and  allegorical  side  gets  altogether  the  better  of  the  dramatic  and 
pictorial.  To  use  the  image  suggested  by  the  change  between  B 
and  C  just  noted,  Hawkyn  the  Active  Man,  who  is  not  always 
present  even  in  the  early  part,  is  hardly  present  at  all  in  the  second ; 
and  in  his  place  we  have  pale  abstractions  arguing  and  jargoning 
about  matters  of  the  first  importance  in  themselves  —  but  ill  suited  for 
such  treatment. 

We  cannot  therefore  put  Langland  by  the  side  of  Chaucer  either 
for  i:^no-e,  or  for  dirsetness,  or  for  artistic  sense.  To  say,  according 
to  the  common  antithesis  of  the  books,  that  he  is  a  poet  of  the 
people,  Chaucer  one  of  the  court,  is  very  idle.  The  author  of  the 
Reeve's  and  Afiller's  Tales  is  hardly  to  be  charged  with  ignorance  in 
respect  of  the  people;  and  the  author  of  the  passns  about  Meed  the 
Maid  would  certainly  not  have  thanked  his  eulogists  for  presuming 
him  to  be  unfamiliar  with  the  court.  But  it  is  true  that  Chaucer,  to 
some  extent,  represents  the  Humanist  and  cosmopolitan  distaste  i^x 
politics  and  for  ccyitroversialtheology,  while~Langland  represents  a 
strong  turn  for  both7  It  is  true  aTso,  though  he  himself  seems  to 
have  been  no  Wycliffte  or  Lollard,  that  much  of  the  tendency  after- 
wards known  as  Puritan  appears  in  him,  and  that,  to  our  sorrow, 
the  iconoclastic  spirit,  which  was  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries  to  be  the  disgrace  and  curse  of  England,  shows  itself  in 
angry  remarks  about  church  building  and  the  putting  up  of  paihted 
windows.  Tntensp,  but  narrow;  pious,  but  a  little  Philistine--so  we 
■must  pronounce  him. 

Nevertheless  he  had  a  great  literary  talent,  which  perhaps 
amounted  to  genius.  The  literary  craftsmanship  which  succeeds  in 
impressing  on  a  form  so  uncouth  as  the  unrhymed  and  only  faintly 
metred  alliterative  verse  the  combination  of  freedom  and  order,  of 
swing  and  variety,  which  marks  Piers  Plowman,  is  of  that  kind 
which  must  have  distinguished  itself  whatsoever  the  form  it  happened 
to  adopt.  And  although  the  architectonic  gift,  which  might  have  en- 
abled the  poet  to  present  a  real  whole  instead  of  a  series  of  dissolving 
views,  is  not  present,  yet  it  is  astonishing  with  how  little  repugnance 
the  reader  who  has  once  "got  his   hand  in"   accepts   this  apparent 

1  The  politics  of  Piers  Plowman  itself  are  pretty  distinct;  those  of  Richard 
the  Kedclcss,  the  attribution  of  which  to  Langland  is  one  of  the  least  doubtful  of 
such  things,  are  open  to  all.  The  poem  (which  is  to  be  found  in  Professor 
Skeat's  edition,  and  as  "The  Deposition  of  Richard  II."  in  Wright's  Political 
Poems,  Rolls  Series,  i.  368)  is  incomplete  but  extremely  vigorous,  though  marred 
by  the  "  Philistine  "  and  ungenerous  radicalism  which  is  too  frequently  English. 


13S  CHAUCER   AND    HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  hi 

incoherence,  and  resigns  himself  to  see  the  visions  rise  and  blend  and 
melt,  the  bubbles  swell  and  gleam  and  break.  While  as  for  the  force 
of  individual  passages  —  the  Prologue,  the  Fable,  the  best  Court  scenes, 
the  London  Tavern,  the  Harrowing  of  Hell  —  these  have  never  been 
mistaken  by  any  competent  critic  who  has  read  them.^ 

Beside  the  shadowy  and  in  part  apocalyptic  figure  of  Langland, 
the  solid,  well-authenticated,  somewhat  prosaic  personality  and 
literary  w'ork  of  John  Gower-  present  a  contrast  which  has  its 
interest.  Gower,  after  being  wrongly  connected  by  tra- 
dition with  more  than  one  family  and  county,  was 
definitely  established  by  Sir  Harris  Nicolas  as  John  Gower,  Esquire, 
of  Aldington,  in  Kent,  and  of  other  places.  His  birth-year  is  not 
certain ;  he  died,  old  and  it  is  said  blind,  in  1408,  and  his  tomb  is 
one  of  the  numerous  literary  illustrations  of  the  great  and  recently 
reljuilt  church  of  St.  Saviour's,  or  St.  Mary  Overy's,  Southwark,  with 
which  Gower  seems  to  have  been  connected  in  various  ways.  Indeed, 
though  married,  he  appears  to  have  been  in  minor  orders. 

His  literary  work  even  as  we  have  it  is  considerable,  but  part  of 
it  is  lost.  Part  also,  both  of  what  exists  and  of  what  doeg  not,  only 
indirectly  concerns  us  here,  being  written  in  languages  other  than 
English.  Gower  is  the  last  of  the  probably  not  small  class  of 
English  men  of  letters  between  1200  and  1400  who  were  trilingual 
—  writing,  and  probably  speaking,  French,  Latin,  and  English  with 
equal  facility.  The  principal  existing  piece  of  Gower's  French  is  a 
set  of  fifty  Ballades,  the  favourite  French  {fiot  Provencal)  form,  with 
intertwisted  identical  rhymes,  a  recurrent  refrain,  and  (generally)  an 
envoy.  But  he  also  wrote  in  French  one  of  the  three  divisions  of  his 
capital  work,  the  Speculum  Meditantis,  a  moral  poem,  in  twelve 
divisions,  on  Vices  and  Virtues,  which,  after  being  long  lost  and 
sometimes  misidentified,  has  been  at  length  found  and  is  being  edited. 
Another  part  of  this,  the  Vox  Clamaniis,  also  exists,  but  is  in  Latin. 
It  is  a  lively  political  poem  in  elegiacs  with  internal  rhyme,  dealing 
with  the  disturbance  of  Richard  the  Second's  reign.  Gower  was  a 
favourite  of  the  unlucky  but  not  unlettered  king,  and  deserted  him 
for  the  rising  sun  of  Bolingbroke.  This  poem  contains  a  very  striking 
sketch  of  Wat  Tyler's  rising.  ^  Later,  as  a  Lancastrian,  the  poet  wrote 

1  The  best  commentary  on  the  via/fer  of  Langland  is,  and  is  long  likely  to  be, 
M.  Jusserand's  L' Epopee  mystique  de  W.  Langlaiid. 

r  2  Gower  has  never  been  edited  as  a  whole,  and  it  is  to  be  wished  that  Professor 
Skeat  would  complete  with  him  the  set  of  Chaucer  and  Langland.  At  present 
the  Con/essio  is  in  Chalmers's  Poets,  in  a  separate  edition  by  Dr.  Pauli,  and  cheaply 
in  Professor  Morley's  Carisbrooke  Library.  But  the  Cinquante  Ballades  and  the 
Vox  Clamantis  are  in  Roxburghe  Club  editions  with  the  Tripartite  Chronicle,  the 
last  being  also,  with  other  pieces,  in  Wright's  Political  Poems  ("  Rolls  Series," 
vol.  i.),  and  the  Ballades  (72)  in  a  German  edition  by  Stengel  (Marburg,  1886). 


CHAi'.  II  LANGLAND   AND   GOWER  139 

another  poem  of  the  same  kind  in  leonine  hexameters,  which  is  called 
the  Tripartite  Chronicle,  and  is  a  strongly  partisan  account  of  Richard's 
errors  and  downfall.  .This  is  almost  wholly  historical  :  the  Vox 
diverges  into  a  good  deal  of  miscellaneous  matter  (satire  on  the 
friars,  etc.),  which  reminds  us  of  Piers  Plowman. 

The  Cotifessio  Amantis,  the  third  and  English  part  of  Gower's 
opus  magnum,  is  much  less  vigorous  and  spirited  than  either  of  these 
Latin  poems ;  but  while  they  have  no  significance  for  English  litera- 
ture, it  has  much.  It  was  undertaken  at  the  hapless 
Richard's  suggestion. ^  It  is  an  immense  poem,  or  Amantis"" 
collection  of  poems,  in  (with  infinitesimal  exceptions) 
octosyllabic  couplets,  accomplished  to  the  point  of  extreme  fluency, 
but  curiously  lacking  in  backbone  and  vigour.  It  fills,  in  Chalmers's 
Poets,  some  five  hundred  and  fifty  columns,  each  of  which  at  its  fullest 
holds  nearly  seventy  lines ;  but  Latin  arguments  of  the  various 
sections  take  some  room.  Probably  there  are  between  thirty  and 
forty  thousand  lines  in  all.  The  author  declares  his  purpose  of 
writing  in  "  the  middle  way,"  of  composing  a  book  half  of  pleasure  and 
half  of  learning.  After  a  long  historical  and  miscellaneous  prologue, 
he  opens  his  first  book  with  one  of  the  stock  complaints  of  the  woes  of 
lovers,  and  proposes  to  make  his  own  confession  to  Genius  —  3.  Rose 
personage,  of  course.  The  confessor,  after  a  sermon,  appropriately 
or  inappropriately  illustrated  as  usual,  begins  to  hear  his  confession, 
and  succeeds  in  making  of  it  a  frame  for  a  huge  series  of  tales  from 
classical  and  mediaeval  sources  alike.  Actaeon,  Perseus,  and 
Ulysses  are  succeeded  by  the  tale  of  Florent,  the  subject  of  Chaucer's 
IVife  of  Bath's  Tale  ;  Narcissus  jostles  a  king  of  Hungary ;  Alboin 
and  Rosmunda  have  their  place  not  far  from  Nebuchadnezzar.  The 
beautiful  story  of  Constance  (Emari,  see  supra),  which  Chaucer 
probably  borrowed  from  Gower,  appears ;  the  original  of  Pericles ; 
the  tale  of  "  Rosiphele,"  perhaps  the  original  of  77ie  Flower  and  the 
Leaf ;  and  dozens  of  others  from  all  sources  and  of  all  sorts.  The 
poem  ends  gracefully  enough,  though  not  altogether  cheerfully,  by 
Venus  at  once  hearing  the  poet's  prayer,  and  dismissing  him  from 
her  court  as  too  old  for  love,  with  a  rosary  of  black  beads  hung 
round  his  neck  inscribed  Pour  Rcposer.  _ 

Grace,  indeed,  Gower  cannot  be  said  with  justice  at  any  time  to\ 
lack ;  his  faults  are  the  want  of  strength,  of  definiteness,  in  his  con- 
ceptions and  deliveries,  the  insignificant  fluency  of  his  verse,  and 
above  all,  the  merciless  and  heart-breaking  long-windedness  which 
results  from  it.  Even  this  conclusion,  which  is  full  of  true  and 
touching  things  (as  where  Venus  after  her  operations  asks  the  forlorn 

1  Its  exact  date  is  matter  of  guesswork.      It  probably  took  a  good  many  years 
to  write,  but  may  have  been  begun  as  early  as  138J  or  thereabout. 


I40  CHAUCER   AND    HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  iil 

poet  laughingly  what  love  is,  and  he  cannot  answer  her),  is  prolonged 
to  such  an  extent  that  all  the  shock  is  expended,  all  the  race  and 
spirit  watered  down.  In  his  own  time,  by  himself  and  by  Chaucer, 
Gower  was  specially  called  "moral."  Venus,  with  her  kindly  scorn, 
acknowledges  this  gift  in  him,  and  dismisses  him  to  its  enjoyments 
now  that  he  is  unfit  for  hers.  In  recent  days  a  slight  imputation,  not 
exactly  of  immorality,  but  of  morality  of  a  low  kind,  has  in  turn  been 
cast  on  him.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that  he  was  moral  enough  in 
the  special  contemporary  fashion,  which  consisted  in  illustrating 
every  point  by  some  approved  extract  from  authority,  and  by  sub- 
jecting it  as  far  as  possible  to  the  process  of  allegorical  homilising. 
Although  Chaucer  casts,  directly  or  dramatically,  blame  on  his  selec- 
tion of  such  stories  as  those  of  Apollonius  and  Canace,  this,  if  serious, 
would  be  rather  a  hypercriticism.  But  Gower  has  no  passion,  the 
"  cold  ointment "  which  Venus  puts  on  his  heart  at  the  end  of  the 
Confession  must,  one  would  think ,  have  been  applied  to  some  extent 
/even  before  the  beginning  of  it ;  and  in  his  most  pathetic  serious 
[stories  (the  humorous  he  hardly  attempts)  the  sinewy  directness  of 
I  Chaucer,  the  mystical  fire  of  Langland,  are  things  to  which  he  does 
mot  even  try  to  attain. 

I  Yet  it  would  be  a  very  great  mistake  to  minimise  or,  like  many, 
to  pass  by  as  negligible  the  contribution  of  Gower  to  English  litera- 
ture.    Even   in    itself,  if  it    has    not  the  very  highest   qualities,  it  is 

far  above  contempt.     Coleridge's  rather  pettish  wish  that 
reputation.     Chalmers    had   given    Lydgate   instead,    must  have    been 

caused  either  by  very  excusable  ignorance  of  Lydgate's 
actual  worth ;  or  by  a  complete  failure  to  recognise  the  formal 
superiority  of  Gower  and  the  importance  of  his  priority  in  time ;  or 
perhaps,  and  even  probably,  by  that  capriciousness  which  too  often 
mars  Coleridge's  criticism.  The  contemporaries  of  Chaucer  and 
Gower,  and  the  immediate  successors  who  entered  into  their  labours, 
made  no  such  mistake,  though  in  the  fifteenth  century  they  some- 
times, and  not  quite  unjustly,  promoted  Lydgate  himself  to  the  actual 
company  of  his  masters.  That,  historically  and  as  a  master,  Gower 
had  a  real  right  to  be  ranked  with  Chaucer,  is  as  unquestionable  as 
that  Gower  is  vastly  Chaucer's  inferior  as  a  poet.  We  need  not 
attach  great  value  to  the  supposed  and  indeed  probable  priority  of 
Gower  to  Chaucer  himself.  It  is  sufficient  that  they  were  certainly 
fellow-pioneers,  fellow-schoolmasters,  in  the  task  of  bringing  England 
to  literature.  Up  to  their  time,  as  we  have  established  by  actual 
survey,  the  literary  production  of  the  country,  whether  in  the  suc- 
cessive vernaculars  of  Anglo-Saxon  and  Early  Middle  English,  or  in 
the  half-naturalised  foreign  tongues  of  French  and  Latin,  had  been 
exceedingly  rudimentary  and  limited.     All  but  a  very  small  part  of  , 


CHAP.  II  LANGLAND   AND   GOWER  141 


it  had  been  purely  religious  or  ecclesiastical ;  of  the  small  "  profane  " 
portion  the  whole  of  the  belles  lettres  division  had  been  in  verse; 
and  again  all  but  a  very  small  part  of  this  verse  had  been  directly 
translated  romance.  It  was  the  function  of  great  writers  now  to 
establish  the  form  of  English  as  a  thoroughly  equipped  medium  of 
literature,  and  to  furnish  it  further,  as  far  as  they,  could,  with  matter 
various  in  kind,  and  with  varieties,  of  style.  JEven  Langland,  a 
much  more  interesting  and  striking  figure  than  Gower  to  us,  could 
have  been  much  better  spared  by  his  own  generation  than  Gower 
himself.  InJiiemry  form  Lajiglajid-Jiad -nothing  tn  teiich  :  he  was 
in  fact  merelyrowuTg '  off-stream,,  if  JiQL,agaijlst-Jt|^  up  a  backwater 
which -litPliowliTtRer.  In  substance  he  was  powerfiir~rattTer  than 
profitable,  offering  nothing  but  allegory,  of  which  there  was  already 
only  too  much,  and  political-ecclesiastical  discussion,  a  growth  always 
nearer  to  the  tares  than  to  the  wheat  of  literature.  In  other  words, 
and  to  vary  the  metaphor,  he  gave  the  workmen  in  the  new  workshop 
of  English  letters  no  new  or  improved  tools,  he  opened  up  to  them 
no  new  sources  of  material.  jHe  was  a  genius,  he  was  a  seer,  he 
was  an  artist;  but  he  was  neither  master  nor  stock-provider  in 
literature.   I 

Gower  was  both.  The  want  of  zest  and  race  in  his  literary  style 
(though  he  has  style),  and  still  more  in  his  poetical  medium,  must 
not  be  allowed  to  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  both  show  an  enormous 
improvement  on  such  immediate  predecessors  as  Hampole,  as  the 
author  of  The  Pearl,  as  the  author  of  Cursor  Mnndi.  H^Jcnov^sJiis 
crafty  faj:-4^tter  thag-tb^v-'did ;  he  has  better  tools;  he  can  teach 
others  to  turn  out  work  that  can  be  depended  on,  while  they  them- 
selves, and  all  those  who  followed  them,  were  constrained  either  to 
have  touches  of  genius  or  to  be  frankly  inadequate  if  not  simply  in- 
tolerable. Gower,  unlike  Chaucer,  was  apparently  no  master  of 
prose,  and  his  faculty  in  verse  was  strictly  limited  to  the  octosyllable  in 
English  —  in  Latin,  as  we  have  said,  he  could  write  more  vigorously, 
if  also  more  barbarously.  BuL_so_Jar_as__he_  w-ent^he^  was  distinctly 
an  pv^-'p^Q  of  Htar.'iry  nrrjimplishment  —  and  examples  of  literary 
accomplishment  were  what  England  then  wanted  first  of  all. 

What  she  wanted  next  Gower  also  saw,  and  this  too  he  also,  as 
he  could,  provided.  It  was  a  want  which  the  plain  common  sense 
of  Ca.\ton  saw  still  existing  nearly  a  hundred  years  later,  and  which 
was  never  really  supplied  till  a  hundred  more  had  passed ;  a  want 
which  explains  the  dearth  and  dulness  so  often  charged  against  the 
Afpurteenth  century  ;  a  want  which  no  exceptional  genius  could  supply. 
/l1ie  English  Muses  simply  did  not  know  enough  to  do  much  :  they 
anted  feeding,  training,  educating;  they  were  in  their  nonage. 
/Now  the,  to  us,  odd  and  cumbrous  medley,  the  "marine  stoi'e "   of 


142  CHAUCER   AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  hi 

the  Confessio  Arnantis,  was  an  attempt  to  supply  these  wants,  to 
give  matter  and  models  at  once :  to  write  a  book,  as  Gower  says  in 
the  interesting  exordium,  which  only  his  fatal  fluency  prevents  from 
being  quite  excellent  — 

After  the  world  that  whilome  took 
Long  time  in  olde  dales  past. 
And 

to  touch  also 
The  world  that  neweth  every  day. 

That  his  efforts  were  not  vain,  the  genuine  gratitude  of  his  immediate 
successors  for  his  lessons  in  "  rhethorike  "  —  in  form  —  testifies  ;  and 
Chaucer  and  Shakespeare  are  perhaps  sureties  after  whom  it  is  un- 
necessary to  produce  any  others  as  to  the  value  of  his  contributions 
in  matter. 1 

1  Chaucer  dedicates  his  Troilus  to  Gower  and  to  the  philosophical  Strode  — 
identified  fairly  well  with  Ralph  Strode,  who  flourished  about  1370,  and  seems  to 
have  written  a  good  deal  in  Latin  and  English  prose  and  verse.  An  attempt, 
ingenious  but  purely  fanciful,  has  been  made  to  find  the  "  Pearl  poet "  (pp.  79- 
81)  in  this  Strode. 


CHAPTER   III 

CHAUCER'S   PROSE  —  WYCLIF,   TREVISA,    MANDEVILLE 

Turning-point  in  prose  —  Chaucer's  prose  tales — His  Boethius  —  The  Astrolabe — ■ 
Wyclif  —  John  of  Trevisa  —  Sir  John  Mandeville  —  The  first  prose  style 

The  prose  of  the  late  fourteenth  century  in  England  is  not  to  the 
mere  literary  taster,  with  one  notable  exception,  at  all  comparable  in 
interest  to  the  verse  of  the  same  time.  But  it  is  hardly  less  impor- 
tant. For  this  time  was  in  fact  the  beginning  of  English 
prose  properly  so  called.  Before  1350  it  may  be  doubted  "in  pfji^°'°' 
whether  there  is  a  single  English  work  in  prose,  with 
the  exception  of  the  Ancren  Riwle,  which  unites  the  bulk  and  the 
literary  quality  of  a  book  proper ;  and  while  the  Ancren  Riwle  is 
still  almost  more  Saxon  than  English  in  language,  it  belongs  in  subject 
to  the  division  of  sacred  literature,  which,  though  it  is  one  of  the 
noblest  of  all  divisions,  yet  of  necessity  is  less  national,  less  idiosyn- 
cratic, than  any  other. 

At  the  great  turning-point,  however,  which,  though  it  must  have 
come  sooner  or  later  anyhow,  was  undoubtedly  determined  to  no 
small  extent  by  the  concentration  of  English  patriotic  sentiment, 
owing  to  the  conquests  of  Edward  III.,  prose  did  not  merel}-,  like 
verse,  make  a  fresh  start,  it  made  a  start  almost  for  the  first  time. 
From  the  later  years  of  Edward  and  the  reign  of  Richard  II.  date 
four  writers  of  prose,  each  noteworthy  in  his  own  way,  and  three  out 
of  the  four  notable  in  something  more  than  his  own  way  —  Chaucer 
the  poet,  Wyclif  the  controversialist,  Trevisa  the  chronicler,  and 
the  shadowy  personage  long  known,  and  perhaps  even  yet  not 
entirely  exorcised,  as  "Sir  John  Mandeville."  All  were  translators 
in  less  or  greater  degree,  but  all  also  were  originals  of  English  prose 
writing. 

The  interest  of  Chaucer's  prose  works,  the  Treatise  on  the  Astro- 
labe, the  translation  of  Boethius,  the  Parson's  Tale,  and  the  Tale  of 
Melibee  is  almost  entirely  an  interest  of  form ;   and  in  the  last  that 

•  143 


144  CHAUCER   AND    HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  in 


interest  is  minimised  and  almost  confined  to  the  fitful  and  straggling 

emergence  of  blank  verse,  or  something  like  it,  at  the  opening.     So 

too    the   Parson's    Tale,   a   translation    and   a   theological 

Chaucer's     translation,  does   not  advance  us  very  much  further  than 

prose  a  es.     ^^^  prosc  treatises  by  or  attributed  to  Hanipole  and  his 

followers  in  the  first  half  of  the  century.     It  is  good  straightforward 

English,   but   shows    no   attempt   at   style,   while   the   well-worn   and 

strictly   prescribed    common    form    of    its    matter    expresses    further 

limitations.      The   Boethius   and   the   Astrolabe  are    superior.      The 

version  of  the  first,  even  if  it  were  intrinsically  less  attractive,  would 

inevitably  invite  comparison  with  Alfred's  at  the  dawn  of  Saxon  as 

this  at  the  dawn  of  modern  English  prose,  and  the  often  noble,  never 

contemptible,  matter  of  the   original   could   not  and  did  not  fail  to 

stimulate  an  artist  like  Chaucer.     But  the  most  valuable  point  of  the 

Boet/iiiis  as  an  exercise  for  the  pioneer  in  a  new  prose 

uiis.  .^    ^j^^    ^^^^    ^^    ^j^^    ^^  Metres,"    which,    especially  when 

rendered  by  such  a  poet  as  Chaucer  into  a  language  with  such 
illimitable  latent  possibilities  as  English,  must  needs  result  in  far 
more  ambitious  and  far  more  successful  attempts  in  "the  other 
harmony"  than  had  yet  appeared.  Accordingly  some  of  the  metre 
passages  in  Chaucer's  version,  though  quite  legitimate  and  sound 
prose,  attain  a  rhythmical  as  well  as  verbal  dignity,  which  English 
prose  was  hardly  to  know  again  save  in  a  few  passages  of  Malory, 
Fisher,  Berners,  and  the  translators  of  the  Bible,  till  late  in  the 
sixteenth  century.  And  the  whole  shows  that,  if  it  had  suited 
Chaucer  to  write  more  originally  in  prose,  he  might  have  effected  a 
revolution  therein  at  least  as  great  as  that  which  he  did  effect  in  verse, 
nay  greater,  seeing  that  he  had  practically  no  forerunners. 

The  attractions  of  the  Treatise  on  the  Astrolabe  are  different,  but 

perhaps  they  are  not  less.     The  specially  pleasant  and  easy  address 

to  "  little  Lewis  my  son,"  for  whom  the  treatise  was  compiled,  and  of 

whom,  unluckily,  we  know  no  more,   does  not  so  much 

Astrolabe.     Contrast  with  as  supplement  the  interest  of  the  piece  as 

an  early  scientific  treatise  by  one  of  the  greatest  of  men 

of  letters.     The  astrolabe  was  a  small   pocket  instrument,  somewhat 

of  the   sextant   kind,   for   taking   the   altitudes   and   positions  of  the 

heavenly  bodies ;    and  though   the  object  of  its  use  was  astrological 

rather    than     astronomical,    it     has,    I    believe,    been     admitted    by 

"  scientists  "  of  the  severest  stamp  that  the  treatise  itself  shows  an 

exactness   of    scientific    acquirement    up   to   a    certain    point    which 

certainly  would    not  be  easy  to   parallel    in   any  but   a   specialist  of 

modern  times. ^     And  it  is  not  perhaps  superfluous  or  impertinent  to 

1  Astronomy    {"  Ast.    edit     astra")     was    part    of    the    regular    mediaeval 
Quadrivium. 


CHAP.  Ill      CHAUCER'S   PROSE  — WYCLIF   AND   OTHERS  145 


add  that  astrology,  a  study  which  may  be  defined  as  rather  extra- 
scientific  than  anti-scientific,  and  which  at  least  attained  a  complete 
rigidity  of  scientific  method,  has  an  almost  unsurpassed  traditional 
interest  for  literature.  To  the  time  of  Chaucer's  great  moderniser 
Dryden,  it  held  the  belief  of  the  best-informed  and  least  generally 
credulous  of  men,  and  even  since  it  went  out  of  fashion,  it  has  been 
splendidly  celebrated  in  prose  and  verse  by  Scott  and  Coleridge. 
But  in  this  treatise  of  Chaucer's,  the  great  interest  is  the  spectacle  of 
an  early  example  of  the  scientific  application  of  literature  and  the 
literary  handling  of  science.^ 

The  work  of  Wyclif,'-  a  prose  writer  only,  and  a  "sacred"  and 
philosophical  prose  writer  only,  is  less  novel,  less  attractive,  but  not  less 
important.  Little,  despite  his  fame  and  the  violent  partisanship  for 
and  against  him,  is  really  known  of  the  author.  We  ^^  ^^.j. 
do  not  know  when  John  Wyclif  was  bornr  or  where, 
though  the  probabilities  connect  his  birth  with  the  place  of  Wycliffe- 
on-Tees  and  the  time  of  1320-1325.  He  was  certainly  Master  of 
Balliol  (a  northern  college)  at  Oxford,  in  1360;  and  by  the  confession 
of  his  opponents,  was  a  recognised  expert  in  theology  and  scholastic 
philosophy.  He  had,  after  giving  up  Balliol  on  his  appointment  to 
a  college  living,  become  Warden  of  Canterbury  Hall,  now  merged  in 
Christ  Church ;  but  was  deprived  of  this  post  by  the  next  Archbishop 
but  one  of  Canterbury.  Other  preferments  came  to  him,  and  in  1374 
he  received  the  Crown  benefice  of  Lutterworth,  which  he  held  till  his 
death,  ten   years   later.      The   best-known   event  in   his   life   was   his 

1  A  thing  of  more  length  than  merit,  the  Testament  of  Love,  used  to  be  included 
in  Chaucer's  prose  works,  and  may  be  found,  by  those  who  want  it,  in  Chalmers 
and  in  Professor  Skeat's  Supplement.  For  once  the  exorcists  are  justified  of  their 
spells.  Not  only  does  the  thing  (which  is  an  allegorical-religious  treatise  on  the 
author's  quest  for  a  "  Margaret,"  wlio  is  less  doubtfully  than  usual  a  mere  eidolon  of 
Grace,  or  spiritual  truth,  or  the  Church)  contain  internal  evidence  that  it  is  not 
Chaucer's  in  its  reference  to  him,  but,  as  any  one  who,  knowing  the  Boetliius,  reads 
it  will  see  at  once,  it  pillages  that  book  and  others  of  his  in  a  way  which, 
barefaced  in  another,  would  be  unintelligible  in  himself.  It  is  now  put  down  (a 
kind  of  signature  being  discovered)  to  a  certain  Thomas  Usk,  a  busy  Londoner, 
who  was  executed  with  a  good  deal  of  barbarity  by  the  triumphant  Gloucester 
faction  in  1388.  Usk  did  not  quite  deserve  "  hanging  for  his  bad  prose ";  but 
it  is  not  good. 

2  Wyclit's  English  work,  outside  the  Bible,  with  some  not  his,  is  to  be  found 
in  Mr.  T.  Arnold's  Select  Riiglish  Works  of  Wyclif  {j,  vols.).  Clarendon  Press,  and 
Mr.  F.  U.  Matthew's  /inglish  Vl'orks  of  Wyclif  hitherto  unprinted  (E.E.T.S.).  The 
whole  Bible,  a  composite  work  of  Wyclif  and  others,  was  edited  in  4  vols.  4to 
by  Forshall  and  Madden,  Oxford,  1850;  the  Gospels  (very  conveniently  printed 
in  parallel  columns,  with  the  early  Gothic  and  A.S.  versions  and  Tyndale's)  by 
fk)Sworth  and  Waring  (3rd  ed.  London,  1888).  His  very  voluminous  Latin 
works,  philosophical  and  ecclesiastical,  have  been  tackled  by  a  special  Wyclif 
Society. 

L 


146  CHAUCER   AND    HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  hi 

summons  to  appear  in  St.  Paul's  on  a  charge  of  heresy  in  1377,  on 
which  occasion  the  court  was  practically  broken  up  by  the  turbulence 
of  Wyclifs  partisan,  John  of  Gaunt.  Into  the  nature  and  extent  of 
his  heresies  we  are  here  precluded  from  entering.  On  ''  Dominion," 
on  Transubstantiation,  and  other  points,  they  reached  the  extreme  of 
scholastic  subtlety ;  and  perhaps  the  most  practical  part  of  his  tenets 
was  the  establishment  of  an  irregular  order  of  "poor  priests,"  who 
took  the  field  at  once  against  the  corrupt  friars  and  the  extravagantly 
endowed  prelates  of  the  time.  These  poor  priests,  more  definitely 
than  Wyclif  himself,  were  responsible  for  the  "  LoUardy "  which, 
though  its  first-fruits  in  the  Wat  Tyler  insurrection  came  in  Wyclifs 
lifetime,  developed  later,  and  did  not  call  for  sharp  repression  till  the 
reigns  of  Henry  IV.  and  Henry  V.  Much  of  Wyclifs  tendency  in 
politics  ecclesiastical  is  observed  in  Langland,  but  the  latter  shows  no 
sign  of  any  doctrinal  heresy. 

The  English  literary  work  of  Wyclif  and  the  Wyclifites  (for  a 
large  part  of  the  University  of  Oxford  was  saturated  with  his  doctrine, 
and  the  complete  body  of  Wyclifian  literature  is  rather  an  earlier 
"  Tracts  for  the  Times  "  than  the  work  of  any  one  man)  consists  on 
the  one  hand  of  a  new  and  complete  translation  of  the  Bible,  on  the 
other  of  a  considerable  mass  of  tracts  and  sermons  intended  for 
popular  consumption.  In  some  respects  these  latter  are  not  very 
delightful  or  profitable  reading.  We  find  already  in  them  the  hard, 
narrow  intolerance  of  contrary  opinion  and  the  refusal  to  believe  in 
its  honesty,  the  savage,  churlish  hatred  of  all  the  beauty  of  holiness  — 
music  (the  "knacking  of  new  songs,"  as  the  Wychfite  catchword 
has  it),  painted  windows,  fair  architecture,  and  all  that  makes  the 
mediaeval  church  gracious  and  precious  in  our  eyes — the  almost 
Iscariot-like  grudging  of  all  expense  on  divine  worship  that  is  not 
"  given  to  the  poor,"  the  rage,  at  least  as  much  political  and  social  as 
theological,  at  wealthy  and  exalted  bishops  and  abbots,  the  sectarian 
jealousy  between  "poor  priests"  and  friars, —  all  the  ugly  Philistine 
sourness,  in  short,  which  disgraces  the  extreme  Protestant  party  of 
the  sixteenth  century  and  the  extreme  Puritan  party  of  the  seventeenth. 
There  is  little  room  in  this  furious  cudgel-play  of  partisan  hatred  for 
the  serene  exercise  in  elaborate  prose  which  Chaucer  gives  us  in  the 
Boethius,  for  the  scientific  precision  of  the  Astrolabe.,  for  the  gay  and 
varied  garrulity  of  Mandeville.  A  few  lively  touches  of  manners,  a 
few  of  the  less  merely  "teeth-gnashing"  flouts  of  satire,  a  quaint 
phrase  here  and  there,  a  racy  translation  of  antiquity  —  these  are  the 
principal  attractions  which  the  Wyclifite  tracts  have  to  offer;  while 
as  for  the  Translation  of  the  Bible,  as  it  cannot  compete  as  literature 
with  that  produced  some  two  centuries  later,  so  it  has  merely  the 
same   attraction   as   matter.     It   should   be   observed    that    there   are 


CHAP.  Ill      CHAUCER'S   PROSE  — WYCLIF   AND   OTHERS  147 

later  and  earlier  versions  of  it,  the  former  much  the  more  advanced 
in  grammar  and  style. 

Nevertheless  both,  as  much  the  one  as  the  other,  were  most 
important  as  contributions  to  English  prose.  Wyclif  and  his  coad- 
jutors brought  to  both  their  tasks  —  that  of  translation  and  that  of 
tract-writing  —  a  combination  of  education  and  of  "  object "  which 
has  been  very  rare  in  literary  history.  They  were  all  trained  in  the 
severest  science  of  scholastic  study,  the  most  thorough  perhaps  that 
has  ever  been  seen.  Even  a  Bachelorship  of  Divinity  represented 
four  years  training  in  arts,  three  more  in  the  quadrivium  of  mediaeval 
science,  music,  arithmetic,  geometry,  and  astronomy ;  and  seven  more 
still  in  theology.  Every  man  who  had  gone  through  this  had  been 
in  the  habit  of  constant  disputes  with  opponents,  on  the  watch  to 
note  the  slightest  vagueness  of  definition,  the  slightest  illicit  process 
of  argument.  Yet  these  accomplished  scholars  were  in  their  new 
venture  addressing  the  common  people  first  of  all.  Their  training 
compelled  them  to  be  precise ;  their  object  compelled  them  to  be 
forcible.  In  the  translation  of  the  Bible  they  had  a  wide  range  of 
the  most  various  kinds  of  literature,  history,  poetry,  oratory, 
philosophy,  parable,  —  matter  which  still  retained,  after  being  passed 
through  the  Latin  sieve,  large  admixture  of  its  original  Oriental 
elements  to  colour  and  diversify  the  English  result.  In  their  tracts 
they  had  above  all  things  to  be  exact  in  aim  to  meet  their  enemies, 
and  to  be  forcible  to  attract  disciples.  No  better  exercising  ground 
for  an  infant  prose,  in  at  least  some  ways,  could  have  been  provided, 
than  this  combined  one  of  translation  and  polemic.  We  do  not, 
indeed,  find  in  Wyclif,  or  in  any  of  the  immediate  Wyclifites,  the  full 
consequences,  which  we  shall  find  fifty  years  later  in  Pecock's 
Repressor,  of  a  vocabulary  and  arrangement  varying  between  extreme 
scholasticism  and  extreme  vernacularity,  but  we  find  approaches  in 
both  directions. 

The  third  prose  author  of  this  time  owes  his  position  to  reasons 
rather   different   from  those   which   have   preferred   Chaucer,    Wyclif, 
and    Mandeville.     He  is    neither    a   great   poet    who   was   an  almost 
equally  great  all-round  man  of  letters,  nor   an  eager  con- 
troversialist  who   has  linked  his    name   with    one   of  the      Trc"is°. 
great  versions  of   the  Bible    (there  seems   to  have   been 
an  idea  in  Caxton's  mind  that  Trevisa  did  translate  the   Bible,   but 
nothing  else  is  known  of  it)  nor  an  interesting  if  shadowy  personality 
whose    name    is    attached    to    a    charming   piece   of  literature.     He 
simply  produced  an  English   version   of  tlie  Latin  Clironicle  or  Poly- 
chronicon    of   Ralph    Higden,    which    had    been    written    not   so    very 
much  before   his  own   day.     Higden   was   a  West  countryman,  who 
was  born  about  the  last   decade  but   one  of  the  thirteenth    century; 


148  CHAUCER   AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  hi 

became  a  monk  of  the  Benedictine  Abbey  of  St.  Werburgh  at 
Chester;  perhaps  (it  is  necessary  to  lay  stress  on  that  "perhaps") 
had  something  to  do  with  English  literature  directly  in  the  matter 
of  the  Chester  Plays,  and  certainly  wrote  this  Polychronicon,  one 
of  the  usual  historical  surveys,  "  beginning  at  the  beginning,"  narrow- 
ing to  a  rather  more  particular  survey  of  Jewish  and  Roman  his- 
tory with  others,  and  ending  with  that  of  England  continued  to 
the  writer's  own  time.  Higden  is  said,  on  the  not  altogether  trust- 
worthy authority  of  Bale,  to  have  died  in  1363.  Not  very  long 
after  this  his  book  was  Englished  1  by  John  of  Trevisa,  who,  as  the 
"  Tre "  shows,  was  a  Cornishman,  but  seems  to  have  been  chiefly 
connected  with  Berkeley  in  Gloucestershire.  He  is  said  to  have  died 
in  1 41 3,  but  liis  History  was  finished  as  long  before  as  1387.  The 
piece  has  more  interest  for  its  matter,  which  includes  much  early 
(indeed  the  earliest)  description  of  England  in  English,  and  for  the  evi- 
dence it  gives  of  the  now  unrestrainable  impulse  to  write  about  English 
matters  generally  in  the  English  tongue,  than  for  any  special  literary 
merit  or  savour.  Trevisa,  who  seems  to  have  been  no  great  scholar 
in  Latin,  for  he  confesses  that  he  could  not  always  understand  his 
original,  was  no  genius  in  English.  But  his  style  is  racy  from  its 
age,  and  agreeable  for  its  want  of  pretension.  In  his  day  a  man 
deserved  almost  more  credit  for  undertaking  a  long  work  in  English 
than  most  men  would  deserve  now  for  abstaining  from  it. 

The  last  name  to  be  mentioned  in  this  chapter  is  by  far  the  most 
interesting  in  the  special  connection  of  English  prose.  But  the  dis- 
cussion of  it  is  complicated,  and  obstructed  by  a  more  than  ordinary 
amount  of  those  teasing  and  extra-literary  squabbles  about  authorship 
and  authors  which  meet  us  so  frequently.  Nay,  in  consequence  of 
the  doubts  which  have  been  raised  as  to  the  existence  of  Sir  John 
Mandeville,  and  the  proofs  (not  invalid  as  such  things  go)  that  the 
real  author  was  a  French  or  Flemish  physician  of  Liege,  proposals 
have  even  been  made  to  oust  the  book  '^  altogether  from  English 
literary  history  and  give  it  to  French. 

These  proposals  cannot  for  one.  moment  be  admitted.  The 
French  version  of  Mandeville  may  be  —  very  likely  is  — the  oldest.     It 

1  Edited,  with  the  Latin,  in  the  "  Rolls  Series."  As  with  nearly  all  the  early 
historians,  the  interest  of  the  work  for  literature  can  be  almost  sufficiently  gauged 
by  sample,  and  a  dozen  pages  of  extract  will  be  found  in  Morris  and  Skeat, 
Part  II. 

2  There  is  no  thoroughly  satisfactory  edition.  Wright's,  in  the  Bohn  Library 
(among  Early  Travels  in  Palestine),  is  too  much  modernised;  Mr.  Warner's,  for 
the  Roxburghe  Club,  is  not  generally  accessible;  Halliwell's,  more  than  once 
reprinted,  is  the  best  edition;  and  Mr.  E.  B.  Nicholson,  Bodley's  Librarian,  is 
the  best  authority  on  the  disputed  points,  which  he  has  treated  in  the  Eticylopadia 
Britannica  and  elsewhere. 


vjHAiMii       CHAUCER'S   PROSE  — \\^CLIF  AND   OTHERS  149 

may  have  been  —  it  very  likely  though  by  no  means  necessarily  was  — 
written  by  some  one  who  was  not  an  Englishman.  But  it  is  a  book 
which,  in  the  history  of  literature,  has  very  little  impor- 
tance. French  prose  had  been  written  currently  on  all  sub-  Mandeville. 
jects  for  two  centuries  before  it ;  and  there  was  nothing 
remarkable  in  its  existence.  No  one  has  contended  that  the  French 
author  can  for  a  moment  vie  with  Villehardouin,  or  Joinville,  or  his 
own  contemporary  Froissart,  as  a  prose  writer.  The  book  has  had 
no  influence  on  French  literary  history  —  no  great  French  writer  has 
been  inspired  by  it,  none  of  its  "  notes  "  in  the  least  corresponds  to 
any  mark  of  French.  The  contrary  of  all  these  things  is  the  case 
in  regard  to  the  English  version.  Even  the  infidels  do  not  place 
that  version  much  later  than  1400,  and  it  may  be  permitted  to  doubt 
whether  it  is  not  older ;  for  though  the  prose  shows  an  advance  in  ease 
and  resource  on  Wyclif,  a  great  one  on  Trevisa,  it  is  not  much,  if  at 
all,  in  front  of  Chaucer.  It  is  quite  an  admirable  thing  in  itself;  it 
shows,  if  it  be  a  translation,  that  some  third  person  must  be  added 
to  Malory  and  Berners  to  make  a  trinity  of  such  English  translators, 
as  the  world  has  rarely  seen,  in  the  fifteenth  century.  It  expresses 
with  remarkable  fidelity  the  travelling  mania  of  the  English,  and  in 
the  stories  of  the  "Watching  of  the  Falcon,"  the  "Daughter  of 
Hippocrates,"  and  others,  it  has  supplied  romantic  inspiration  for 
generation  after  generation.  As  French  it  is  little  or  nothing  to 
Frenchmen  or  to  France ;  as  English  it  is  a  great  thing  to  England 
and  to  Englishmen. 

The  facts  as  to  authorship  and  contents  are  as  follows.  The 
book  purports  to  have  been  written  by  Sir  John  Mandeville  of  St. 
Albans,  who  began  to  travel  on  Michaelmas  Day  1322,  journeyed  in 
the  East  for  thirty  years  and  more,  and  after  obtaining  leave  from  the 
Pope,  and  coming  home  a  sufferer  from  gout,  produced  his  book  in 
Latin  and  P>ench  and  English  in  1356.  Later  accounts  have  it  that 
he  was  buried  at  Li6ge.  Against  this  are  the  facts  that  no  other  notice 
of  any  such  Sir  John  Mandeville  exists;  that  the  arms  quoted  as 
on  the  Liege  monument  have  nothing  to  do  with  any  family  of  the 
name;  and  that,  as  we  have  mentioned,  the  French  version  seems  to 
be  much  anterior  to  the  English,  if  not  also  to  the  Latin.  Further, 
before  any  more  serious  doubts  had  been  started  about  Mandeville's 
personality  than  those  which  arose  from  the  marvels  narrated  in  his 
book,  and  which  had  almost  from  the  first  caused  it  to  be  regarded 
as  a  capital  example  of  a  "traveller's  tale," — it  had  been  observed  that 
its  contents  were  very  far  from  original.  A  certain  Friar  Odoric  may 
have  travelled  in  "Cathay"  (Chinese  Tartary),  and  had  ills  travels 
written  down  by  a  brother  of  his  Order,  as  early  as  1330.  Now  the 
resemblance   between  Mandeville   and    Odoric   is   striking.      Further 


150  CHAUCER  AND    HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book  hi 

borrowings,  certain  or  extremely  probable,  have  been  indicated  from 
another  Franciscan  friar,  from  an  Armenian  named  Hayton,  from  a 
German  knight  named  Boldensele,  and  from  others.  Part,  it  is  true, 
is  not  accounted  for,  and  seems  to  be  direct  personal  experience ;  but 
the  whole  is  very  like  a  blend  of  such  experience  with  matter  from 
earlier  books.  And  the  compiler  has  been  identified  with  a  certain 
Liege  physician,  John  of  Burgundy  or  John  of  the  Beard,  who  is  said 
to  have  revealed  his  personality  on  his  deathbed  to  a  third  John, 
John  of  Outremeuse.  Perhaps  we  may  not  impertinently,  like  Prince 
Henry,  take  leave  of  all  these  withered  old  Johns  and  Sir  Johns, 
whose  identity  is  shadowy  in  the  extreme  and  of  no  importance. 

Once  more  the  book  is  the  thing;  and  the  importance  of  the 
book,  by  whomsoever  written,  at  whatsoever  time  anterior  to  the 
latest  (the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century)  at  which  it  can  possibly 
have  appeared,  and  whether  translation  or  original,  remains  for  the 
history  of  English  prose  immutable  and  inexjDugnable.  The  title  of 
"  Father  of  English  prose,"  which  used  to  be  given  to  Mandeville,  is 
indeed  ^rather  silly,  as  are  all  such  titles,  if  only  in  that  they  provoke 
the  chronological  and  other  squabbles  from  which  literary  study  has 
suffered  so  much.  No  one  man  could  be  "  the  Father  of  English 
Prose  "  at  any  time ;  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  had,  as  we  have  seen, 
at  this  time  at  least  four  simultaneous  fathers.  What  the  Voyage  and 
Trai/aile  really  is,  is  this  —  it  is,  so  far  as  we  know,  and  even  beyond 
our  knowledge  in  all  probability  and  likelihood,  the  first  considerable 
example  of  prose  in  English  dealing  neither  with  the  beaten  track  of 
theology  and  philosophy,  nor  with  the,  even  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
restricted  field  of  history  and  home  topography,  but  expatiating  freely 
on  unguarded  plains  and  on  untrodden  hills,  sometimes  dropping  into 
actual  prose  romance,  and  always  treating  its  subject  as  the  poets 
had  treated  theirs  in  Brut  and  Mori  d'' Arthur ,  in  Troy-book  and 
Alexandreid,  as  a  mere  canvas  on  which  to  embroider  flowers  of 
fancy.  It  is  the  first  book  of  belles  lettres  in  English  prose,  and  this 
is  such  a  priority  as  the  most  ambitious  of  authors,  identified  or 
unknown,  might  be  content  with.  And  being  such,  it  deserves  a 
brief  handling  of  its  material  and  formal  characteristics,  such  as  we 
have  given  to  its  verse  predecessors  in  the  same  supreme,  and  indeed 
only  purely  literary,  department  of  literature. 

The  extreme  attractiveness  of  the  matter,  and  the  delightful 
illustrations  of  old  attached  to  it,  have  perhaps  a  little  drawn  away 
attention  from  the  fact  that  the  form  of  the  book  is  well  worthy  of 
the  substance.  A  summary  of  the  life  of  our  Lord  (for  it  must  be 
remembered  that  the  book  is  primarily  a  road-book  for  the  Holy 
Land)  leads  to  a  description  of  Constantinople  and  a  prdcis  of  the 
tenets  of  the   Greek    Church.     Then  we    cross    the    "  Brace    of   St. 


CHAP.  Ill      CHAUCER'S   PROSE  — WYCLIF  AND   OTHERS  151 

George  "  (Sea  of  Marmora)  and  come  to  Asia  Minor,  where  Cos  gives 
us  the  "  Daughter  of  Hippocrates,"  and  Rhodes  another  wild  tale, 
and  Cyprus  an  account  of  hunting  leopards.  Jerusalem  itself  follows, 
and  "Babylon"  (which  it  must  be  remembered  is  always  Cairo  in 
the  Middle  Ages),  and  a  long  account  of  Egypt  and  of  Arabia,  and 
how  roses  came  into  the  world,  and  of  Jerusalem  again,  and  of  whole 
Palestina.  Only  after  this  do  we  get  into  the  true  Utopian  El  Dorado 
of  Mandeville,  with  the  "Watching  of  the  Spar-hawk"  in  an 
Armenian  castle  (what  time  the  Ark  still  was  visible  on  the  top  of 
Ararat),  and  the  customs  of  Ind,  and  the  great  Cham  of  Cathay,  and 
the  royal  State  of  Prester  John,  and  the  four  floods  that  come  from 
the  Paradys  Terrestre.  There  is  hardly  a  page  in  the  book  which  is 
not  full  of  interesting  detail,  of  romantic  suggestion,  of  fact  sublimed 
and  opalised  by  imagination,  or  by  the  mere  process  of  continuous 
report  from  lip  to  lip  and  book  to  book. 

But  the  great  interest  for  us  is  that  here,  and  here  for  the  first 
time  distinctly,  the  subject  and  the  idiosyncrasy  of  the  author  pro- 
duce between  them  a  style.  There  are  approaches  to  a  style  in 
Chaucer;  but  he  was  kept  too  close  to  his  text  in  Boethius,  to  his 
subject  in  the  Astrolabe.  Wyclif  might  have  reached  one ;  Trevisa 
probably  could  not :  Mandeville  did.  His  object  being  to  produce 
his  effect  by  the  accumulation  of  interesting  marvels,  with  few  models 
before  him  except  the  arrangements  of  the  Bible,  he  mostly  affects 
short  sentences,  and  has  a  trick  of  beginning  each  with  "  And." 
This  conjunction  is  dear  to  the  story-teller,  because  it  has  a  sort  of 
arresting  and  exciting  effect  upon  the  hearer,  by  promise  of  something 
fresh ;  while  the  long  periodic  sentence,  besides  requiring 
greater  practice,  is  apt  to  weary  hearers  as  opposed  to  prose  style, 
readers.  The  vocabulary  is  simple  and  rather  modern, 
with  few  obsolete  or  archiac  words,  as  indeed  might  be  expected, 
whether  the  book  was  really  the  work  of  a  cosmopolitan  traveller  or 
that  of  a  mere  homekeeping  forger  of  letters.  Few  books  of  the 
time,  when  the  spelling  is  completely  modernised,  have  so  little 
uncouthne.ss  about  them.  And  one  thing  (rarely  to  be  said  of  any 
author,  rarest  of  one  mediaeval  in  time)  is  that  this  author  knows 
exactly  when  he  has  said  enough.  Nothing  tempts  him  to  the  fatal 
loquacity  of  nearly  all  writers  between  the  Dark  Ages  and  the 
Renaissance,  and  he  will  even  apologise  for  the  Sparrowhawk  discus- 
sion which  tells  the  reason  of  the  woes  of  Armenia.  "  This  is  not 
the  right  way  to  go  to  the  parts  that  I  have  named,  but  for  to  see  the 
marvel."  To  see  the  marvel  of  the  rising  of  literary  pro.se  style  in 
English  there  is  no  better  way  than  to  read  Mandeville. 


INTERCHAPTER   III 

Short  as  is  the  period  which  has  been  covered  in  the  preceding 
Book,  and  few  as  are  the  names  which  it  contains,  we  have  at  last 
reached  in  it  one,  the  importance  of  which  has,  in  great  part  at  least, 
not  to  be  pleaded  for.  At  no  time  during  the  present  century  —  at 
no  time,  indeed,  during  the  last  five  centuries,  except,  and  that  not 
universally,  for  a  short  interval  during  the  eighteenth  —  would  the 
right  of  Chaucer  to  a  place,  and  a  great  one,  in  English  literary 
history  have  been  contested ;  while,  silly  as  the  title  of  *'  Father 
of  English  Prose"  may  be,  the  fact  of  its  having  been  long  ago 
awarded  sometimes  to  Mandeville,  sometimes  to  WycHf,  is  a  piece 
of  evidence  in  itself.  Yet  there  is  no  need  for  this  to  break  the  good 
custom  of  these  interposed  summaries ;  indeed,  one  at  the  present 
juncture  may  have  special  value. 

For  it  is  impossible  to  appreciate  too  clearly  the  exact  position 
of  Chaucer  in  poetry,  while  that  of  himself  and  his  contemporaries 
in  prose  certainly  has  not  always  been  appreciated  with  even  the 
least  clearness  —  if  Professor  Earle  had  any  justification  for  saying, 
not  more  than  a  few  years  ago,  that  "there  exists  a  general  impres- 
sion among  educated  Englishmen  that  our  prose  dates  from  the 
sixteenth  century."  ^ 

Even  to  appreciate  Chaucer  with  exactness  and  propriety  is  by 
no  means  a  matter  of  course ;  yet  without  such  an  appreciation  it 
is  impossible  to  get  the  parts  of  the  history  into  true  proportion  and 
connection.  At  no  time  have  competent  readers  failed  to  perceive 
his  abounding  humour,  the  shaping  faculty  which  enables  him  to 
make  every  character  at  once  an  individual  and  a  type,  the  "  gold 
dewdrops  of  his  speech,"  the  sweetness  of  his  music.  Perhaps  we 
have  outgrown  (there  is  at  any  rate  no  excuse  for  us  if  we  have  not) 
the  idea  entertained  even  by  Dryden  that  this  sweetness  is  "rude," 
that  there  is  something  untutored  and  infantine  about  it.  But  it  may 
be  doubted  whether  even  yet,  whether  even  among  persons  who  may 

1  English  Prose,  p.  369. 
152 


BOOK  III  INTERCHAPTER  III  153 

boast  some  acquaintance  with  him,  an  accurate  estimate  of  his  posi- 
tion in  regard  both  to  the  past  and  the  immediate  future  prevails. 
It  so  happens,  oddly  enough,  that  the  first  part  of  this  has  been 
expressed  with  extreme  propriety  of  fact,  and  in  words  that  could 
no.t  be  bettered  in  another  language  in  reference  to  another  person, 
by  a  writer  who  probably  had  never  heard  of  Chaucer,  and  would 
have  regarded  him  as  a  savage  if  he  had.     Boileau's  famous  couplet  — 

Villon  sut  le  premier  dans  ces  siecles  grossiers 
Debrouiller  I'art  confus  de  nos  vieux  romanciers  — 

is,  as  it  stands,  a  sort  of  Helot  among  critical  utterances.  The  sikles 
were  not  grossiers  ;  Villon  was  not  the  first  to  ''  disembroil "  poetical 
art  of  any  kind ;  and  what  he  did  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with 
the  vieux  romanciers,  but  was  the  infusion  of  a  modern  spirit  into 
fo.-ms  already  arranged  for  him  as  exactly  and  neatly  as  any  art 
could  be  arranged.  But  the  second  line  expresses  precisely  what 
Chaucer  did  in  English,  and  what  gives  him,  if  not  his  chief  title  to 
admiration  as  a  poet,  his  chief  place  in  literary  history.  He,  in  fact 
and  in  deed  — 

Debrouilla  I'art  confus  de  nos  vieux  romanciers. 

It  already  existed  in  plentiful  quantity,  and  now  and  then  in  no  incon- 
siderable degrees  of  accomplishment.  But  it  was  all  in  the  shape 
of  broiiillon  —  of  rough  draft.  Men  had  practised  the  octosyllabic 
couplet  for  centuries,  but  they  had  never  succeeded  in  writing  it 
with  a  sure  mastery  at  once  of  vigour  and  of  variety,  of  smoothness 
and  of  strength.  They  had  got  safely  through  very  intricate  stanzas, 
but  no  one  of  them  had  any  stanza  so  under  his  command  as  to 
write  anything  at  all  approaching  the  best  passages  —  indeed  prac- 
tically the  whole  —  of  Troilus.  They  had  now  and  then  stumbled  upon 
the  great  heroic  couplet  itself,  but  they  had  hardly  known  it  when 
they  saw  it,  and  had  invariably  let  it  slip  again,  even  if  they  per- 
ceived its  character.  Nay,  in  his  own  day,  some  men  were  even 
relapsing  from  the  point  that  art  had  reached  on  the  earlier  stage  of 
"rim  ram  ruf"  —  on  the  rhythmical  prose  of  alliteration  either  simple 
of  itself  or  awkwardly  bedizened,  like  a  true  savage  art,  with  feathers 
and  gawds  of  inappropriate  stanza  and  rhyme. 

All  this  Chaucer  debrotiilla  —  set  straight,  copied  out  fair,  and 
left  the  copy  so  transposed  as  a  testimony  for  ever,  and  a  point  to 
which  men  might  return,  but  which,  once  gained,  they  never  could 
really  lose.  He  was  no  doubt  powerfully  backed  on  the  more  artistic 
side  by  Cower,  but  Gower  liad,  in  English  at  least,  little  strength; 
and  he  was  far  more  powerfully  backed  on  the  otlier  by  Langland, 
but  Langland  had,  or  chose  to  have  in  this  respect,  an  inferior  and 


154  CHAUCER   AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  book 

antiquated  art.  In  the  union  of  the  two  Chaucer  stood  alone,  and 
fortunately  he  was  quite  able  to  stand  alone. 

To  such  an  estimate  the  demur  may  be  made,  "  If  he  did  so 
much,  how  was  it  that  outside  his  own  work  so  little  resulted  —  that 
nearly  a  century  and  a  half  had  to  pass  after  his  death  before  any  real 
advance  was  made? "  To  this,  of  course,  no  absolutely  complete  answer 
can  be  given.  The  most  philosophical  view  of  the  philosophy  of  history 
never  pretends  to  explain  all  the  facts,  especially  in  regard  to  "  the 
times  and  the  seasons."  The  best  explanation  why  there  is  no  poet 
in  English  —  even  in  Scots  —  who  is  the  equal  of  Chaucer,  between 
Chaucer  himself  and  Surrey,  is  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  no  such  poet 
appeared.  But  we  can  give  some  side-explanations,  some,  as  it  were, 
marginal  notes  on  this,  and  we  can  at  any  rate  see  that  things  were 
much  better  as  they  were.  If  Chaucer  had  not  appeared  when  he 
did,  the  language  might  have  got  into  ways  too  slovenly  for  it  to 
acquire  a  real  Ars  poetka  at  all,  might  have  succumbed  to  the  rigid 
syllabic  prosody  of  French  (there  was  some  danger  of  this  for  a  long 
time  to  come),  or  have  gone  off  "rim-ram-ruffing  "  into  the  wilder- 
ness. But  since  he  appeared  when  he  did,  his  work  was  necessarily 
exposed  to  the  drawback  that  it  was  composed  in  a  language  which 
had  still  not  acquired  its  complete  modern  form.  The  final  e,  a 
troublesome  and  by  this  time  a  useless  thing,  which  meant  anything 
and  everything  and  nothing,  had  to  be  shed ;  some  other  structural 
changes  had  to  be  gone  through.  Above  all,  the  language  had  to 
pass  under  certain  modifications  of  sound  which  have  never  yet  been 
fully  explained.  In  this  welter  Chaucer  could  not  be  equalled ; 
Spenser  could  not  come  till  it  was  over.  But  through  it  all  Chaucer's 
work  remained,  above  the  welter  itself,  a  pattern  and  a  beacon  at 
once. 

The  influence  of  Gower,  infinitely  less  as  is  his  value  for  us,  was 
probably  not  so  very  much  less  than  Chaucer's  for  his  own  contem- 
poraries. The  third  great  poetical  figure  of  the  time  exactly  reverses 
these  conditions.  Langland  is  for  us  a  true,  nay  a  great,  poet ;  his 
reactionary  aberrations  in  form  can  do  us  no  harm,  and  his  apoca- 
lyptic obscurity  adds  something  of  a  zest  to  our  reading  of  him. 
These  would  not  have  been  the  best  of  influences  on  his  own  age, 
which  was  urgently  in  need  of  formal  correction,  and  was  not  at  all 
in  need  of  incitements  to  allegorical  meandering.  But,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  he  does  not  seem  to  have  exercised  much,  if  he  exercised  any, 
influence,  and  what  he  had  was  in  the  direction  of  political  and  other 
satire,  not  that  of  poetry  proper.  Even  the  alliterators  did  not  usually 
follow  his  straightforward  reliance  on  alliteration  and  accent,  but 
confessed  their  sense  of  insufficiency  by  calling  in  more  and  more 
the  aid  of  stanza  and  of  rhyme. 


HI  INTERCHAPTER   III  155 


The  formal  importance  of  the  age  in  prose  is  hardly  less,  though 
its  productions  have  far  less  intrinsic  interest.  The  excursion  of 
prose  beyond  the  narrow  limits  of  theological  matter  which  had  so 
long  confined  it  was  one  great  thing ;  the  use  of  it  to  address  the 
common  people,  who  had  hitherto  been  only  accessible  by  verse,  was 
another.  That  the  third  limit  —  translation  —  which  had  been  im- 
posed upon  it  still  remained,  was  no  drawback  for  the  time.  Very 
much  more  importation  of  vocabulary.;  very  much  more  experiment,  like 
that  of  Pecock  in  the  next  age,  with  term-forging;  very  much  more 
copying  of  the  more  accomplished  prose  forms  of  French  and  Latin, 
were  necessary  before  the  resources  of  style  could  really  be  at  the 
command  of  the  English  prose  writer  in  miscellaneous  subjects.  But 
the  return  to  vernacular  writing  in  history,  more  than  two  hundred 
years  after  the  pen  had  left  the  hand  of  the  last  annalist  of  Peter- 
borough, meant  a  very  great  deal ;  the  application  of  the  genius  for 
letters  of  such  a  man  as  Chaucer  to  scientific  exposition  in  the 
Astrolabe,  to  philosophical  exposition  in  the  Boethius,  meant  a  great 
deal  more ;  perhaps  the  example  of  prose  narrative  of  the  easy, 
interesting,  not  first  of  all  instructive  kind  in  Mandeville  meant 
most  of  all.  This  fascinating  shadow,  whatever  else  he  was,  and 
whatever  else  he  did,  was  the  spiritual  father  of  Malory  and  Berners, 
of  Lyly  and  Sidney,  of  Defoe  and  Fielding,  of  Miss  Austen  and 
Scott.  They  were  still  long  to  be  "  bodiless  childfuls,"  but  they 
were  now  "  bodiless  childfuls  of  life,"  and  Sir  John,  if  ever  any  other, 
gave  them  that  life. 

Lastly,  we  must  not  forget,  though  considerations  of  weight  have 
necessitated  a  mere  allusion  to  it  as  yet,  that  the  third  great  kind, 
the  kind  which  is  not  essentially  prose  nor  essentially  verse,  but 
partakes  of  both  —  to  wit.  Drama  —  was  by  this  time  certainly  born  in 
English.  It  was  as  yet  in  swaddling  clothes ;  perhaps  we  must  not 
be  too  absolutely  certain  that  any  single  piece  now  actually  in  our 
possession  existed  in  the  form  in  which  we  have  it  now.^  But  there 
is  no  reason  for  doubt  that  this  momentous  and  important  kind  —  which 
was  to  absorb  the  greatest  genius  of  the  first  really  complete  age  of 
English  literature,  which  was  to  confer  inestimable  benefits  upon 
both  prose  and  verse,  and  was  to  be  the  first  literary  kind  to  engage, 
apart  from  some  consideration  of  profit,  the  attention  of  a  great 
audience  —  had  for  some  time  left  the  use  of  Latin  and  become 
common  in  the  vernacular.  It  was  still,  as  has  been  said,  in 
swaddling  clothes,  it  was  performed  and  composed  in  ways  unfavour- 
able to  a  rapid,  accomplished  literary  development,  it  was  limited  in 
subject,  awkward  in  form ;  but  it  was  the  drama  —  the  direct  ancestor 

1  The  well-known  Harrowing  of  Hell  is  possibly  as  early  as  Alison,  but  it  is 
faintly  dramatic,  and  there  is  a  long  interval  between  it  and  other  things. 


»56 


CHAUCER   AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES 


BOOK  III 


of  the  great  Elizabethan  drama  itself —  and  its  presence  in  the  list  of 
literary  kinds  is  a  matter  of  the  first  importance. 

In  short,  the  literary  work  of  the  Middle  Ages  proper  in  England 
was  now  complete,  and,  with  a  good  fortune  rare  and  almost  un- 
paralleled,  what  they  had  given  was  caught  up,  summed,  uttered  in 
perfect  form  by  a  poet  of  the  greatest  genius,  and  a  prose  writer  of 
no  small  talent.  Perhaps  this  good  fortune  had  in  a  manner  to  be 
paid  for  by  the  relapse  in  poetry  which  the  next  century  saw.  But 
even  this  was  a  rest  as  well  as  a  relapse,  and  meanwhile  prose  the 
unresting,  if  also  the  unhasting,  was  making  advances  as  steady  as 
they  are  unmistakable. 


BOOK    IV 


THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 


CHAPTER    I 


THE   ENGLISH   CHAUCERIANS  —  LYDGATE   TO   SK.ELTON 


Contempt  for  fifteenth  century  literature — Lydgate  —  Occleve — Bokenam  — 
Audelay  and  Minors — Hawes  —  The  Pastime  of  Pleasure  —  The  Example  of 
Virtue  —  Barclay  —  The  Ship  of  Fools  —  The  Eclogues  —  Skelton  —  His  life  — 
His  poems 

Few  sections  of  English  Letters  have  been  more  abused  or  more 
disdained  than  the  literature,  and  especially  the  purely  English 
poetry,  of  the  fifteenth  century.  The  contemptuous  ignorance  of 
M.  Taine  extended  even  to  the  Scottish  poets,  who  have   ^  , 

r  \  .  ,     Contempt  for 

been  more  generally  excepted  from  condemnation ;  and  fifteenth  cent- 
less  excusable  under-valuation  of  these  same  has  been  ""^^  iterature. 
made  by  critics,  at  least  to  the  language  born,  such  as  Mr.  Lowell  and 
Mr.  Lounsbury.  Even  those  who  do  not  commit  the  unpardonable 
or  inexplicable  error  of  belittling  or  ignoring  Uunbar  and  Henryson 
have  usually  a  short  shrift  and  a  long  drop  for  the  English  writers  of 
the  time,  and  especially  for  the  English  poets. 

Of  these  disdains  literary  history  knows  nothing;  and  nothing 
is  to  be  passed  over  by  her  unless  it  is  at  once  devoid  of  intrinsic 
attraction,  and  of  no  importance  as  supplying  connections  and 
origins.  Even  from  the  first  point  of  view,  slighting  of  the  Tiua 
Maryit  Wenien  and  the  IVedo,  of  the  Testament  of  Cressid,  of  the 
A'tuifs  Quair,  of  Malory  and  Berners,  of  the  Ni(t-brow7ie  Maid,  and 
the  carol  "  I  sing  of  a  maiden,"  must  convict  the  slighter  either  of 
invincible  bad  taste,  or  of  ignorance  that  cannot  be  too  soon 
corrected.  From  the  second,  the  period  which  shows  us  the  progress 
m,  and  the  final  stoppage  of,  the  blind  alley  of  alliteration,  the  strange 

'57 


15S  THE  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

failure  to  make  the  improvement  that  might  have  been  expected  on 
the  magnificent  advantages  given  by  Chaucer,  the  process,  slow  but 
sure,  of  elaborating  the  machinery  and  amassing  the  capital  of 
English  prose,  the  probable  beginning  of  the  ballad,  the  spread  and 
popularising  of  the  drama.^  and  the  certain  and  glorious  ending  of 
romance,  need  not  be  ashamed  of  itself  in  any  company  which  knows 
and  observes  the  laws  of  literary  history. 

The  poets,  both  Scotch  and  English,  of  this  century  were  wont  to 
leash  with  Chaucer  and  Gower  in  the  triplet  of  masters  whom  they 
acknowledged  and  hailed  with  reverence  John  Lydgate  the  "Monk 
of  Bury."  Very  little  is  known  of  the  life  of  this  voluminous,  some- 
wliat  undistinguished,  but  by  no  means  unpleasant  or  uninteresting 
writer,  who  has  had  decidedly  hard  measure  in  the  way  of 
presentation  to  modern  readers,  though  the  Early  English  Text 
Society  has  begun  to  devote  a  portion  of  its  too  small  resources  and 
its  too  largely  drawn  upon  labour  to  the  task.^  The  latest  certain 
date  in  his  life  is  1446.  As  the  dates  of  his  orders  are  —  sub-deacon, 
1389;  deacon,  1393;  and  priest,  1397.  he  may  have  been  born  about 
1370.  He  appears  to  have  enjoyed  the  advantages  of  the  three 
greatest  European  Universities  of  his  day  —  Oxford,  Paris,  and 
Padua  —  and  his  knowledge  both  of  ancient  and  modern  literature 
must  have  been  pretty  complete  for  the  time.  He  taught  rhetoric  at 
Bury  St.  Edmunds,  and  it  must  be  remembered  that  Rhetoric,  which 
had  for  many  centuries,  legitimately  or  illegitimately,  extended  itself 
in  the  sense  of  the  Art  of  Prose  Literature,  had  by  this  time  absorbed 
poetics  likewise,  and  that  in  the  fifteenth  century  especially 
"  rhetorike "  and  (in  French)  rhetoriqiieur  are  words  almost  inter- 
changeable with  "  poetry  "  and  "  poet.'"  Unluckily,  as  from  the  days  of 
Martianus  Capella''  downwards  rhetoric  and  ornate  diction  had  been 
closely  connected,  this  also  became  confounded  with  poetry,  and  the 
main  objection  to  fifteenth-century  verse  next  to,  or  indeed  connected 

1  For  reasons  given  post  it  has  seemed  better  to  reserve  the  dramatic  matter, 
which  might  have  made  some  appearance  even  earlier,  and  has  a  fair  claim  to  a 
place  here,  for  the  next  Book,  so  far  as  the  main  text  is  concerned.  See  also 
Interchapters  iii.  {supra)  and  iv.  (infra). 

2  Until  this  reissue,  which  has  already  given  the  Temple  of  Glass  and  other 
things,  was  begun,  Halliwell's  edition  of  the  Minor  Poems  for  the  Percy  Society, 
and  the  Story  of  Thebes,  and  some  smaller  pieces  given  by  Chalmers  in  his 
Chauceriana,  formed  the  accessible'  Lydgate,  illustrated  by  four  and  twenty 
pages  of  bibliography,  which  Ritson  devotes  in  his  Bibliographia  Poetica 
(London,  1802)  to  "this  voluminous,  prosaick,  and  drivelling  monk,"  as  the  critic, 
with  his  usual  sweetness,  describes  his  subject. 

3  This  crabbed,  but  to  fit  tastes  not  unpleasing,  writer  paints  the  breast  of 
Rhetoric  as  exquisitissimis  gemmarum  coloribus  balteatum,  gives  her  arms 
which  clash  velut  fulgoreae  nubis  fragore  colliso  bovibis  dissultantibus,  and 
assigns  to  her  a  vox  aurata  —  all  transparent  allegory. 


CHAP.  I  THE   ENGLISH   CHAUCERIANS  159 


with,  its  prolixity  and  dulness,  is  its  addiction  to  "  aureate  "  terms  — 
that  is  to  say,  bombastic  classical  or  pseudo-classical  phraseology. 

In  this  Lydgate  is  not  quite  such  a  sinner  as  some  of  his  con- 
temporaries and  still  more  his  successors.  He  could  now  and  then 
catch  something  at  least  of  the  propriety  of  language  which  is  one  of 
his  master  Chaucer's  glories,  and  he  was  also  less  to  seek  than  any 
other  of  that  master's  purely  English  followers  in  versification,  though 
he  too  shows  some  signs  of  that  curious  confusion  of  poetic  tongue 
which  came  upon  his  time. 

The  early  printers,  Caxton,  Pynson,  and  Wynkyn  de  Worde,  in 
whose  time  Lydgate  still  ranked  as  one  of  the  di  majores  of  English 
literature,  were  not  unkind  to  him ;  but  the  mania  for  early  printed 
books  as  such  has  made  these  editions  entirely  inac- 
cessible, save  in  public  libraries,  to  the  lover  of  litera- 
ture who  is  not  a  millionaire.  Fortunately,  the  pieces  noted  above 
appear  to  be  very  fair  specimens  of  his  work,  much  of  the  current 
abuse  of  which  is  only  an  echo  of  the  violence  of  Ritson,  a  critic 
seldom  to  be  undervalued  when  he  praises,  but  too  often  merely  to 
be  neglected  when  he  blames.  The  Thebes  poem,  which  was 
obviously  intended  as  a  pendant  to  the  Knight's  Tale,  gives  the 
more  canonical  history  of  the  wars  which  are  taken  for  granted  as  pre- 
cedent in  Chaucer's  poem,  consists  of  between  four  and  five  thousand 
verses  in  couplets  (vide  infra),  and  begins  as  a  Canterbury  Tale  with 
a  prologue,  references  to  Ospringe  and  other  localities,  and  an  invitation 
by  the  host  to  "Dan  John  "to  tell  it.  In  this  piece  the  characters 
of  Statins  and  those  of  Boccaccio  are  both  drawn  upon,  and  the 
story  is  sufficiently  well  told,  though  with  too  many  speeches  and 
involutions,  and  with  little  share  of  Chaucer's  orderly  and  artful 
action.  The  most  noteworthy  thing  about  it,  however,  as  about  most 
of  the  poetry  of  Lydgate,  of  Occleve,  and  even  of  Hawes,  not  to 
mention  smaller  men,  is  that  strange  loss  of  "grip"  in  versification 
which  has  been  more  than  once  referred  to.  How  far  this  is  due  to 
careless  or  ignorant  copying  or  printing  cannot  be  said  with  con- 
fidence until  a  much  larger  amount  of  Lydgate's  enormous  work  has 
been  competently  edited  from  the  MSS.  ;  but  it  is  very  improbable 
that  this  can  ever  he  made  to  bear  the  whole  blame  or  any  large  part 
of  it.i     The  truth    would   rather   seem  to    be    that    Chaucer   was   too 

1  If  Lydgate  is  really  responsible  for  the  following  lines  in  an  account  of 
Henry  VI.'s  entry  into  London  (Afinor  Poems,  p.  3),  no  bathos  and  no  bad  verse 
can  have  been  inaccessible  to  him  — 

Their  clothing  was  of  colour  full  convcnable: 
T/tf  noble  Afayor  clad  in  red  veleivet  ( !) 
The  SherifTs,  the  Aldermen,  full  notable, 
Infurrid  clokys  the  colour  Scarlett. 
Observe  that  "  In  furred  clokys,  scarlet  in  colour,"  is  an  obvious  change,  and 
makes  a  very  fair  line. 


36o  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

far  in  advance  of  his  time  both  in  ear  and  in  perception  of  the 
capabilities  of  the  language  ;  that  his  followers,  while  ignorant  of  the 
real  powers  of  the  decasyllable,  improperly  attributed  to  it  that  license 
of  shortening  as  well  as  lengthening  by  equivalence  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  had  generally  prevailed  in  regard  to  the  octosyllable ;  or  else 
that  they  were  bewildered  by  the  old  go-as-you-please  liberty  of 
alliterative  rhythm,  while  the  confusion  was  worse  confounded  by 
rapid  and  uncertain  changes  of  pronunciation  and  accentuation  in 
the  language,  as  English  finally  shook  off  all  dependence  upon 
French,  as  its  dialects  mixed  and  blended,  and  as  other  influences 
were  brought  to  bear.  Certain  it  is  that  in  Lydgate,  still  more  in 
Occleve,  and  more  or  less  in  all  the  others  of  this  chapter,  while  the 
line  sometimes  loses  all  rhythmical  sufficiency,  though  it  does  yield 
ten  syllables  to  the  finger,  it  at  any  other  time  fails  to  respond  even 
to  this  mechanical  test,  and  simply  sprawls  —  a  frank  and  confessed 
nondescript  or  failure. 

These  faults  appear,  but  somewhat  less,  in  the  Complaint  of  the 
Black  Knight  and  the  other  smaller  poems  caught  in  the  great 
"Chauceriana"  net.  The  rhyme-royal  of  the  Complaint  seems  to 
have  acted  as  a  sort  of  support  and  stay  to  the  backboneless  writers 
of  this  time.  In  the  other  shorter  poems,  and  in  the  pleasant  piece 
of  London  Lickpenny  —  which  is  one  of  Lydgate's  best  and  best-known 
things,  and  which  describes  the  woes  of  a  penniless  (or  one-pennied) 
man  in  Westminster  Hall  and  in  London  shops  and  streets  —  there  is 
naturally  much  more  variety  and  liveliness  than  in  the  longer  and 
more  conventional  efforts.  Not  that  there  is  a  lack  of  convention 
even  here.  It  is  exceedingly  rash  to  take  the  confessions  of  youthful 
follies  and  peccadilloes  which  Lydgate  makes  in  his  Testament,  just 
as  Occleve  does  in  his  Male  Rdgle,  and  many  other  poets  of  this  and 
other  ages  elsewhere,  for  solid  biographical  documents.  The  chief 
of  Lydgate's  other  works  are  the  Temple  of  Glass,  the  very  title  of 
which  is  redolent  of  fifteenth-century  allegory ;  the  Falls  of  Princes, 
perhaps  his  most  popular  book  in  his  own  day,  adapted  from 
Boccaccio,  and  itself  serving  as  model  to  the  famous  miscellany  of 
the  Mirror  for  Magistrates  in  the  sixteenth  century ;  a  Troy  Book, 
one  of  the  numerous  versions  of  Guido  Colonna's  plagiarism  from 
Benoit  de  Sainte-More ;  Proverbs;  the  Court  of  Sapience ;  a  Life  of 
Our  Lady  ;  a  Chronicle  of  English  Kings  ;  Lives  of  his  patron  at  Bury 
St.  Edmunds;  and  so  forth.  These  are  but  a  few  of  the  enormous 
number  of  works  attributed  to  him.  But  the  general  value  of 
Lydgate  is  not  hard  to  fix.  He  is  a  scholar,  not  a  master,  a  versifier 
rather  than  a  poet ;  an  interesting  figure  in  a  time  of  groping  and 
transition,  and  perhaps  not  so  very  unlike  other  figures  in  other 
times. 


CHAP.  I  THE   ENGLISH   CHAUCERIANS  i6i 

Thomas  Occleve  ^  (there  seems  to  be  as  good  authority  for  this 
as  for  the  somewhat  uglier  form  "  Hoccleve  ")  is,  and  probably  will 
continue  to  be,  inseparably  connected  in  literary  history 
with  Lydgate,  of  whom  he  is  a  rather  less  voluminous 
and  rather  less  accomplished  double.  He  was  often  given  to  auto- 
biographic details  of  the  preciser  kind,  and  from  two  of  these  we 
gather  that  he  must  have  been  born  about  1368  {where  is  guesswork, 
the  nearest  locality  in  spelling  being  Hockcliffe  in  Bedfordshire). 
He  entered  the  Privy  Seal  Office  when  he  was  about  twenty, 
and  we  have  abundant  records  of  payments  to  him  for  parchment, 
ink,  and  wax  used,  as  well  as  of  salaries  and  pensions.  He  was 
always  expecting  a  benefice  or  "  corrody "  (annuity  cliarged  on 
ecclesiastical  revenues)  ;  but  nothing  came  till  1424,  when  he  was 
quartered,  to  an  extent  not  exactly  defined,  on  the  Priory  of  Southwick 
in  Hampshire.  We  may  have  something  of  his  as  late  as  144S,  and 
he  may  have  died  a  little  later,  say  1450. 

Occleve's  principal  work  is  an  English  version  o'r  adaptation  in 
rhyme-royal  of  one  or  more  Latin  originals,  under  the  title  of  De 
Regwiine  Frincipmn,'^  preceded  by  a  long  introduction,  partly  auto- 
biographic and  wholly  moralising.  The  enthusiastic  address  to  his 
"master  dear"  Chaucer,  of  whom,  be  it  remembered,  one  of  his 
MSS.  preserves  the  most  probably  authentic  portrait,  is  the  most 
interesting  thing  in  this  lugubrious  and  desultory  work,  of  which  tlie 
versification  frequently  sprawls  and  staggers  in  a  fashion  beside 
which  even  Lydgate's  is  well  girt  and  neatly  moving. 

Among  the  smaller  pieces  attention  has  chiefly  been  given  to  the 
above  referred  to  piece,  entitled  La  Male  Rtgle  de  T.  Occleve,  which 
seems  to  have  been  written  when  the  poet  was  coming  to  forty  years, 
after  which  age  of  wisdom,  however,  he  married  —  for  love,  he  says. 
This  poem  has  the  invariable  characteristics  of  such  regrets  for  lost 
youth,  together  with  the  less  usual  peculiarity  that  the  poet  represents 
himself  as  not  merely  a  ne'er-do-well,  but  a  very  poor  creature  —  a 
valetudinarian,  "  letting  I  dare  not  wait  upon  would "  in  his  very 
escapades,  a  coward,  a  glutton,  vain,  weak,  lazy,  but  with  none  of  the 
nobler  vices.  If  the  thing  had  been  better  done  we  might  have 
taken  it  for  his  humour ;  but  the  poorness  of  the  verse,''  witli  a 
Chaucerian  flasli  or  two  such  as  — 

Excess-at-l)oar(l  has  laid  his  knife  with  me, 

1  The  first  volume  of  an  edition  of  him  has  been  issued  by  the  E.E.T.S. 
under  Dr.  Furnivall's  editorship. 

2  Edited  for  the  Roxburghe  Club  by  Wright  in  i860. 

8  Occleve,  says  Dr.  Furnivall,  "  is  content  so  long  as  he  can  count  the  syllables 
on  his  fingers."     This  is  generous  rather  tlian  severe. 
.M 


i62  THE  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

is  rather  a  warrant  for  truth.  A  singularly  weak  Complaint  of  Our 
Lady  before  the  Cross,  where  the  subject  strikes  no  spark  out  of 
Occleve's  flabby  nature ;  a  feebly  violent  onslaught  on  Sir  John  Old- 
castle  and  the  Lollards ;  certain  ballades,  pious  or  political,  which  are 
no  ballades  at  all,  Occleve  being  apparently  too  weak  to  keep  up  to  the 
rhyme-and-refrain  scheme,  may  be  noticed.  The  Letter  of  Ctipid  to 
Lo7>ers  is  a  little  better.  Not  so  much  can  be  said  of  Occleve''s  Com- 
plahit  and  Occleve's  Dialogue,  though  the  latter  may  have  an  attrac- 
tion for  some  in  its  querulous  garrulity.  But  the  tale  which  it 
introduces  —  a  versification  from  the  Gesta  Romanorum  about  the 
Emperor  Jereslaus's  wife  —  and  a  later  Story  of  Jonathas,  are  not  bad 
of  their  kind,  while  the  poem  which  comes  between  them,  and  which 
is  connected  with  all  that  have  been  mentioned  since  the  Coinplaint, 
Ars  Utilissihia  sciendi  mori,  is,  in  a  different  vein,  their  equal.  It 
is,  like  most  of  the  work  of  this  time  and  of  this  poet,  merely  a 
translation,  though  of  what  original  is  not  quite  certain.  But  there  is 
a  much  healthier  and  manlier  tone  in  it  than  in  the  puling  regrets  of 
the  Male  Rile  for  wasted  health  and  feeble  follies  gone.  The 
fifteenth  century  thought  much  of  Death,  and  the  thought  was  here, 
as  elsewhere,  tonic.  The  whining  poltroon  of  the  retrospect  of 
life  faces  the  prospect  of  death  with  no  sham  philosophy,  and  if  not 
without  fear,  yet  in  humility  and  faith. 

For  those,  and  perhaps  only  for  those,  who  desire  to  appreciate 
at  first  hand  the  strange  paralysis  of  humour  and  harmony,  of 
grace  and  strength,  which  came  upon  the  successors  of  Chaucer  and 
Langland,  it  may  be  worth  while  to  turn  over  the  work  of  Osbern 
Bokenam  (=  probably  Buckenham),^  whose  Legends  of  the  Saints,  in 
some  10,000  lines  of  decasyllabics  variously  arranged  in  Chaucerian 
fashions,  have  had  the  very  undeserved  honour  of  two  reprints,''^ 
chiefly,  it  would  seem,  because  they  represent  the  not  very  common 
dialect  of  Suffolk.  Bokenam,  who,  as  we  learn  from  a 
note  in  the  MS.,  was  a  Suffolk  man,  a  Doctor  of 
Divinity,  and  an  Austin  Friar  of  Stoke  Clare,  tells  the  lives  of  Saints 
Margaret,  Anne,  Christina,  the  Eleven  Thousand,  Faith,  Agnes, 
Dorothy,  Mary  Magdalene,  Katharine,  Cecily,  Agatha,^  Lucy,  and 
Elizabeth  of  Hungary,  in  verse  of  rather  more  smoothness  than 
some  of  his  contemporaries  could  manage,  but  of  a  saltlessness,  an 
absence  of  flavour,  sparkle,  piquancy,  bite,  which  is  desperate  and 
almost  inconceivable.  Not  St.  Margaret  and  the  Dragon,  not  St. 
Katharine  and  the  Wheel,  not  even  that  lovely  legend  of  St.  Dorothea, 
which  might  draw  poetry  from  an  expert   in    phonetics,    can   inspire 

1  "  Dr.  Bokenham  of  Bury  "  occurs,  however,  in  Roger  North. 

2  By  Stevenson  for  the  Roxburghe  Club,  and  by  Horstmann  (Heilbronn,  1883). 
8  "  Agas  "  in  the  English,  a  form  identical  with  the  original  of  "  haggis," 


CHAP.  I  THE   ENGLISH   CHAUCERIANS  163 

Bokenam  with  anything  beyond  the  mildest  prettiness  of  expression, 
and  this  he  very  seldom  reaches.  The  most  interesting  thing  in  the 
whole  book  is  the  statement  in  the  same  end-note  that  Thomas  Burgh 
had  the  poem  copied  in  Cambridge  in  the  year  of  Our  Lord  1447, 
at  the  cost  of  thirty  shillings  —  which  sum  can  seldom  have  been 
either  worse  spent  or  more  hardly  earned  either  by  town  or  gown  in 
that  locality. 

Indeed,  after  making  every  allowance  for  the  attempts,  estimable 
if  not  delectable,  of  Lydgate  and  Occleve  to  keep  English  poetry 
alive  during  the  first  half  of  the  fifteenth  century,  it  is  impossible  not 
to  be  struck,  not  merely  with  the  extremely  moderate  success  of  their 
own  efforts,  but  with  the  paucity  of  any  attempt  to  support  them  among 
their  contemporaries.  What  we  may  call  the  Apocrypha  of  Piers 
Flow/nan,  the  Creed,  and  the  Tale  {vide  supra)  may  belong  to  the 
beginning  of  this  century  as  well  as  to  the  end  of  the 
last.  So  may  the  verses  of  the  Shropshire  poet,  Aude-  "nlnM-s^" 
lay,^  who,  like  Langland  himself,  was  a  reformer  without 
being  a  Wyclifite.  To  the  first  quarter  of  the  fifteenth  century  belong 
William  of  Nassington,  a  Yorkshire  writer  of  sacred  verse,  who 
perhaps  belongs  to  the  tradition  of  Hampole ;  and  Hugh  Campden, 
another  translator,  the  author  of  the  moral  romance  of  Boctus  and 
Sidrac.  The  hapless  Prince  Edward,  son  of  Henry  VL  and  Margaret 
of  Anjou,  before  Clarence  stabbed  him  in  the  field  by  Tewkesbury, 
underwent  the  minor  pain  of  having  a  moral  poem  on  the  Active 
Policy  of  a  Prince  written  for  him  by  a  certain  George  Ashby,  Clerk 
of  the  Signet  to  his  mother,  and  an  aged  Chaucerian.  One  of  Caxton's 
books  is  a  verse  translation  of  Cato's  Morals,  by  Benedict  Burgh,  done 
about  1470;  and  the  last  quarter  saw  some  curious  alchemical  verses 
by  George  Ripley  and  Thomas  Norton.  But  this,  and  perhaps  a 
little  more  of  the  same  kind,  purely  curious  and  appealing  only  to 
the  robuster  kind  of  curiosity,  is  all  that  bridges  in  England  the 
space  between  Lydgate  and  Occleve  in  the  early  part  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  and  Hawes  and  Skelton  in  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth. 
There  is,  it  is  true,  some  anonymous  matter  of  far  greater  interest 
which  may  represent  this  interval,  and  which  will  be  dealt  with  in  a 
later  chapter.     But  even  this  is  but  scanty  in  amount.^ 

Very  little  is  known  of  Stephen  Hawes,  and  that  little  does  not 
include  the  date  either   of  his  birth  or  of  his    death.     He  is  said  to 

'  Ed.  Hallivvell,  Percy  Society,  1844.  A  selection  only.  The  MS.  is  dated 
1426,  and  Audelay  lived  and  wrote  as  late  as  the  reign  of  Henry  VI.  He  has 
"bob  and  wheel"  stanzas,  sometimes  alliterated  and  sometimes  not,  Romance 
sixains,  a  system  composed  of  triplet  octosyllables  separated  by  single  lines, 
monorhymed  throughout  the  poem,  etc. 

2  I  know  the  writers  mentioned  in  this  paragraph,  after  Audelay  and  Nassing- 
ton, only  at  second  hand. 


i64  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

have  been  a  gentleman  of  birth,  an  Oxford  man,  a  pretty  considerable 
traveller,  a  master  of  modern  languages,  a  man  of  great  memory 
(seeing  he  could  repeat  by  heart  the  works  of  Lydgate), 
and  the  possessor  of  a  critical  faculty  somewhat  smaller, 
inasmuch  as  he  made  that  voluminous  person  equal  in  some  respects 
with  Geoffrey  Chaucer.  It  is  said  with  probability  that  he  was 
Groom  of  the  Chamber  to  Henry  VII.;  he  certainly  wrote  verses  to 
congratulate  Henry  VIII.  on  his  accession;  and  it  seems  likely  that 
he  died  in  Suffolk  in  early  middle  age,  certainly  before  1530,  and 
probably  about  1523. 

Wynkyn  de  Worde  printed  collections  of  the  poems  of  Hawes  — 
the  Pastime  of  Pleasure,  by  which  he  is  now  almost  solely  known,  in 
1509,  with  some  more  pieces  and  the  Example  of  Virtue  in  15 12. 
The  Pastime  was  reprinted  by  Wright  for  the  Percy  Society,^  un- 
luckily with  some  omissions.  Mr.  Arber's  long-promised  reprint  of 
his  other  poems  has,  still  more  unfortunately,  never  appeared.  But 
the  text  of  the  Pastime,  and  the  abstract  of  the  Exafuple  contained  in 
Professor  Henry  Morley's  English  Writers,'^  make  an  estimate  easy 
enough.  Hawes  has  been  said  to  belong  to  "the  Pro- 
o/Pteasur'/.  venqal  school,"  a  statement  of  course  entirely  erro- 
neous, and  due  to  the  confusion  between  Proven9al  and 
French,  which  was  at  one  time  excusable,  but  has  long  ceased  to  be 
so.  He  is,  in  fact,  a  Chaucerian  who  has  deepened  one  particular 
colour  of  Chaucerism  by  recurrence  to  the  Romance  of  the  Rose  itself, 
and  still  more  to  the  heavier  following  of  its  allegory  in  the  fourteenth 
and  fifteenth  centuries  by  French  and  English  writers.  The  Pastime 
of  Pleasure,  or  the  history  of  Graund-Amour  and  La  Bel  Pucell,  is, 
like  Gavin  Douglas's  contemporary  King  Hart,  simply  an  allegory 
of  the  life  of  man.  The  hero  passes  the  meadow  of  youth ;  chooses 
the  path  of  Active  Life,  neglecting  the  Contemplative  or  Monastic ;  is 
introduced  to  the  Seven  Daughters  of  Doctrine  (the  Trivitun  and 
Quadriviuni)  ;  meets  La  Bel  Pucell,  determines  to  obtain  her,  but  is 
exposed  to  some  danger  by  the  misguidance  of  a  comic  slanderer  of 
women,  Godfrey  Gobilive ;  destroys  a  three-headed  giant  and  non- 
descript monster,  so  forcing  his  way  to  La  Bel  Pucell ;  is  received  by 
the  Virtues,  and  married  to  his  beloved  by  Law.  He  lives  happily 
with  her  till  Age  strikes  him  with  infirmities  and  the  vice  of  Avarice. 
Contrition  comes  in  time,  however,  before  Death,  and  he  is  buried 
by  Mercy  and  Charity  and  epitaphed  by  Fame. 

Thus  presented  in  its  bare  scheme  or  skeleton,  the  poem  may 
well  seem  (to  use  a  Drydenian  phrase)  but  a  cool  and  insignificant 
thing.     Nothing  is  more  dead  to  us,  hardly  anything  perhaps  seems 

1  1845.  2  vii.  7S-8I. 


CHAP.  I  THE   ENGLISH   CHAUCERIANS  165 

more  certain  of  no  resurrection,  than  this  bald  yet  childish  form  of 
allegory,  which  lacks  alike  the  vivid  passages,  the  attractive,  dreamlike 
transformations,  and  the  fiery  intensity  of  Langland,  the  gorgeous 
romance  of  Spenser  and  his  perfect  poetic  skill,  the  amiable  humanity 
and  vivid  novel-interest  of  Bunyan.  In  the  two  last  of  these  cases  — 
perhaps  even  in  the  first  —  the  allegory,  though  ever  present,  is  present 
in  the  background ;  it  will  come  when  called,  but  does  not  obtrude 
itself;  in  Hawes  it  is  pitilessly  obtrusive  at  every  step.  Further, 
the  poet  is  singularly  ill-provided  with  the  means  of  his  art.  He  is  far 
from  being  such  a  "  dull  dog  "  as  Occleve  ;  he  has  perhaps  more  flashes 
of  poetry  than  Lydgate.  But  either  the  venerable  Wynkyn  was  false 
to  the  central  principle  of  all  good  printing,  "  Follow  copy  even  if  it 
flies  out  of  the  window,"  or  else  Hawes  was  less  able  to  keep  up  any 
standard  of  correct  and  musical  versification  than  even  these  his 
predecessors.  Both  his  rhymes-royal  and  his  couplets  (both  are  used 
in  the  Pastime)  are  subject  to  the  strangest  lapses,  to  fits  of  a  kind  of 
verse-giddiness  or  epilepsy. 

The  Exa)iiple  of  Virtue,  entirely,  it  would  seem,  in  rhyme-royal, 
appears  from  the  abstract  above  referred  to  to  be  even  more  nakedly 
allegoric  than  the  Pastime  of  Pleasure.  The  usual  invocation  of  the 
unequal  three  —  Chaucer,  Gower,  and  Lydgate  —  is  fol- 
lowed by  the  usual  dream.  Youth  is  escorted  by  Dis- "^^J- ^,y%"f ''' 
cretion,  voyages  over  the  sea  of  Vain  Glory  to  an  island 
where  are  the  castles  of  Justice,  Nature,  Fortune,  Courage,  and 
Wisdom  ;  is  engaged  to  Cleanness  ;  is  tempted  by  Lust,  Avarice,  and 
Pride ;  fights  with  a  three-headed  dragon  (Hawes  cannot  spare  the 
three-headed  dragon)  ;  is  new  dubbed  by  Virtue ;  marries  Cleanness, 
and  is  finally  translated  with  her  to  Heaven.  The  three  are  once  more 
invoked,  and  the  poem  ends.  Of  course,  in  both  these  poems  there 
is  a  certain  faint  adumbration  of  the  Faerie  Queen — its  outline  with- 
out its  glorious  filling-in,  its  theme  without  its  art,  its  intellectual 
reason  for  existence  without  any  of  its  aesthetic  justification  thereof. 
It  is  not  improbable  that  Spenser  did  know  Hawes ;  but  if  so  he 
owed  him  a  very  small  royalty.  The  merit  of  this  poet  is  that  he 
manages  occasionally  to  lighten  his  darkness  with  flashes,  to  refresh 
his  desert  with  flowers,  of  by  no  means  mediocre  poetry.  We  owe 
to  him  one  of  the  oldest  forms,  if  not  the  oldest  form,  of  the  beautiful 
saying  — 

Be  the  day  weary,  or  be  the  day  long, 
At  length  it  draweth  to  evensong. 

Fur  which  and  other  things  he  may  be  forgiven  such  intolerablfe 
matter  as  the  following,  which  deserves  its  place  as  a  general  example 
of  tlic  worse  side  of  fifteenth-century  poetry  :  -~ 


i66  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

And  if  the  matter  be  joyful  and  glad, 
Like  countenance  outwardly  they  make; 
But  moderation  in  their  minds  is  had, 
So  that  outrage  may  them  not  overtake. 
I  cannot  write  too  much  for  their  sake 
Them  to  laud,  for  my  time  is  short 
And  the  matter  long  which  I  must  report. 

Pasture  of  Pleasure,  cap.  xii.  last  stanza. 

It  is  between  Hawes  and  Skelton  that  we  may  perhaps  most  con- 
veniently mention  a  third  writer,  who  is  even  more  of  a  mere  curiosity 
than  Hawes  himself,  but  who  is  as  characteristic  of  his  time  as  either. 
This  is  Alexander  Barclay,^  the  Englisher  of  the  famous 

arc  ay.  jVarretisckiff  of  Sebastian  Brandt.  As  far  back  as 
Bale's  time  (that  is  to  say,  in  the  age  just  after  his  own,  and 
partly  overlapping  it)  there  was  a  doubt  whether  Barclay  was  a  Scot 
or  an  Englishman.  The  spelling  of  his  name  would  incline  to  the 
former  hypothesis,  which  also  has  early  authority  of  the  positive 
kind ;  but  no  connection  of  any  sort  is  known  between  Barclay  and 
Scotland,  all  his  associations  are  with  the  South  and  South-west  of 
England,  and  the  spelling  (always  a  very  untrustworthy  guide)  is  after 
all  merely  the  pronounced  form  of  "  Berkeley."  His  literary  qualities 
are  scarcely  such  that  the  two  divisions  of  the  island  need  light  very 
keenly  for  him.  He  must  have  been  born  somewhere  about  the 
beginning  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  fifteenth  century,  and  pretty 
certainly  had  a  University  education.  Tlie  only  allusion  traced  in 
his  work  is  to  Cambridge,"^  but  Scots  more  often  went  to  Oxford,  and 
Oxford  had  more  connection  with  the  West  country.  He  was  certainly 
for  some  time  chaplain  of  the  College  of  St.  Mary  Ottery,  in  Devonshire 
(the  future  birthjjlace  of  Coleridge),  and  seems  there  to  have  translated 
the  S/u'p  of  Fools,^  which  Pynson  published  in  1508,  dedicated  to 
Bishop  Cornish  of  Exeter.  He  may  have  had  poetical  employment 
at  the  Field  of  the  Cloth  of  Gold,  was  a  monk  at  Ely,  and  after  the 
dissolution  of  the  monasteries  obtained  livings  in  Essex  and  Somerset 
under  Edward  VI.,  as  well  as  later,  just  before  his  death  in  1552, 
that  of  Allhallows,  Lombard  Street. 

Barclay's  work  was  extensive,  but  chiefly  translated.  He  "  did " 
Gringore's  Castle  of  Labor  before  the  Ship,  and  after  it  some  more, 
though    not    wholly,    original    Eclogues,    of  which    the    Citizen   and 

1  Warton  has  given  a  rather  full  account  of  Barclay  (iii.  189-203,  ed.  1871), 
and  Ritson  is  as  usual  to  the  point  in  four  pages  of  the  Bibliograpliia  Poetica. 
But  the  long  introductions  to  the  modern  editions  mentioned  below  are  the 
things  to  consult. 

'^  Trumpington,  also  mentioned,  would  prove  nothing,  because  Chaucer  had 
made  it  a  place  of  literature. 

3  Very  handsomely  reprinted,  with  the  woodcuts,  by  T.  H.  Jamieson 
(Edinburgh,  2  vols.  4to,  1874). 


CHAP.  I  THE   ENGLISH   CHAUCERIANS  167 

Uplandishman  ^  is  the  only  one  easily  accessible  in  full.  Divers  other 
works,  some  of  them  extant,  are  assigned  to  him,  and  he  seems  in 
one.  Contra  Skeltoiin/n,  to  have  made  a  formal  onslaught  on  a  poet  at 
Vt'hom  his  existing  poems  contain  more  than  one  fling. 

Barclay  seems  really  to  deserve  the  place  of  first  Eclogue-writer 
in  English,  if  any  one  cares  for  this  fortuitous  and  rather  futile  variety 
of  eminence.  His  Eclogues,  moreover,  are  not  merely  more  original, 
but,  so  far  as  they  are  accessible,  seem  to  be  less  jejune 
than  the  S/iip.  This  latter  owes  its  fame  partly  to  its  '^^'"fJoiL"'^ 
rarity  before  the  reprint  of  five  and  twenty  years  ago, 
partly  to  the  famous  and  really  admirable  woodcuts  which  it  contains. 
The  first  "fole"' —  the  possessor  of  unprofitable  books  —  has  a  certain 
savour  of  promise  which  is  unluckily  but  seldom  fulfilled  afterwards. 
Still,  mainly  thanks  to  the  illustrations  and  to  the  general  sympathy 
with  Puck  in  seeing  and  saying,  "  Lord,  what  fools  these  mortals  be  ! " 
it  is  possible  to  make  one's  way  through  the  long  catalogue  which  fills 
from  two  thousand  to  two  thousand  five  hundred  stanzas  of  rhyme- 
royal.  The  individual  line  is  rather  an  interesting  one,  showing  a 
sort  of  intermediate  stage  between  the  would-be  rigid  decasyllabic  of 
Lydgate  and  Occleve  and  the  long  rambling  twelves  or  fourteeners  of 
the  mid-sixteenth  century  poets.  Sometimes  Barclay  permits  him- 
self a  full  Alexandrine ;  oftener  (in  fact,  in  the  majority  of  cases)  he 
lengthens  out  his  line  with  trisyllabic  feet,  so  arranged  as  sometimes 
to  take  very  little  keep  of  the  iambic  basis.     This  same  line  is  found 

in  the   Eclogues,   arranged    mainly  in    couplets,  but  with 

.  ,  1         .1  •      1  1  M      The  Eclogues. 

insertions  in  stanza,  such  as  the  allegorical  octaves  describ- 
ing the  Tower  of  Virtue  in  the  Fourth  Eclogue.  In  the  first  three 
(paraphrased  from  Aeneas  Silvius)  the  speakers  are  Coridon  and 
Cornix,  in  the  fourth  Codrus  and  Menalcas,  in  the  fifth  (the  Citizen 
and  Uplandishman  [countryman]),  Augustus  and  Faustus.  They  have 
for  almost  pervading  subject  that  ratlier  monotonous  grumbling  at 
the  vices,  follies,  and  ingratitude  of  courts  which  was  the  natural 
result  of  the  Tudor  concentration  of  the  fountains  not  merely  of 
honour  but  of  profit  in  the  sovereign,  and  of  which  we  find  more 
than  an  echo  in  Spenser. 

No   more   curious  instance  of  literary  contrast  could  possibly  be 
provided  than  that  which  is  .supplied  by  the  writer  who  is  always  coupled 
with    Hawes,   and   sometimes    with    Barclay,    his    enemy. 
Tiie    birthplace    of    John    Skelton  -    is    given    with    the 
very  sufficient  variants  of  Cumberland   and  Norfolk ;    his   birth-year 

1  I'"d.  Fairholt,  for  the  Percy  Society,  1847.  The  introduction  contains  very 
full  extracts  from  the  other  four. 

-  A  handy  edition  appeared  in  1736.  Chalmers  included  Skelton  in  his 
Poets,  and  Dyce  re-edited  him  in  1843. 


i68  THE  FIFTEENTH  CENTURY  book  iv 

must  have  been  somewhere  about  1460,  and  so  in  a  not  uninteresting 
way  he  takes  up  in  the  cradle  the  torch  which  Lydgate  and  Occleve 
dropped  in  the  tomb.  He  was  pretty  certainly  a  Cambridge  man, 
and  was  M.A.  in  1484.  His  earliest  poem  is  thought  to  be  one  on 
the  death  of  Edward  IV.,  which  is  noteworthy,  like  Dunbar's  Lament 
for  the  Makers,  for  a  Latin  refrain,  melancholy  in  tone.  Caxton  in 
1490,  and  in  the  preface  to  his  Aeneid,  speaks  of  Skelton's  scholar- 
ship with  reverence,  and  tells  us  that  he  was  Poet  Laureate  in  the 
University  of  Oxford.  This  title,  which  Skelton  also  enjoyed  from 
Louvain  and  Cambridge,  has  caused  mistakes  which  seem  even  yet 
not  to  be  universally  cleared  up.  Perhaps  it  is  too  much  to  speak  of 
it  as  a  "  degree  "  ;  it  was  rather,  in  old  Oxford  language,  a  "  position  " 
in  rhetoric  and  poetics  (then  practically  confounded)  which  necessi- 
tated a  verse-thesis.  It  had  nothing  to  do,  except  accidentally, 
with  the  modern  sense  of  "  Poet  Laureate,"  which  practically  comes 
into  existence  with  Ben  Jonson  and  the  seventeenth  century. 

Skelton  seems  to  have  been  one  of  the  numerous  \i\.&Y?i\:y  p?-fltegis 
of  Lady  Margaret  and  her  son  Henry  VII. ;  he  took  orders  in  1498, 
when  he  must  have  been  no  longer  a  young  man,  and  was  tutor  to 
Henry  VIII.  At  this  time  Erasmus  follows  Caxton 
as  his  encomiast.  He  became  rector  of  Diss,  in  his 
(probably)  native  county,  Norfolk,  before  1504.  Up  to  this  time, 
when  he  was  far  advanced  in  middle  life,  he  seems  to  have  been 
continuously  prosperous  and  well-reputed.  He  lived  twenty-five 
years  longer,  during  which  he  became  a  complete  Ishmaelite.  The 
beginning  of  his  trouble  seems  to  have  been  that  he  married.  At 
any  rate  he  was  .suspended  for  this  offence  (or  perhaps  not  for 
marriage  at  all)  at  some  time  not  clearly  known,  and  seems  to  have 
gone  to  London.  The  King  favoured  his  old  tutor,  but  either 
from  jealousy  or  sheer  quarrelsomeness,  or,  as  his  partisans  maintain, 
reforming  zeal,  he  fell  foul  of  Wolsey,  whose  friend  he  had  previously 
been.  A  series  of  satires  on  the  minister  made  it  necessary  for 
Skelton  to  take  refuge  in  the  sanctuary  of  Westminster,  where  he 
died  in  1529,  probably  near  his  full  term  of  days,  and  only  a  year 
before  the  former  friend,  now  foe,  on  whom  his  pupil,  and  Wolsey's 
master,  somewhat  ungratefully  revenged  him. 

One  point  which  distinguishes  nearly,  not  quite,  all  Skelton's  verse 
from  that  of  Hawes  is  that  it  is  thoroughly  alive.  The  Crown  of 
Laurel,  a.  stately,  sterile,  eminently  fifteenth-century  piece,  mainly  in 
rhyme-royal  and  aureate  language,  does  indeed  meet  us  in  the  fore- 
front of  his  work  and  inspire  doubt  and  dread  — 

Aulas  Gellius,  that  noble  historian, 
Orace  also  with  his  newe  poetry, 
Master  Terence,  the  famous  comicar, 


CHAP.  I  THE   ENGLISH   CHAUCERIANS  169 


are  lines  likely  to  "strike  a  chill."  But  if  Skelton  was  not  equal 
to  "  new  poetry "  himself,  he  could  at  any  rate  rebel  against  the  old ; 
if  he  could  not  write  musically,  he  could  at  any  rate  take  ^^.^  ^^^^ 
refuge  in  the  doggerel  of  talent  and  almost  of  genius. 
Even  this  very  poem,  with  its  addresses  to  various  young  ladies  of 
high  birth,  contains,  in  the  short  staccato  metres  that  Skelton  loved  — 
to  Margaret  Hussey  ("Merry  Margaret  As  Midsummer  flower"),  to 
Isabel  Pennell  ("  My  maiden  Isabel,  Whose  mammy  and  whose  daddy 
Brought  forth  a  goodly  baby"),  to  Gertrude  Statham  (-'Mistress 
Gertrude,  With  Womanhood  Endued"),  — very  pleasant  examples  of 
better  things.  The  Bouge  of  Court  retains  the  dim  and  dreary 
personages  —  Dread,  Suspicion,  Disdain,  Favell,  etc. —  of  allegory. 

The  real  Skelton,  taking  the  order  of  his  works  as  usually  printed, 
emerges  first  in  a  very  long,  very  boisterous,  very  rude,  and  in  part 
rather  childish  and  ignoble,  but  curiously  spirited  and  fresh,  ballad 
of  triumph  over  the  Duke  of  Albany,  who  ran  away  shamefully  with 
a  hundred  thousand  "tratland  Scots  and  faint-hearted  Frenchmen" 
beside  the  water  of  Tweed.  Here  —  in  almost  the  shortest  possible 
lines,  anapaestic  in  general  character  and  for  the  most  part  of  two 
feet  only,  rhymed  in  couplet,  and  with  language  sometimes  almost 
inarticulate  in  its  bubbling  volubility,  strongly  alliterated,  using  the 
repeated  beginning  of  the  Hne  freely  —  Skelton  crows  and  whoops  at 
the  defeated  enemy  with  a  heartiness  that  may  not  be  chivalrous,  but 
is  certainly  unfeigned.  Speak  Parrot,  in  rhyme-royal,  is  an  odd 
mixture  of  the  author's  favourite  half-gibberish  doggerel  with 
"aureate"  language  and  "rhethorike" — indeed,  it  is  impossible  not 
to  see  a  deliberate  satire  on  the  second  in  both  constituents.  The 
above-mentioned  Dirge  071  Edward  IV.  is,  of  course,  quite  serious, 
couched  in  twelve-lined  stanzas  of  decasyllables  decidedly  Occlevian  in 
their  character,  with  the  refrain  (2iiia  ecce  nunc  in  pulvere  dormio. 
Against  the  Scots,  a  song  of  triumph  for  Flodden,  is  a  duplication 
of  the  other  crow,  but  rather  more  ignoble  because  the  triumph  and 
the  tragedy  were  both  greater.  This  is  partly  in  "  Skeltonics," 
partly  in  octosyllables.  Ware  the  Hawkel  is  pure  doggerel  satire; 
and  then  a  few  serious  pieces  introduce  us  to  what  is  perhaps 
Skelton's  most  vigorous,  though  certainly  not  his  most  elegant,  work, 
the  Tunning  of  Eleanor  Rumtning.  This  is  a  more  than  Hogarthian 
sketch,  in  language  which  might  make  Swift  or  Smollett  squeamish, 
of  the  brewing  and  drinking  of  a  certain  browst  of  ale  by  a  country 
ale-wife  and  her  customers.  This  is  wholly  in  the  Skeltonian  dimeter 
or  monometer,  which,  it  should  be  observed,  has  a  tendency  now  and 
then  to  fall  into  six-syllabled  iambics  or  seven-syllabled  trochaics  for 
longer  or  shorter  breaks,  the  centre  of  the  verse  shifting  precisely  in 
the  same  fashion  as  in  the  Genesis  and  Exodus  or  Christabel  metre, 


I70  THE  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

of  which,  in  fact,  this  is  undoubtedly  a  shortened  and  doggerelised 
variant  for  satiric  purposes.  In  this  form  it  pervades  Skelton's  two 
chief  political  satires  against  Wolsey,  JlViy  come  ye  not  to  Court  and 
the  Book  of  Colin  Clout,  as  well  as  the  Book  of  Philip  Sparrow, 
his  most  whimsical  and  graceful  thing,  a  long  desultory  mourning  for 
the  pet  bird  of  Mistress  Joan  Scrope. 

In  these,  and  in  Skelton's  minor  poems,  the  chief  of  which  are  a 
Lament  on  the  Death  of  the  Earl  of  Northtimberland  and  a  morality 
called  Magnificence,  we  see  a  fertile,  restless,  and  ingenious  spirit 
entirely  unprovided  with  the  proper  means  of  expression,  and  just 
falling  short  of  the  intelligence  and  originality  necessary  to  elaborate 
such  means  for  itself.  It  is  impossible  not  to  recognise  in  the 
"  Skeltonics  "  an  attempt,  crude  and  clumsy  it  is  true,  to  get  away  from 
the  intolerable  dulness  and  dryness  of  the  stanza-decasyllable,  as 
it  appears  in  Hawes  and  the  earlier  fifteenth-century  poets.  To  this 
day  it  is  difficult  to  see  why  this  fit  of  stuttering  should  have  come 
upon  English.  At  the  beginning  and  at  the  end  of  the  150 
years  of  it  (to  pass  over  Skelton's  younger  contemporaries  Wyat  and 
Surrey  for  reasons)  we  find  Chaucer  before  and  Sackville  afterwards 
making  the  seven  or  eight-lined  stanza  decasyllables  the  instrument 
of  music,  sweet  or  stately,  merry  or  sorrowful,  at  their  pleasure  and 
with  no  sort  of  difficulty.  Between  them  (to  borrow  a  phrase  from 
Mr.  Swinburne  of  another  matter)  it  seems  almost  impossible  for  an 
English  poet  to  "  clear  his  mouth  of  pebbles  and  his  brow  of  fog." 

Probably  at  no  time  would  Skelton  have  been  a  great  poet  in  the 
serious  and  passionate  way  —  probably,  at  all,  his  genius  would  have 
inclined  to  comedy  and  to  satire.  As  it  is,  he  holds  a  position  with 
Butler  as  the  chief  English  verse-writer  who  has  deliberately  preferred 
to  be  burlesque  to  the  verge,  and  in  his  case  considerably  over  the 
verge,  of  grotesque  and  doggerel.  In  comparing  the  two  men,  whose 
powers,  natural  and  acquired,  do  not  seem  to  have  been  very  different, 
while  their  tempers  were  also  not  dissimilar  (Skelton  inclining  rather 
to  the  jovial,  Butler  to  the  saturnine),  it  is  impossible  not  to  re- 
member that  Butler  came  just  after,  as  Skelton  came  just  before,  the 
enormous,  the  incalculable  advances  made  by  the  Elizabethan  period, 
not  merely  in  language  and  metre,  but  in  everything,  small  and  great, 
that  pertains  to  the  business  of  poetry.  And  we  ought  to  give  the 
author  of  Thilip  Sparrow  and  Eleanor  Rumming  and  Why  come  ye 
not  to  Court  a  substantial  allowance  for  the  fact. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE   SCOTTISH   POETS — HISTORICAL,    POLITICAL,   AND   MINOR 

Lateness  of  Scottish  Literature  —  Barbour — Wyntoun  —  Blind  Harry —  Minors  — 
Lyndsay  —  His  life — His  works  —  The  Satire  of  the  Three  Estates  —  Minor 
poems 

Although  the  literary  eminence  of  the  quartette  of  poets  who  will 
be  discussed  in  the  next  chapter  is  unquestioned,  even  the  earliest  of 
them  (taking  him  to  have  been  James  the  First)  was  not  the  first  known 
poet  of  Scotland.  That  position,  assigned  by  tradition  or  imagina- 
tion, first  to  Thomas  of  Erceldoune,  and  then  to  the  still  more 
shadowy  "  Huchowne,"  belongs  historically  to  John  Barbour,  Arch- 
deacon of  Aberdeen,  and  author  of  the  Brus,  which  was  finished  in 
1375.     The    reasons   of  this    extraordinary  lateness,    and     ,  j. 

the  still  more  extraordinary  lagging  of  prose  (of  which,  Scottish 
except  laws,  letters,  and  a  few  translations,^  etc.,  we  Literature, 
have  nothing  till  the  Complaint  of  Scotland,  hard  on  the  middle  of 
the  sixteenth  century),  are  too  conjectural  to  be  argued  out  here. 
Attention  can  only  be  called  to  the  following  facts,  which  (though 
some  of  them  are  even  now  sometimes  attacked)  are  absolutely  indis- 
putable. They  are  these  :  that  the  establishment  of  a  separate  kingdom 
in  any  sense  corresponding  to  what  we  call  Scotland  was  very  late; 
that  this  kingdom  when  established  consisted  of,  or  rested  on,  the 
debris  of  four  different  nationalities  and  lansjuages  —  those  of  the 
Picts,  of  the  Scots  of  Dalriada,  of  the  Britons  of  Strathclyde, 
and  of  the  Anglo-Danes  of  Northumbria;  that  the  literary  chances 
of  the  last,  where  only  an  English  literature  could  have  arisen,  were 
ruined  by  the  Danish  invasion,  and  not  recovered  till,  after  the 
Norman  conquest  of  England,  English  was  everywhere  undergoing  a 
process  of  moulting  which  made  literature  impossible;  that  even  in 
the  comparatively  halcyon  times  of  the  Alexanders,  English  (all  the 
Scottish    writers    up    to     Douglas     invariably     call     their    language 

1  It  is  not  improbable  that  a  version  of  the  Bible  now  in  hand  for  the  Scottish 
Text  Society  may  be  of  the  early  fifteenth  century,  but  it  is  pretty  certainly  based 
on  Wyclif. 

171  « 


172  THE  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

"Inglis,"  and  if  they  use  "Scots"  at  all,  mean  Gaelic  by  it)  was  yet 
unformed ;  and  that  from  the  latter  half  of  the  thirteentli  to  the  latter 
half  of  the  fourteenth  century  the  War  of  Independence,  and  the 
turbulent  state  in  which  Scotland  emerged  from  it,  made  literature 
Hiiprobable,  if  not  actually  impossible. 

At  any  rate,  whether  it  be  strange  or  not,  that  we  have  nothing 
earlier  than  Barbour,  the  author  of  the  Bi'us^  is  a  fact  and  indispu- 
table. His  identification  with  the  Archdeacon  rests  on  the  testimony  of 
his    immediate    successor,    Wyntoun,    and   of   the    Arch- 

^^  ''"'^'  deacon  we  have  divers  documentary  notices.  These  do 
not  include  the  date  or  place  of  his  birth.  The  former  is  guessed 
at  as  about  1320.  Our  first  notice  of  him  is  thirty-seven  years  later, 
when  in  1357  Edward  III.  granted  him  license  to  come,  with  three 
scholars,  to  Oxford  to  study,  to  stay  there  and  exercise  scholastic 
acts,  and  to  return  to  Scotland,  where,  it  must  be  remembered,  there 
was  as  yet  no  University.  Seven  years  later  he  had  a  similar  safe- 
conduct  to  the  same  place,  and  at  other  times  others  to  go  to  France, 
also  for  the  sake  of  study.  The  other  references,  which  are  numer- 
ous, refer  chiefly  to  payments  of  pensions,  etc.,  and  do  not  concern 
literature.     He  died  in  March  1395. 

Besides  the  Brns  there  have  of  late  years  been  assigned  to 
Barbour,  and  taken  away  from  him  by  turns,  a  fragment  of  a  Troy 
Book  and  a  very  large  collection  of  Lives  of  the  Saints.'^  In  dialect 
and  metre  these  are  similar  to  the  Brus  itself;  but  they  are  naturally 
less  interesting,  being  simply  members  of  a  very  large  class,  and 
treating  common  matter  in  common  form,  while  the  Brus  stands 
quite  by  itself.  Even  as  a  historical  document  —  though  it  takes 
some  remarkable  liberties  with  fact,  confusing  Bruce  with  his  own 
grandfather,  making  him  refuse  an  offer  of  the  crown  from  Edward, 
etc.  —  it  is  not  despicable.  It  was  written  (we  have  the  exact  date  in 
a  passage  of  its  own)  less  than  fifty  years  after  Bruce's  death,  and  by 
a  man  who  was  probably  nearly  ten  years  old  at  the  date  of  that  death, 
so  that  he  had  ample  opportunity  for  communication  with  direct  wit- 
nesses. That  Barbour  takes,  as  every  medieeval  writer,  almost  without 
exception,  invariably  did  take,  license  of  embellishing,  altering,  supply- 
ing, omitting,  to  suit  his  own  notions  of  the  story,  is  not  so  much 
probable  as  certain,  but  it  is  not  material.  As  a  poet,  Barbour,  if 
not  taking  very  high  rank,  is  very  far  indeed  from  being  despicable. 
His  famous  and  often  quoted  outburst  about  freedom  does  not  seem 
to  be,  by  any  means,  a  mere  commonplace,  and  many  of  his  descrip- 
tive passages  (the  pursuit  of  Bruce  by  John  of  Lorn  being  only  one 

1  Frequently  edited.  The  Scottish  Text  Society's  issue  by  Professor  Skeat 
(Edinburgh,  1894)  is  the  one  I  have  used. 

2  Also  in  the  Scottish  Text  Society's  issues.     Ed.  Metcalfe,  Edinburgh,  1896. 


CHAP.  II    THE   SCOTTISH   POETS  — HISTORICAL  AND   MINOR    173 

of  them)  fully  rise  to  the  level  required.  It  would  be  absurd  to 
compare  Barbour  to  Chaucer  or  to  Langland,  but,  with  a  little  less 
elegance,  he  has  more  spirit  than  Gower. 

Poetry  was  not  the  strong  point  of  his  younger  contemporary 
and  immediate  successor  in  the  verse-chronicling  of  Scottish  history, 
Andrew  Wyntoun,  Canon  of  St.  Andrews  and  Prior  of  St.  Serf  in 
Lochleven.  His  birth-  and  death-dates  are  not  known, 
but  he  certainly  held  his  priory  from  1395  (Barbour's  v"  o""- 
death-year)  to  1413  at  least;  and  he  was  alive  six  years  later,  for 
he  notices  the  death  of  Robert  Duke  of  Albany  in  1419.  1350- 
1420  would  therefore  (as  he  speaks  of  old  age  having  mastered  him) 
be  a  probable  life-date.  The  title  of  '•Original  Chronicle"  which 
he  gave  to  his  work  ^  does  not,  as  Dr.  Irving"^  seems  rather  oddly 
to  have  thought,  claim  "  originality "  in  our  common  modern  sense 
—  indeed,  Wyntoun  very  frankly  quotes  many  authors  down  to 
Barbour.  It  signifies  that  he  began  at  the  beginning  —  origo  —  after 
the  wont  of  the  mediaeval  chronicler.  His  verse  is  less  poetical  than 
Barbour's  in  spirit  but  a  little  more  accomplished  in  form,  attaining 
the  trisyllabic  swing  of  the  Christabel  metre  sometimes  with  very 
good  effect,  as  witness  the  line  in  his  often  quoted  account  of 
Macbeth  and  the  Weird  Sisters  — 

Lo !  yon  |  der  the  thane  |  of  Crum  |  bauchty  |  [Cromarty]. 

And  another  in  reference  to  the  Maid  of  Norway  — 

To  Nor  I  way  and  Scot  |  land  both  right  |  wise  heir. 

He  has  not  a  few  passages  interesting  for  matter  —  as  far  as 
manner  goes  the  interview  between  the  Devil  and  St.  Serf  (Book  v. 
chap,  xii.)  is  a  very  fair  specimen.  It  is  from  him  that  we  have  the 
well-known  and  interesting  piece  "  When  Alexander  our  King  was 
dead,"  which,  however,  can  hardly  be  contemporary  with  the  event  it 
commemorates. 

The  transition,  from  Wyntoun's  easy  amble  of  manner  (not  seldom 
degenerating  into  a  mere  pedestrian  verse)  and  his  placid  chronicling, 
to  the  next  writer  on  this  special  list  is  not  a  little  curious.  Barbour 
had  been  patriotic  beyond  all  dispute,  and  he  had  not 
been  over-squeamish  about  dressing  up  the  facts  of  his-  '"  ^^^' 
tory  to  better  advantage  in  the  garb  of  romance.  Wyntoun,  with  more 
sense  of  history,  had  been  patriotic  too ;  but  ncitlicr  showed  any 
violent  animosity  against  England,  and  an  Englishman  must  compare 
with  some  compunction  the  international  courtesy  of  Laurence  Minot 

1  Twice  edited  —  in  part  by  D.  Macpherson  (1795)  and  in  whole  by  Laing 
(1872-79). 

2  History  of  Scottish  Poetry,  p.  1 16. 


174  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

and  theirs.  Both  were  cosmopolitan,  and  the  method  of  Barbour  himself 
was  rigidly  critical,  as  compared  with  Blind  Harry,i  or,  as  modern 
punctilio  prefers  to  call  him,  "Henry  the  Minstrel,"  the  poetical 
biographer  of  the  other  great  hero  of  the  War  of  Independence. 
The  author  himself  is  a  very  obscure  person.  The  locus  classicus 
about  him  is  a  passage  of  the  same  Latin-writing  historian,  John 
Mair  or  Major,  who  is  our  authority  for  the  authorship  of  the  King's 
Quair.  Mair  says  that  Henricus,  blind  from  his  birth,  executed 
the  poem  in  his  (the  historian's)  infancy,  which  is  judged  to  have 
been  ci7-.  1460.  We  have  only  one  MS.  of  it,  and  that  is  dated 
1488,  while  we  have  some  records  of  payments  to  Henry  as  late  as 
1492,  and  Dunbar  includes  him  among  the  Dead  Makers  in  1508. 
The  last  three-quarters  of  the  fifteenth  century  would  therefore  seem 
to  have  been  his  date,  and  the  text  of  his  poem,  if  not  directly  taken 
down  from  his  dictation,  to  have  been  at  least  contemporary. 

Sir  VVilliain  Wallace  consists  of  nearly  12,000  lines  in  heroic 
couplets,  often  very  spirited,  and  generally  correct  enough  in  con- 
struction, but  observing  the  sharp  French  caesura  at  the  fourth 
syllable.  It  purports  to  be  based  on  a  Latin  book  by  John  Blair, 
Wallace's  own  chaplain ;  but  no  such  book  is  known  to  have  existed, 
nor  is  it  referred  to  by  any  authority,  except  such  as  have  obviously 
derived  their  knowledge  from  Harry  himself.  Nor  does  it  need 
more  than  the  slightest  examination  of  the  poem  to  see  that  it  is  in 
substance,  though  not  in  form,  a  true  chanson  de  geste,  having  only 
the  remotest  foundation  in  history,  and  weaving  its  story  perhaps  out 
of  some  popular  traditions,  but  mainly  out  of  the  poet's  own  head  or 
the  heads  of  his  unknown  predecessors.  It  is  well  known  that  the 
authentic  documents  for  Wallace's  history  are  extremely  meagre. 
Barbour  never  mentions  his  name.  But  Wyntoun,  long  before 
Harry,  says  that  great  gestes  of  him  existed,  and  suggests  that 
a  "great  buke "  (the  opposition  is  not  unnoteworthy)  might  be 
written.  It  is  by  no  means  improbable  that  blind  Harry  took  the 
hint  directly  from  the  good  prior  of  St.  Serf.  By  his  time  the 
national  animosity  between  Scots  and  English,  according  to  a 
custom  odd  at  first  sight  but  not  unintelligible,  had  grown  much 
more  fierce  than  during  the  actual  Wars  of  Independence  in  the 
previous  century.  And  Harry's  verses  are  inspired  by  the  hottest 
flame  of  this.  The  presence  of  indignation  and  the  absence  of  in- 
formation combine  in  him  to  make  an  exceedingly  spirited  romance, 
which  was  naturally  and  deservedly  popular  in  Scotland  from  the 
very  first,  but  which,  of  course,  has  the  slightest  —  if  the  slightest  — 
pretence  to  historical  importance.  The  ghostly  apparition  of  Faw- 
done,  in  the  finest  passage  of  all,  is  not  more  a  thing  of  the  imagi- 
1  Scottish  Text  Society,  ed.  Moir. 


CHAP.  II   THE   SCOTTISH    POETS  —  HISTORICAL  AND   MINOR    175 

nation  than  the  still  more  famous  fishing  story  with  which  the  poem 
opens,  or  the  stock  incident  (very  freshly  and  excellently  told)  of  the 
visit  of  the  Queen  of  England  to  Wallace,  and  her  mediation  with 
her  no  less  cowardly  than  ferocious  husband.  But  it  was  all«perfectly 
right  and  proper,  according  to  the  laws  of  the  class  of  composition  to 
which  Blind  Harry's  work  belongs ;  and  it  is  a  compensation  for  the 
extreme  lateness  and  comparative  scantiness  of  Scottish  literature 
that  it  was  thus  able  to  produce  the  latest,  and  very  far  indeed 
from  the  worst,  example  of  the  national  folk-epic  which  blends 
traditions  of  all  sorts,  adds  commonplaces  from  the  general  stock 
of  fiction,  and  makes  the  whole  thick  and  slab  with  original  sauce, 
in  order  to  exalt  and  consecrate  the  deeds  of  a  popular  hero. 

It  may  be  not  inconvenient  here,  before  coming  to  the  last  of  the 
batch  of  historical  poets  or  verse-writers  who  form  the  staple  of  this 
chapter,  and  who  in  this  case  extend  beyond  the  fifteenth  century 
proper,  to  note  very  briefly  the  minor  poets  of  this  and 
the  other  class  who  complete  the  list  of  the  makers 
of  the  fifteenth  century  itself,  as  we  have  them  on  the  authority  of 
Dunbar  and  others.  The  chief  of  these  was  Walter  Kennedy,  Dun- 
bar's contemporary  and  antagonist  in  the  "  flyting"  {vide  infra),  who 
took  his  degree  at  Glasgow  in  1476,  and  is  spoken  of  not  as  dead 
but  dying  in  the  Complaint  of  the  Makers,  published  therewith. 
There  are  poems  of  Kennedy's  in  existence,  but  mostly  unpublished, 
and  said  to  be  of  no  great  merit.  Others  who  are  not  mere  names 
are  Richard,  or  Sir  Richard  Holland,  a  Douglas's  man,  who  wrote 
about  the  middle  of  the  century  the  Book  of  the  Howlat^  alliterated 
and  rhymed,  describing  a  general  council  of  the  Birds,  with  the  Pea- 
cock as  Pope-President ;  and  Clerk  of  Tranent,  who  is  spoken  of  as 
having  made  the  "Anturs  of  Gawane"  {vide  supra).  To  him  may 
be  due  the  existing  Golagros  and  Gawane,  an  alliterative  rhymed 
poem  of  the  Gawain  Northern  cycle  (ante,  p.  103,  and  post,  p.  195). 
Mersar,  two  Rowls  or  Rolls,  and  others  are  but  shadows,  and  only  a 
single  poem  seems  to  remain  by  (2uentin  Shaw,  a  poet  who  is  not 
only  mentioned  by  Dunbar,  but  picturesquely  introduced  by  Gawain 
Douglas  — 

Quentin  with  ane  buttock  ^  on  his  head  — 
■■  __^^__^-^^— ^^-^— 

1  This    is    in   the   Scottish   Text    Society's   Alliterative  Poems,   ed.  Amours. 
Everybody  knows  the  two  short  lines  — 

O   Douglas,    Douglas,  Tender  and  true  ! 

which  end  the  wheel  of  stanza  31,  and  the  whole  passage  dealing  with  Lord 
James  and  the  heart  of  the  Bruce  is  good.  Otherwise  not  much  can  be  said  for 
the  poem,  which  is  a  mere  variation  of  the  Parliament  of  Fowls. 

*  i.e.  a   hood,  probably  like  that  in  Chaucer's  portrait,  ami  copied  from  it  by 
fifteenth-century  poets,  as  those  of  the  eighteenth  copied  Tope's  nightcap. 


176  THE   FIFTEENTH  CENTURY  book  iv 

as  one  of  the  Scottish  poets  worthy  to  show  cause  against  even 
Chaucer,  Gower,  and  Lydgate.  And  to  the  poets  who  are  thus 
without,  or  nearly  without,  poems,  a  list  of  poems  at  present  un- 
attached* to  poets  might  be  added,  showing  more  evidence  of  the 
literary  working  in  Scotland  which  began  so  late  and  was  to  die 
away,  all  but  completely,  so  soon. 

It   is   probable   that   among  these  forgotten,  scarcely  known,  and 

too   often  still  disdained  writers,  there  was  more  than  one  who  was  a 

better  poet  in  the  strict  sense  of  that  term  than  "  Sir  David  Lyndsay 

of  the  Mount,  Lord  Lyon  King  of  Arms,"  who,  at  the  cost 

yn  say.  gf  a  slight  stretch  of  chronology,  may  best  be  mentioned 
here.  But  Lyndsay  is  an  interesting,  and  though  not  a  fully  yet  a 
fairly  known  personality,  while  they  flit  as  shadows  ;  he  has  left  an 
abundant  supply  of  work,i  frequently  interesting  in  itself,  and  gener- 
ally characteristic  of  his  time;  and  in  one  particular  he  has  the  rare 
good  luck  to  have  left  the  only  example,  not  merely  in  Scottish  but 
in  English  literature,  of  an  early  sotie  or  political  farce-satire  in 
dramatic  form.  If  he  had  given  us  nothing  but  the  Satire  of  the 
Three  Estates,  Lyndsay  would  be  a  remarkable  figure  in  English 
literature ;  as  it  is,  he  has  left  much  else. 

He  is  supposed,  rather  than  known,  to  have  been  born  at  The 
Mount,  near  Cupar,  in  Fife,  somewhere  about  1490 ;  but  claims 
(also  guesswork)  have  been  put  in  for  Garmylton  or  Garleton  in  East 
Lothian,  an  estate  which  certainly  belonged  to  his  father 
and  to  him.  The  family  was  an  offshoot  (whether  legiti- 
mate or  not  is  uncertain)  of  that  of  Lyndsay  of  the  Byres.  He  may, 
rather  than  must,  have  been  the  "  Da.  Lyndsay  "  who  was  an  incor- 
porated fourth-year  student  at  St.  Andrews  in  1508-9.  He  cer- 
tainly had  not  merely  a  regular  salary  in  the  Royal  Household,  but 
a  "play-coat  of  blue  and  yellow  taffety'Mn  151 1,  and  played  before 
King  James  IV.  and  Queen  Margaret.  He  is  said  to  have  been 
present  at  the  famous  scene  of  the  apparition  to  the  King  before 
Flodden,  which  is  enshrined  in  Marmion.  And  he  was  master- 
usher,  or  master  of  the  household,  to  James  V.  from  his  earliest 
childhood.  In  1522  he  was  a  married  man,  and  his  wife  Janet 
Douglas  was  accustomed  to  sew  the  King's  "  sarkis "  with  double 
hanks  of  gold  thread.  James's  very  early  nominal  coming  of  age  at 
his  twelfth  year  caused  the  removal  of  Lyndsay,  who  retired  to  his 
estate  of  Garmylton  and  "  commenced  poet."  But  four  years  later 
James  emancipated  himself  from  his  still  real  tutelage  to  Angus,  and 
almost  at  once  promoted  his  old  master  to  knighthood  and  the  office 
of  Lyon  King,  which  then  involved  very  important  diplomatic  duties. 

1  Ed.  Laing,  Edinburgh,  3  vols.  1879. 


CHAP.  II   THE   SCOTTISH    POETS  — HISTORICAL  AND   MINOR    177 

In  discharge  of  these  Lyndsay  went  to  England,  France,  the  Nether- 
lands, and  Denmark.  He  held  a  chapter  of  his  heralds  in  January 
1555,  and  seems  to  have  died  between  that  month  and  the  following 
April. 

Lyndsay's  works  consist  of  the  above-mentioned  Satire  of  the  Three 
Estates,  of  a  Dialogue  between  Experience  and  a  Courtier,  and  of  the 
History   of  Squire  Meldrum,   all   long   poems,    with   a   considerable 
number  of  shorter  ones.     Of  the  long  poems.  The  Dia- 
logue    (or    The  Monarchie)    consists  of  more   than   6000 
lines,    chiefly    octosyllabic    couplets,    and    gives    the    history   of   the 
world,  with  comments  in  the  dismallest  manner  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury.    The  History  of  Squire  Meldrum,  in  the  same  metre,  is  an 
exceedingly  pleasant  romantic  biography  of  a  real  person,  a  sort  of 
cross  between  Quentin  Durward  and  the  Admirable  Crichton,  whose 
prowess  against  Englishmen  and  others  in  the  field,  and  his  courtesy 
to  ladies  in  the  bower,  are  very  lovingly  depicted.     The  most  note- 
worthy  of    the    three,    however    (though,    like    them    and    Lyndsay's 
other  poems,  it  is  disfigured  by  the  extraordinary  coarseness  of  lan- 
guage which  marks  most  of  this   early  Scottish  poetry,  and  which, 
except  for  a  very  brief  time  at  the  Restoration,  and  then  chiefly  in 
anonymous  writings,   has    never   been   matched   in   England),  is  the 
Satire.     This,  as  its  length,  not  far  short  of  5000  lines,    .j,.    ^  .■ 
makes    inevitable,    is    not    a    single    piece,   but,   on    the        a/the 
model  of  the  French  compositions  which  no]  doubt  sug-      Estates 
gested  it,  a  set  or  pentalogy  of  five  different  pieces :    the 
first  part  of  the  play  proper,   the  First  and  Second  Interludes,  the 
second  part  of  the  play,  and  the  Third    Interlude,  while  there  is  a 
preliminary  interlude  of  between  two  and  three  hundred  lines  more 
which  has  been  thought  spurious,  but  with  no  apparent  reason,  and 
which   is   certainly  not   less   vigorous   than   the    rest,  though  it  is  if 
possible  even  coarser. 

The  main  play  is  a  "  morality "  of  the  familiar  kind  (see  next 
Book),  but  with  the  allegory  deflected  from  its  usual  ethical  tenor  to 
a  political  bent,  Rex  Humanitas  being  tempted  by  Wantonness, 
Placebo,  and  the  Vices  in  the  habit  of  Friars,  and  saved  by  Correc- 
tion, (iude  Counsel,  and  the  Virtues.  It  is  in  the  second  part  that 
the  Three  Estates  make  a  direct  appearance;  while  the  Interludes, 
not  losing  sight  of  the  moral,  enforce  it  with  more  farcical  and 
general  satire.  It  has  been  customary  to  regard  Lyndsay  as  a  partisan 
of  the  Reformation,  and  so,  in  the  merely  literal  and  grammatical 
sense,  he  certainly  was.  But  it  does  not  appear  very  certain  that  he 
was  a  partisan  from  any  doctrinal  side. 

This  sharp  satire  on  abuses  in  Church  and  State,  perhaps 
mixed,  as  satire  so  often  is,  with  some  selfish  consideration,  appears 

N 


178  THE  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

also  in  all,  or  almost  all,  Lyndsay's  minor  poems,  which,  if  not  over 

numerous,   are   very   interesting.      They   scarcely   reach    a   dozen   in 

number,  and,  as  has  been  said,  grace  of  poetic  style  and 

poems.  thought  is  by  no  means  their  prominent  characteristic. 
But  they  all  have  a  certain  accomplishment  of  phrase 
and  form  which  is  extremely  noteworthy  in  contrast  with  the  stagger- 
ing state  of  English  in  both  ways  at  the  time,  and  more  noteworthy 
still  when  we  remember  that  the  Scottish  Muse  was  about  to  fall 
almost  barren  for  centuries,  while  the  English  was  in  some  fifty  years' 
time  to  become  the  fruitful  mother  of  the  best  poetry  in  the  world. 
And  they  are  all  interesting,  more  or  less,  »in  matter.  The  Dream 
(which  is  in  plain  language  a  begging  letter  to  the  King)  is  in  rhyme- 
royal,  and  the  body  of  it  is  simply  part  of  that  vast  and  dreary 
common  form  of  fifteenth-century  allegory  through  which,  as  through- 
out this  Book,  we  have  to  make  our  way.  But  the  begging  letter  by 
itself  has  some  very  interesting  biographical  touches,  reminding  James 
how  his  master-usher  had  carried  him  in  his  arms  and  tucked  him  up 
in  bed;  how  he  had  told  him  not  merely  "of  Hercules  the  actis 
honorabill,'''  and  much  other  improving  matter,  but  the  Prophecies  of 
Rymour,  Beid,  and  Marlyng,  and  tales  of  the  Red  Etin  and  the 
Gyre  Carling,  for  which  posterity  would  very  cheerfully  give  twenty 
Dialogues  between  Experience  and  a  Courtier.  The  Dream  itself 
ranges  from  the  centre  of  the  Earth  (^i.e.  Hell)  and  the  description  of 
Paradise,  to  the  relations  between  France  and  Scotland  and  the  state 
of  Argyle  and  the  Out  Isles,  which  would  appear  not  to  have  been 
Paradise  at  all.  The  piece,  with  all  its  parts  included,  considerably 
exceeds  1000  lines,  and  ends  with  a  direct  Exhortation  to  the 
King's  Grace  (in  nine-line  stanzas,  with  a  different  one  as  coda)  which 
is  manly  and  sensible.  In  fact,  both  Dunbar  and  Lyndsay  deserve 
the  highest  credit  for  the  absence  of  "  assentation  "  in  their  addresses 
to  their  patrons,  James  the  Fourth  and  Fifth,  though  neither  father 
nor  son  seems  to  have  profited  very  much  thereby. 

This  manly  tone  is  renewed  in  the  Complaint  of  Sir  David 
Lyndsay  —  some  500  lines  in  octosyllabic  couplets  —  which  is  again 
biographical  and  again  suppliant,  but  does  not  hesitate  to  mingle 
probably  unpalatable  advice  with  supplication.  Nor  is  the  Testament 
and  Complaint  of  the  Papyngo  (the  King's  Parrot),  which  is  about  the 
length  of  the  Dream,  and  chiefly,  but  not  wholly,  in  rhyme-royal,  very 
different,  being  directed  largely  against  various  abuses  in  Church  and 
State,  especially  the  former.  The  Answer  to  the  King''s  Flyting  (the 
Flyting  itself  is  lost)  partakes  of  the  studied  coarseness  of  this 
singular  form  of  poetical  amusement.  But  Lyndsay's  practical 
honesty  makes  him  still  more  attentive  to  warning  the  "  Red  Tod  of 
St.  Andrews "  against  vice  and  disorder  than  to  exercises  in  curious 


CHAP.  II   THE   SCOTTISH   POETS  — HISTORICAL  AND   MINOR    179 

ribaldry.  Another  court  poem,  probably  not  without  special  meaning, 
is  the  Petition  of  the  King's  old  hound  "  Bagsche  "  to  his  successors 
in  favour,  Bawtie  and  others,  for  "ane  portion  in  Uunfermling," 
concluding  with  good  advice.  The  poet's  most  important  attempt  in 
pathetic  poetry,  the  Deploration  of  Queen  Magdalene,  the  fair  and 
ill-fated  French  princess  who  was  James's  first  wife,  and  to  whom  the 
climate  of  Scotland  was  almost  at  once  fatal,  is  meritorious  but  hardly 
successful,  Lyndsay  being  unable  to  extract  from  the  rhyme-royal  that 
plangent  note  which  it  so  readily  yields  to  true  poets.  He  is  happier, 
though  still  not  consummately  happy,  in  the  comic  handling  of  the 
Justing  betiveeti  Watsott  and  Barbour  and  the  Supplication  in  Con- 
tempt of  Side  Tails  (trains),  as  well  as  in  the  rather  famous  anti- 
clerical Kitty s  Confession,  to  which  the  Description  of  Feddar  Coffis  1 
is  a  kind  of  pendant.  Lastly  has  to  be  mentioned  the  Tragedy  of 
the  Cardinal,  a  ferocious  attack  on  the  dead  Beaton  in  the  style  of 
the  Fall  of  Princes. 

1  i.e.  "  pedlar  knaves,"  in  senses  both  literal  and  transferred. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE  FOUR   GREAT   SCOTTISH    POETS 

The  King's  Quair  —  Henryson  —  The  Testament  and  Complaint  of  Creseide  —  The 
Fables  —  Robene  and  Makyne  —  Minor  poems  —  Dunbar  —  The  Twa  Maryit 
Wemen  and  the  Wedo  —  Other  large  poems  —  Gawain  Douglas — His  life  — 
His  original  poems  —  His  Aeneid 

It  has  constantly  been  remarked  as  a  most  curious  and  partially 
unaccountable  phenomenon,  that  while  Chaucerian  poetry,  as  soon  as 
Chaucer's  own  hands  failed,  gave  nothing  but  third-rate  work  or 
worse  in  England,  it  produced  in  Scotland  work  in  some  cases  of 
very  high  quality  indeed.  Such  account  as  is  possible  of  the  reasons 
for  the  general  lateness  of  purely  Scottish  literature  has  been  given 
in  the  last  chapter.  In  this  we  shall  give  an  account  of  the  four 
chiefs  of  Scottish  poetry  when  it  did  come  —  James  the  First,  Robert 
Henryson,  William  Dunbar,  and  Gawain  or  Gavin  Douglas. 

Criticism  of  the  strenuously  inert  kind  has  played  its  usual  games 
with  the  literary  work  of  James  Stewart,  first  king  of  the  name  in 
Scotland.  After  by  turns  attributing  to  him  and  taking  away  from 
him  Chrisfs  Kirk  on  the  Green,  Peebles  to  the  Play,  etc.,  it  has 
recently  attacked  his  claims,  which  for  nearly  four  centuries  had  been 
undisturbed,  on  the  Kingis  Quair  itself.  Once  more  this  history 
does  not  trouble  itself  with  otiosities  of  the  kind.  It  is  sufficient 
that  the  Kingis  Quair  {quire,  book)  is  attributed  to  James  by  John 
Major  or  Mair,  not  an  impeccable  historian,  but  fairly  near  the  time, 
and  likely  to  know  ;  that  it  is  also  given  as  his  in  the  MS.,  which 
seems  to  be  still  more  nearly  contemporary ;  that  no  other  attribution 
of  the  poem  has  any  early  authority ;  and  that  nothing  is  to  be  gained 
by  disturbing  the  accepted  tradition.  It  is  indeed  unwise  to  try,  as 
other  freaks  of  the  same  tricksy  spirit  have  done,  to  force  the  dramatic 
details  of  the  poem  too  closely,  or  closely  at  all,  into  line  with  the 
historical  events  of  James's  life,  or  to  insist  that  the  locality  of  the 
poem  is  Windsor,  the  heroine  Joan  Beaufort,  and  so  forth.  For  us 
it  shall  be  sufficient  that  the  unbroken  and  till  now  unopposed  tradi- 

i8o 


CHAP.  HI  THE   FOUR   GREAT   SCOTTISH    POETS  i8i 

tion  of  four  centuries  has  given  the  Kingis  Quair^  to  James  the 
First  of  Scotland,  and  that  though  we  cannot  say  on,  positive  evidence 
that  he  did  write  it.  absolutely  no  facts  have  been  produced  showing 
that  he  did  not.  With  regard  to  Chrisfs  Kirk  on  the  Green  and 
Peebles  to  the  Play,  two  very  lively  and  spirited,  though  slightly 
coarse,  narrative  ballads  of  a  "  Burnsish  "  cast,  the  case  is  dilTerent. 
Early  attribution  hesitates  —  a  fatal  thing  —  between  James  the  First 
and  James  the  FiftJi  as  the  author  of  Chrisfs  Kirk  on  the  Green,  and 
its  tone  is  much  more  suggestive  of  the  "  goodman  of  Ballengeich  " 
than  of  his  fierce  but  knightly  great-great-grandfather.  Also,  though 
it  is  very  difficult  to  speak  of  the  older  Scots  with  any  certainty, 
the  language  certainly  seems  more  recent  than  the  early  fifteenth 
century. 

On  the  contrary,  the  King''s  Qiiair,  if  not  by  James,  must  be 
by  some  unknown  Scottish  poet  who  was  under  the  fresh  and  full 
Chaucerian  influence.  This  James  would  naturally  have  been,  seeing 
that  he  was  born  in  1394,  captured  at  sea  by  the 
English  in  1405,  and  kept  in  an  honourable  captivity  '^^ouJir. 
in  England  till  1424,  in  which  year,  having  married 
Joan  Beaufort,  Henry  V.'s  first  cousin,  he  was  allowed  to  ransom 
himself  and  return  to  Scotland.  There  he  was  crowned  at  Scone, 
ruled  his  turbulent  realm  with  some  justice,  considerable  ability  and 
love  of  learning,  and  very  great  harshness,  till  1436,  when  he  was 
assassinated  by  not  quite  unreasonably  wrathful  rebels  in  the 
monastery  of  the  Black  Friars  at  Perth,  despite  (or  not)  of  the 
heroism  of  "Kate  Badass."  There  was,  if  a  slight  variation  of 
dialect,  a  complete  unity  of  literary  sentiment  between  England  and 
Scotland  at  the  time,  and  the  increasing  study  of  the  French 
rhetoriqueiirs  had  not  yet,  as  it  was  to  do  in  Scotland  even  more  than 
in  England,  aureated  the  vocabulary  with  too  cumbrous  a  garment  of 
brocaded  diction.  The  piece,  which  is  in  stanzas  of  rhyme-royal 
(said  indeed  to  be  so  named  from  it),  has  the  drawbacks  from  which 
even  Chaucer's  own  minor  poems  are  not  free,  of  the  common  form 
of  the  Rose  tradition  —  the  sleep,  the  dream,  the  vision  of  Paganly 
divine  personages,  the  Deadly  Sins,  the  Wheel  of  Fortune,  and  the 
rest.  It  has  none  of  tlie  direct  dramatic  faculty  of  Chaucer  in  the 
Tales  or  of  Dunbar,  none  of  the  inten.se  romantic  power  of  Henry- 
.son's  Creseide,  or  the  idyllic  grace  of  his  Robcne  and  Makync.  But 
it  has  very  much  of  the  dreamy  elegance  of  the  Rose  itself,  in  the 
passages  describing  how  the  weary  dreamer  looks  out  into  the  castle 
garden,  and  sees  the  gracious  apparition  of  his  love  with  golden  hair, 

1  Ed.  Skeat,  Scottish  Text  Society.  The  arguments  against  James's  author- 
ship have  been  carefully  examined  and  replied  to  by  M.  Jusserand;  but  it  was 
really  unnecessary,  for  not  one  of  them  is  even  plausible. 


i82  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

tricolour  plumes  in  it,  and  a  single  ruby  glowing  on  her  breast ;  the 
interview  with  Venus  (that  which  follows  with  Minerva  is  a  little 
owlish)  ;  the  fine  episode  of  Fortune ;  and  the  final  boon  of  red  gilly- 
flowers brought  him  by  the  bird  of  Venus,  the  turtle-dove,  with  an 
encouraging  inscription  on  the  leaves.  On  the  whole,  if  The  Flower 
and  the  Leaf  be  not  Chaucer's,  it  and  the  King^s  Quair  may  be 
ranked  as  the  two  most  graceful,  scholarly,  and  elegant  poems  of  the 
French-Chaucerian  tradition  to  be  found  in  English.  The  Ballad  of , 
Good  Counsel,  which  is  also  ascribed  by  good  authority  to  James,  and 
is  the  only  other  piece  bearing  such  attribution,  is  also,  though  in 
another  kind,  strongly  Chaucerian,  its  refrain  being  — 

And  for  ilk  inch  He  will  thee  quit  a  span, 

and  breathing  the  same  mixture  of  pious  humility  and  moral  wisdom 
which  appears  in  Flee  from  the  Press,  etc.  Both  pieces,  the  Quair 
and  the  Ballad,  are  thus  distinctly  "  school-work,"  owing  almost 
everything,  as  far  as  mere  originality  goes,  to  Chaucer.  But  they  are 
school-work  of  the  best  kind,  standing  to  their  masters  as  Luini's  to 
Lionardo's  in  painting,  and  showing  the  highest  ability  in  execution. 

Few  poems  whose  personality  is  certain,  and  whose  work  is  both 
eminent  in  merit  and  not  inconsiderable  in  bulk,  have  a  more 
shadowy  record  than  Master  Robert  Henryson,  schoolmaster  in  Dun- 
fermline,  as  he  is  entitled  in  editions  of  his  work  printed 
some  sixty  or  seventy  years  after  his  death.  It  may, 
in  fact,  be  said  that  Dunbar's  reference  to  that  death  in  the  Cotnplaint 
of  the  Makers,  which  was  written  about  1506  — 

In  Dunfermline  he  has  done  down, 
Good  Master  Robert  Henryson  ^  — 

is  the  only  certain  and  positive  reference  that  we  possess  to  him. 
For  it  is  not  certain,  though  it  is  highly  probable,  that  he  is  the 
VenerabiHs  vir  Magister  Robertus  Henryson  who  was  incorporated 
in  the  University  of  Glasgow  (then  scarcely  ten  years  old)  in  1462 ; 
and  all  attempts  to  identify  him  with  the  Henrysons  or  Hendersons 
of  Fordell  in  Fife  have  quite  failed. 

About  his  works,2  however,  there  is  no  reasonable  doubt.  They 
consist  of  two  poems  of  some  length,  the  Testament  of  Creseide  and 
Orpheus  and  Eurydice ;  of  a  collection,  with  prologue,  of  ^sopic 
fables  in  Scots ;  and  of  rather  more  than  a  dozen  miscellaneous 
minor  poems,  of  which  the  chief  is  the  somewhat  famous  pastourelle 

1  Readings  vary. 

2  Ed.  Laing  (Edinburgh,  1865),  a  book  now  very  scarce  and  dear,  which  the 
Scottish  Text  Society  hopes  to  re-edit. 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   FOUR   GREAT   SCOTTISH   POETS  183 


of  Robette  and  Mahyne.  The  total  bulk  is  not  large,  but  the  merit 
is,  for  the  fifteenth  century  more  particularly,  very  high,  and  the 
variety  of  the  directions  in  which  it  is  shown  is  extremely  remark- 
able. Of  the  two  long  poems,  Orpheus  and  Eurydice  is  partly  in 
rhyme-royal,  partly  in  couplets,  with  a  ballade  in  ten-line  stanzas 
interposed  and  a  "morality"  in  couplets.  If  it  stood  alone  it  would 
not  create  any  very  special  position  for  its  author.  There  are  much 
better  Middle  English  poems  on  the  same  subject ;  and  this  is  only 
a  fair  Chaucerian  exercise,  not  better  than  the  best  of  Lydgate,  though 
much  better  than  the  worst  of  Occleve. 

Very  different  is  the  Testament  of  Creseide'^  (sometimes  sub- 
divided into  a  ''complaint"  and  a  "testament"  proper),  which 
undertakes    to    complete    Chaucer's     Troilus,     and,    not 

,-     ,         ..1       1  •  1  I        The  Testa- 

adopting   the   story  of  the  jilted   prmce  s    speedy   death,     mentand 
to  give  that  of  Cressida's  punishment.     After  a  vigorous   ^"c/J^f-'lf 
prologue,  describing  how  the  poet  in    middle  age,  and  a 
cold  night,  mended  the  fire,  "  beikit  him  about,"  "  tuik  ane  drink  his 
spirits  to  comfort,"  and  a  book,  the  Troilus  — 

To  cut  the  winter  night  and  make  it  short  — 

he  resolves  to  tell  the  sequel.  Diomed,  satiated  with  Cressida, 
deserts  her  as  she  has  deserted  his  rival.  She  takes  refuge  with  her 
father,  Calchas,  and  will  not  show  herself  in  public,  but  in  '•  ane 
secret  oratoir "  angrily  reproaches  Venus  and  her  son.  Cupid, 
highly  indignant,  summons  the  council  of  the  Gods  -  to  determine 
the  punishment  for  this  blasphemy,  and  it  is  referred  to  a  committee 
consisting  of  Saturn  and  the  Moon.  Little  mercy  is  to  be  expected 
from  these  two  cold  deities ;  and  there  is  singular  force  in  the 
description  of  the  sentence  pronounced  by  Saturn.  Passing  down 
where  careful  Cressid  lay,  and  placing  a  frosty  wand  on  her  head,  he 
deprives  her  of  all  beauty  and  joy.  Cynthia  strikes  her  in  addition 
with  the  incurable  and  loathsome  signs  of  leprosy.  The  doom  takes 
effect  at  once,  and  she  has  to  seek  the  spital-house,  where  (in  a  nine- 
lined  stanza)  she  makes  her  complaint.  One  of  her  wretched 
companions,  not  unkindly,  bids  her  make  virtue  of  necessity,  give  up 
useless  wailing. 

And  live  efter  the  law  of  lipper-leid  (=  folk). 

So  she  goes  forth  with  clapper  and  begging-dish.  As  she  sits 
forlorn    by    the    wayside,   a    gallant   company   rides    by    from   Troy, 

1  This  can  Vjc  found  in  Chalmers's  Poets  and  in  Professor  Skeat's  Chauceriana. 

2  It  is  not  superfluous  to  say  that  Mercury  is  "full  of  rhetoric,"  and  has  "a 
hude  Like  to  ane  Poeit  of  the  auld  fashioun  "  ;  see  note  on  Qucntin  Shaw  in  the 
last  chapter. 


184  THE  FIFTEENTH  CENTURY  book  iv 


Troilus  among  them.  And  then  comes  the  crowning  passage  of 
the  poem.  Their  eyes  meet ;  but  her  bleared  vision  does  not 
recognise  her  former  lover,  and  it  is  impossible  for  him  to  know 
Cressida  in  the  ghastly  creature  beneath  him.  The  stanzas  describ- 
ing this  situation  are  nearly  perfect.  She  receives  his  guerdon,  is 
told  by  one  of  her  comrades  who  he  is,  utters  one  last  complaint, 
and  sending  him  a  ruby  ring  he  had  once  given  her,  dies. 

The  two  great  passages  of  the  doom  of  Saturn  and  the  meeting 
would  of  itself  give  this  poem  rank  with,  if  not  above,  the  best  work 
of  its  century,  but  the  whole  is  not  unworthy  of  them.  Only  in 
Sackville  is  the  power  of  tragic  effect  which  rhyme-royal  eminently 
possesses  brought  out  with  equal  fulness,  and  Sackville  is  less  terrible 
than  the  Saturn  piece,  and  less  pathetic  than  the  lovers'  meeting. 

The  powers  of  this  remarkable  stanza  in  the  lighter  way  are  not 
generally  held  to  be  as  high  as  those  in  serious  verse ;  indeed,  its 
great  inventor  or  naturaliser  in  English  usually  deserted  it  for  octo- 

syllables  or  heroics    when   he  was  bent  on  comedy.     But 

Henryson  has  been  not  much  less  happy  in  his  use  of  it 
for  yCsop  than  in  the  Creseide  poem.  His  prologue  is  again  personal, 
though  less  vivid;  his  fables  are  —  The  Cock  and  the  Jasp  (Jasper)  ; 
The  Uplandish  Mouse  and  the  Burgess  Mouse ;  a  Fox  series  —  Sir 
Chantecleer  and  the  Fox,  The  Fox  confessing  to  the  Wolf,  The 
Parliament  of  Beasts;  The  Dog,  Sheep,  and  Wolf;  The  Lion  and 
the  Mouse ;  The  Preaching  of  the  Swallow ;  The  Fox,  the  Wolf,  and 
the  Cadger;  The  Fox,  the  Wolf,  and  the  Moon's  Shadow;  The 
Wolf  and  the  Wether;  The  Wolf  and  the  Lamb;  The  Paddock 
(Frog)  and  tlie  Mouse.  Many  of  these  are  told  at  considerable 
length,  extending  to  some  hundreds  of  lines,  and  the  moralitas  of 
each,  as  we  should  expect  in  this  moralising  of  all  centuries,  is 
prolonged  to  forty,  fifty,  sixty,  or  even  more  lines,  but  the  general 
treatment  is  not  at  all  heavy. 

There  is,  however,  no  doubt  that  Robene  and  Makytie  =  Malkin 
("  Maudkin "  not  "Marykin,"  as  is  sometimes  said),  the  best  known 
of  Henryson's  poem  from  its  fortunate  inclusion  in  Percy's  Reliqiies, 

is,    if    not    the   best,    superior   to   all   except   the    Testa- 
MaJiyne.      "t^itt.     It   is   the  Old  French  pastourelle,  or  shepherdess 

wooing-poem,  with  a  difference.  In  the  first  part  the 
usual  order  of  things  is  inverted,  and  Makyne  woos  in  vain  the 
impassible  and  clownish  object  of  her  love.  She  is,  in  fact,  '■'■Merry 
Makyne"  by  grace  of  the  perpetual  epithet  only.  But  the  God  of 
Love  avenges  her :  the  moonlight  and  the  "  sweet  season "  work  on 
Robin,  and  he  in  turn  solicits  her  grace.  But  she  has  been  heard 
and  healed,  and  every  fit  reader  of  the  poem  has  praised  the  simple 
but  inimitably  felicitous  touches  with  which,  in  no  undignified  spirit 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   FOUR   GREAT   SCOTTISH   POETS  185 

of  "  tit  for  tat,"  but  with  the  straightforwardness  of  the  heart-whole,  and 
not  without  a  touch  of  solemnity,  she  reminds  him  of  the  old  saw  — 

The  man  that  will  nocht  when  he  may, 
Sail  hauf  nocht  quhen  he  wald  ; 

and  to  a  second  despairing  plea  of  the  soft  dry  night,  the  warm  balmy 
air,  the  secret  greenwood,  replies  — 

Robin,  that  world  is  all  awa, 
And  quite  brocht  to  an  end  — 

and  goes  home  no  longer  merely  technically  "merry,"  but  blithe 
enough  "among  the  holtis  hoar,"  with  (as  we  may  supplement  the 
description)  chin  no  doubt  slightly  upturned  in  the  moonliglit,  leaving 
the  luckless  fool  "  in  dolour  and  in  care." 

The  remaining:  members  of  this  small  but  admirable  collection  of 
verse  are  less  interesting,  though  much  above  the  standard  of  their 
time.  ■  The  Gannond  (Garment)  of  Good  Ladies  has  been  much  praised, 
but  its  allegory  —  "Her   hat  should  be   of  fair-having";  ^,. 

,1111  r  V         ..  r  ^1      Minor  poems. 

"Her  sleeves  should  be  of  esperance"  —  too  frequently 
takes  an  excursion  beyond  the  agreeably  quaint  into  the  tediously 
grotesque.  The  Bliidy  Serk — the  shirt  of  a  knight  who  was 
desperately  wounded  in  rescuing  a  lady  from  a  giant,  worn  by  her 
after  his  death  —  is  better,  but  it  is  not  improved  by  the  inevitable 
inoralitas  (spared  us  in  Robetie  and  Makyne),  likening  the  lady  to 
man's  soul,  the  giant  to  Lucifer,  and  the  knight  to  Christ.  The 
Abbey   Walk  is  interesting  for  its  opening  couplet  — 

Alone  as  I  went  up  and  down 
In  ane  Abbaye  was  fair  to  see  — 

and  its  possible  association  with  the  actual  Dunfermline ;  while  it 
morals  on  the  refrain  — 

Obey  and  thank  thy  God  of  all  — 

with  a  right  musical  and  pleasant  piety.  The  rest,  except  a  rather 
coarse  and  not  very  clever  gibe  at  Some  Practice  of  Medicine,  are 
mostly  religious-philosophical,  and  the  best  of  them  is  the  Three 
Dead  Pows,  i.e.  death's  heads,  which  address  man,  warning  him  of 
his  end.     This  is  also  given  to  Patrick  Johnston. 

It  is  usual  to  rank  William  Dunbar  as  the  chief  of  all  this  group, 
and  in  fact  the   greatest   Scottish    poet   except    Burns.     Nor  is  there 
much    reason    for    quarrelling   with    the    estimate,    since      ^    , 
Dunbar,  though  he  has  perhaps  nothing  equal  ni  tlieir  own 
kinds  to  the  above-noted  passages  of  the  Testament  of  Creseide  and 
Xo  Robene  and  Makyne,  has  a  larger  collection  to  show,  both  of  good 


i86  THE   FirTEENTH   CENTURY  book  it 


and  of  excellent  work,  a  somewhat  wider  range,  and  above  all,  a 
certain  body  and  fulness  of  poetical  wine  which  is  not  so  evident  in 
the  pensive  though  not  uncheerful  schoolmaster  of  Dunfermline.  We 
know  a  little,  if  not  very  much,  more  about  Dunbar  than  about  Henry- 
son.  He  was  certainly  a  Lothian  man,  probably  allied  not  merely 
in  name  to  the  great  family  of  the  Earls  of  Dunbar  and  March, 
founded  in  the  eleventh  century  by  Cospatrick,  and  now  chiefly 
subsisting  in  its  northern  or  Morayshire  branches.  The  year  1460, 
with  the  usual  circa,  is  accepted  as  his  birth-date.  He  went  to  St. 
Salvator's  College,  then  the  only  one  in  the  University  of  St.  Andrews, 
took  his  B.A.  in  1477,  and  his  M.A.  two  years  later,  being,  it  seems, 
destined  for  the  Church.  He  appears,  both  from  his  own  account 
and  that  of  others,  to  have  been  for  a  time  a  Franciscan  friar,  preaching 
and  begging  all  over  England  and  in  France  as  well  as  in  Scotland. 
But  in  the  French  phrase  he  "  threw  the  frock  to  the  nettles,"  and 
appears  to  have  been  employed  by  James  IV.  on  diplomatic  duty  not 
merely  in  England,  but  in  almost  all  parts  of  the  Continent.  One  of 
his  best  and  best-known  poems  welcomes  Margaret  of  England  on 
her  coming  to  Scotland  as  the  King's  bride  in  1503  —  he  was  specially 
attached  to  her  service  ;  and  in  1508  he  had  some  of  his  principal  poems 
printed  and  pubhshed  by  the  first  Scottish  printers,  Chepman  and 
Millar.  Records  of  gifts  and  pensions  to  him  exist  up  to  June,  1513, 
and  then  we  hear  no  more  of  him.  Flodden  came  in  September  of 
that  year,  and  it  has  been  thought  that  he  too  may  have  fallen  in  the 
''dark  impenetrable  ring"  round  his  master.  He  was  certainly  dead 
in  1 530,  for  Sir  David  Lyndsay  says  so ;  but  this  is  all  we  know. 

The  poems  known  to  be  by,  or  reasonably  attributed  to,  him  are 
tolerably  numerous,  but  not  very  bulky,  none  exceeding  some  600 
lines,  while  most  are  quite  short.  The  entire  number  in  Dr.  Small's 
edition  1  is  loi,  of  which  eleven  are  given  as  "attributed,"  while 
The  Twa  seven,  having  been,  as  noted  above,  printed  in  the  poet's 
We'men  o^^'"  lifetime  as  his,  have  a  higher  degree  of  certainty 
andthe  Wedo.  than  any  of  the  others  in  text.  The  two  most  consider- 
able are  The  Twa  Maryit  Wenieii  and  the  Wedo  and  the  Friars  of 
Berwick,  the  latter  only  "attributed,"  but  displaying  a  verve  and  an 
accomplishment  of  form  not  known  to  be  possessed  by  any  other  Scottish 
poet  of  the  time.  Both  are  very  strongly  Chaucerian,  and  the  Friars  is 
in  Ciiaucerian  "  riding-rhyme " ;  the  other  piece  is  perhaps  the  most 
accomplished  specimen  of  that  revived  alliteration  which  has  been 
previously  discussed.  Dunbar  does  not  limit  himself  to  three 
alliterations,  often  giving  four  or  even  five,  and  he  is  somewhat 
less  distinct  in  his  middle  pause  than  Langland.     On  the  other  hand, 

1  For  the  Scottish   Text  Society ;    also  editions  by   D.   Laing    and  by   Dr. 
Schipper. 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   FOUR   GREAT   SCOTTISH    POETS  187 

his  whole  verse,  which  averages  thirteen  or  fourteen  syllables,  has  a 
distinctness  and  evenness  of  rhythm  which  are  only  found  in  parts 
of  Piers  Plowman.  The  matter  of  the  poem  is  an  ultra-Chaucerian 
satire  on  women.  The  three  personages  are  represented  as  all 
young  and  all  pretty ;  they  are  drinking  freely  in  a  goodly  garden  on 
Midsummer  Eve,  and  the  poet  achieves  a  triumphantly  contrasted 
picture  of  physical  beauty  in  scene  and  figure  and  of  moral  deformity 
in  sentiment.  The  Wife  of  Bath,  the  undoubted  model  of  these  three 
young  persons,  is  neither  mealy-mouthed  nor  straight-laced,  but  she  is 
always  good-natured.  Dunbar's  wives  and  widow  combine  sensuality 
with  ill-nature  in  a  way  not  elsewhere  to  be  paralleled  in  English 
literature  till  we  come  to  the  rakes  of  the  Restoration.  Yet  the 
ugliness  of  the  picture  is  half  redeemed  by  the  mastery  with  which 
Dunbar  makes  them  expose  their  own  shame,  and  sets  their  figures 
for  us  with  a  touch  of  grave  irony  worthy  of  Butler,  and  less  purely 
caricatural  in  style  than  Hndibras.  The  Friars  of  Berwick  is  a 
version  of  a  well-known  fabliau.,  in  which  two  friars,  treated  with 
scant  hospitality  by  a  woman  who  in  her  husband's  absence  has 
made  an  assignation  with  her  lover,  revenge  themselves  upon  her 
(though  not  to  extremity),  taking  advantage  of  the  husband's 
unexpected  return.  It  is  therefore  much  less  of  an  original  and  more 
of  a  commonplace  than  The  Twa  Mary  it  IVeinen,  but  the  story  is 
told  with  the  true  brio  of  the  Canterbury  Tales  themselves. 

Next  to  these  two  may  be  ranked  the  Golden  Targe.,  the  Flyting 
of  Dtmbar  and  Kennedy,  the  famous  Dance  of  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins, 
and  The  TJnstle  and  the  Rose.  The  first  of  these  is  a  typical  fifteenth- 
century  poem,  allegorical  in  tone  and  very  "  rhetorical " 
in  language,  with  the  usual  praise  of  Chaucer,  '•'■  Rose  poem"^' 
of  rhetors  all,"  and  "  light  of  our  Inglis,"  as  well  as  of 
the  "sugared  lips  and  aureate  tongues  "  of  Gower  and  Lydgate.  The 
Targe  is  in  nine-lined  stanzas ;  The  Thistle  and  the  Rose,  in  rhyme- 
royal,  is  of  the  same  stamp  and  style,  but  adjusted  to  convey  a 
welcome  full  of  grace,  good  sense,  and  good  taste  to  the  youthful 
Margaret,  the  "rose"  married  to  the  "thistle."  Many  who  know 
nothing  else  of  Dunl)ar's,  know  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins  from  its  early 
inclusion  in  anthologies.  The  vigour  of  its  lurid  pictures  has  not  been 
exaggerated,  nor  the  real  command  of  metre  (Romance  eights  and 
sixes)  which  the  poet  here  as  everywhere  displays,  and  which  contrasts 
so  strikingly  with  the  staggering  gait  and  palsied  grip  of  his  English 
contemporaries.  The  Flyting,  one  of  a  group  of  such  things,  is  a 
curiosity  no  doubt,  but  a  curiosity  of  a  kind  which  could  perhaps  be 
spared.  Literary  Scots  at  all  times,  up  to  the  eighteenth  century, 
admitted,  as  has  been  said,  a  coarseness  of  actual  language  which  is 
rarely  paralleled  in  literary  English  ;  and  these '' flytings"  consisted  of 


i88  THE    FIFTEENTH  CENTURY  book  iv 

alternate  torrents  of  sheer  Billingsgate  poured  upon  each  other  by 
the  combatants.  There  is  not  much  doubt  that  many  of  the  strange 
terms  of  abuse  used  are  mere  gibberish,  coined  for  the  occasion ;  but 
there  was  considerable  legitimate  accommodation  in  Scots  for  the 
purpose,  and  the  poem,  like  others  of  its  kind,  is  at  worst  a  quarry  for 
lexicographers. 

Of  the  very  numerous  minor  poems  must  be  mentioned  the 
touching  and  interesting  Lament  for  the  Makers,  "when  he  was 
sick,"  with  its  passing-bell  refrain  of  Timor  Mortis  conturbat  me,  and 
its  list  of  poets,  most  of  whom  are  shadows  of  shades ;  the  lively  if 
irreverent  Ballad  of  Kind  Kyttok,  and  her  reception  at  Heaven's 
gates  ;  the  Testament  of  Mr.  Andro  Kennedy,  a.  macaronic  pendant  to 
the  Flyting;  two  rhetorical  pieces  on  the  Lord  Bernard  Stewart,  living 
and  dead ;  a  sharp  satirical  description  of  Edinburgh  Session ;  a 
quaint  contrast  of  merry  Edinburgh  and  distressful  Stirling ;  the  very 
vivid  if  not  very  decorous  Dance  in  the  Queen^s  Chamber,  which,  with 
other  poems  to  the  Queen,  shows  that  iVIargaret  had  the  full  Tudor 
tolerance  of  broad  speech;  the  not  unamusing  Poem  to  ane 
Blackamoor  —  "  My  lady  with  the  meikle  lips  "  —  a  negress  who,  as 
a  rarity,  had  been  imported  to  be  maid  to  the  Queen.  The  rest  are 
pious  or  profane,  personal  or  general,  rhetorical  or  direct.  But  they 
are  nearly  always  out  of  the  common  way  of  literature  of  their  time ; 
and  the  contemptuous  fashion  in  which  they  have  been  sometimes 
spoken  of  is  not  a  little  surprising. 

The  last  of  the  four  poets  to  be  mentioned  here  is  also  the  least, 
though  he  has  an  interest  of  his  own.  Gavin  or  Gawain  Douglas 
was  the  third  son  of  Archibald  Douglas  —  "  Bell-the-Cat "  —  fifth  Earl  of 
Angus,  and  of  Elizabeth  Boyd.  It  is  not  known  at 
DougiTs.  vvhich  of  the  numerous  seats  of  the  Douglasses  he  was 
born ;  but  the  date  must  have  been  somewhere  about 
the  juncture  of  the  years  1474-75.  He  matriculated  at  St.  Andrews 
in  1489,  was  a  "determinant"  (=  Bachelor  Elect)  in  1492,  Licentiate 
or  incipient  Master  two  years  later.  He  took  orders,  and  at  once 
obtained  various  preferments,  the  chief  being  the  benefice  of  Preston- 
kirk  or  Linton  in  East  Lothian ;  while  in  1501  he  was  made  Dean 
or  Provost  of  St.  Giles',  Edinburgh.  In  this  same  year  he  finished 
the  Palice  of  Honour.  Between  this  and  the  year  of  Flodden,  15 13, 
in  the  summer  of  which  he  finished  his  Virgil,  we  hear  little  of  him. 
As  readers  of  Scottish  history  know,  his  two  elder  brothers  fell  in  the 
battle  itself,  which  broke  the  heart,  though  it  did  not  actually  see  the 
death,  of  Bell-the-Cat  his  father ;  while  his  nephew,  son  of  the 
Master  of  Angus,  killed  at  Flodden,  very  speedily  gained  the  heart  of 
Queen  Margaret,  who,  though  a  widow  and  a  mother,  was  not  much 
more  than   a  girl    in   age.      By    this    marriage    Gawain    not   merely 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   FOUR   GREAT   SCOTTISH   POETS  189 

became  in  the  future,  through  the  Countess  of  Lennox  and  Darnley, 

a  collateral  ancestor  of  the  whole  royal  house  of  Great  Britain  and 

Ireland,  but  was  brought  into  very  immediate  connection      ^^.  ,., 

.  ,       ,  ,  .   r  •,  1^  T.  ,         His  life, 

with    the   chief  person  in  the  state,   the    Queen   Regent, 

who  at  once  gave  him  the  rich  Abbey  of  Aberbrothock  or  Arbroath, 
and  shortly  afterwards  the  brevet-keepership,  as  we  may  say,  of  the 
Great  Seal.  But  Margaret's  hasty  marriage  to  the  head  of  a  power- 
ful but  dreaded  house  was  extremely  unpopular,  and  Gawain  Douglas 
reaped  from  it  more  trouble  than  profit.  He  was  never  confirmed  in 
Arbroath  by  the  Pope ;  an  attempt  of  his  niece  by  marriage  to  make 
him  Archbishop  of  St.  Andrews,  and  therefore  Primate  of  Scotland, 
was  frustrated  by  the  address  and  interest  at  Rome  of  another  candi- 
date;  and  though  Douglas,  in  15 15,  obtained  the  Bishopric  of 
Dunkeld,  this  appointment  also  brought  him  endless  trouble,  and  he 
was  actually  imprisoned  by  the  new  regent  Albany  for  an  offence 
apparently  somewhat  analogous  to  the  English  Praemunire,  in  ob- 
taining the  Pope's  letters  without  the  King's,  /.e.  the  Regent's,  license. 
The  Pope,  however,  resented  this  very  decidedly,  and  as  Albany's 
severities  towards  Queen  Margaret  were  also  attracting  the  dis- 
pleasure of  her  brother  Henry  VIII.,  Douglas  was  liberated,  and 
after  some  further  difficulty  was  consecrated  to  Dunkeld.  He  did  not, 
however,  enjoy  it  very  peaceably  —  peaceable  enjoyment  of  anything 
was  hardly  possible  then  in  Scotland  —  and  his  death  in  London, 
where  he  was  negotiating  against  Albany,  coincided  with  hostile 
measures  against  him  taken  by  Archbishop  James  Beaton,  and  re- 
moved him  from  evil  to  come.  He  died  at  the  house  of  his  friend 
Lord  Dacre,  and  was  buried  in  the  Savoy.  We  have  his  will  and  a 
considerable  number  of  public  documents  about  him. 

Douglas  was  not  an  old  man  —  forty-eight  only  —  when  he  died ; 
and  for  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life  he  had  been  incessantly  engaged 
in  public  and  private  business.  But  his  work  in  literature — no  doubt 
all  composed  in  the  quiet  time  between  his  ordination  and  Flodden  — 
is  not  inconsiderable.  Besides  what  we  have,  we  know  that  he 
translated  some  Ovid,  and  it  is  possible  that  he  did  other  things. 
His  existing  work^  consists  of  the  Palice  of  Honour,  King  Hart, 
and  the  version  of  the  Aeneid.  Critics  of  weight  -  have  held  up 
Douglas,  on  the  strength  of  this  Virgil,  as  representing,  or  at  any  rate 
anticipating,  the  new  movement  in  poetry,  that  which  incorporates  the 
classical  and  modern  tradition,  and  so  as  occupying  a  position  at 
least  historically  more  important  than  that  of  his  more  intensely  and 
poetically  gifted  contemporary  Dunbar.     With  all  due  deference,  this 

1  Ed.  Small,  4  vols.  Edinburgh,  1874. 

2  See  W.  J.  Courthopc,  History  of  Eti^lish  Poetry,  i.  374,  one  of  the  few 
passages  in  this  excellent  book  with  which  I  cannot  agree. 


190  THE   FIFFEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

. .    ■ — — .       • 

may  well  be  deemed  a  mistake.  Even  in  the  selection  of  Ovid  and 
Virgil,  Douglas,  though  he  may  have  been  slightly  further  affected 
by  the  classical  intiuence  '•  in  the  air,"  did  not  go  very  much  further 
than  Chaucer  a  century  and  more  before  him.  And  in  the  manner 
of  his  work,  both  original  and  translated,  he  is  not  modern  at  all. 
He  is  with  Hawes,  even  with  Lydgate ;  not  with  Wyat  and  Surrey. 

In  order  to  come  to  a  just  estimate  of  this,  though  the  Virgil  itself 
will  give  us  sufficient  data,  it  is  before  all  things  necessary  to  con- 
sider his  original  poems,  the  Palice  and  King  Hart.  Douglas,  like 
his  other  countrymen  just  mentioned,  is  a  better  manager 
"p^"^!"^'  of  """!■  I»glis"  (it  is  believed  that  he  himself  first  uses 
"  Scots "  with  the  national  differentia)  than  Hawes ; 
but  the  Palice  of  Honour  and  King  Hart  are  in  scheme  and  tone 
absolutely  on  a  par  with  the  Pastime  and  the  Exa7nple.  No  later 
Renaissance  sunrise-colour  is  on  them :  they  are  lighted  only  by 
the  setting  moon  of  the  Rose.  Indeed,  neither  in  Hawes  nor  in 
Lydgate,  neither  in  Occleve  nor  in  the  stiffer  work  of  Dunbar,  is  there 
a  more  essentially  fifteenth-century  poem  than  the  Palice  of  Honour. 
It  has  a  prologue  and  parts ;  it  is  written  in  "  aureate "  language 
of  at  least  eighteen-carat  "rhetorical"  value;  it  has  entire  stanzas 
(nine-lined  ones  rhymed  aabaabbab)  consisting  of  mere  catalogues  of 
names.  The  May  morning,  the  stock,  though  no  doubt  quite  sincere, 
classing  of  Chaucer,  Gower,  and  Lydgate,  with  an  interesting  note  of 
"  Dunbar  yet  ondeid,"  the  vision,  the  heathen  mythology  and  the 
historical  characters,  the  bare,  childlike  allegory  everywhere  intruding 
itself,  are  unmistakable.  Nobody  who  knows  the  Romance  of  the 
Rose,  as  Guillaume  de  Lorris  started  it  nearly  three  hundred  years 
before  Douglas's  death,  can  possibly  mistake  the  quality.  As  usual 
in  these  poems,  the  story,  apart  from  the  allegory,  is  slender.  The 
poet  offends  Venus  (whose  lusty  countenance  and  "  topaz  "  hair  have 
been  thought  to  be  a  compliment  to  the  youthful  Margaret)  and  is 
sentenced  to  a  palinode  and  a  journey  round  the  world  in  company ' 
with  the  Muses.  They  at  last  reach  the  slippery  Rock  of  Honour 
with  its  Palace  at  the  top,  are  introduced  to  much  historical  and 
allegorical  company,  and  the  poem  ends  abruptly  by  one  of  the 
common  devices  for  waking.  The  common  form  for  this  is  relieved 
not  merely  by  the  singularly  abundant  vocabulary  which  distinguishes 
all  these  Scottish  poets,  but  by  a  distinctly  poetical  imagination  and  no 
small  descriptive  power. 

King  Hart,  the  date  of  which  Is  unknown,  is  duller.  The  hero 
IS  simply  the  Heart  of  man ;  and  the  poem  is  one  of  the  innumerable 
allegories  of  Life.  He  has  five  servants  —  the  senses;  is  captured  by 
Dame  Pleasance,  liberated  by  Pity,  captures  Pleasance  in  turn  and 
marries  her,  is  visited  by  Age,  deserted  by  his  wife,  etc.,  and  at  last 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   FOUR   GREAT   SCOTTISH   POETS  191 

mortally  wounded  by  Decrepitude.  It  is  impossible  to  understand 
Mr.  Small's  assertion  that  this  is  ''  a  work  which  in  its  execution  is 
quite  original.'"     The  stanza  is  the  Chaucerian  octave. 

Undoubtedly,  however,  if  Douglas  had  left  nothing  but  his  two 
ostensibly  original  poems,  he  would  not  stand  nearly  as  high  in 
historical  repute  as  he  does  stand.  It  has  been  said  that  the  idea  of 
him  as  a  strictly  Renaissance  writer,  because  he  translates  Virgil,  is 
a  mistake.  Douglas,  it  is  true,  was  no  bad  scholar;  he  certainly 
knew  Latin  well,  and  he  may  have  known  Greek.  But  Virgil  comes 
out  of  his  hands  as  he  might  have  come  out  of  those  of  ,^.    , 

„,  ,  1-11  r     1  <-    "IS  Aeneta. 

Chaucer,  almost  as  he  might  have  come  out  01  those  or 
Benoit,  with  the  sole  exception  that  Douglas  is  faithfuller.  He  does 
not  embroider  on  his  text.  But  his  version  of  that  text  looks  back- 
ward and  not  forward.  He  accents  classical  names  with  an  entire 
inditTerence  to  quantity.  His  vocabulary  and  phraseology  are 
Romantic,  not  Classical.  He  substitutes  the  irregular  charm  of  the 
Middle  Ages  for  the  exact,  the  impeccable,  though  the  somewhat 
frigid,  correctness  of  Virgil.  Nor  is  this  all.  The  fifteenth  century, 
as  we  have  seen,  particularly  affected  prologues,  and  Douglas  has 
given  us  a  Prologue  to  each  of  the  books  of  the  Aeneid,  as  well  as  to 
the  thirteenth  Aeneid  of  Mapheus  Vegius,  which  he  also  translated. 

And  these  prologues  are,  as  indeed  might  be  expected,  by  far  the 
most  interesting  part  of  the  work.  The  text  is  translated  into  riding- 
rhyme  of  very  fair  Chaucerian  quality,  and  displaying  Douglas's  usual 
correctness  of  ear  and  his  justness  and  colour  of  language.  But  in 
the  Prologues  he  gives  himself,  as  was  natural  and  permissible,  a 
much  freer  field.  Their  interest  is  not  to  be  judged  from  the  First, 
which  is  itself  in  couplets,  and  after  a  very  "  aureate  "  laudation  of 
Virgil  as  "  Chosen  carbunkil "  — 

Lanterne,  lodesterne,  mirror,  and  a  per  se  — 

engages  in  a  severe  criticism,  not  very  graceful  in  tone  and  most 
awkwardly  clothed  in  verse,  of  Caxton's  Aeneidos.  This  extends  to 
several  hundred  lines.  The  Second  is  very  short  —  three  stanzas  of 
rhyme-royal  —  and  not  very  notable ;  nor  need  much  be  said  of  the 
Third  —  five  stanzas  of  nine  lines  each.  It  is  not  till  the  Fourth  that 
the  poet  allows  himself  really  to  expatiate ;  but  he  does  so  here,  with 
good  effect,  in  nearly  forty  "  royal "  stanzas  on  the  strength  of  Love, 
the  incommodity  and  remedy  of  the  same  —  it  has  been  observed  that 
he  translated  the  Rcmedium  amoris,  though  it  is  lost.  The  very  first 
stanza  hits  .successfully  that  clangorous  note  of  the  rhyme-royal  which 
has  been  observed  upon,  and  this  note  is  well  sustained  throughout. 
The  Fifth,  short,  nine-lined,  and  with  another  fling  at  Caxton,  is  less 
notable ;  and  the  Sixth  (octaves)  is  chiefly  noteworthy  for  its  matter, 


192  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

a  curious  discussion  of  various  poetical  and  philosophical  accounts 
of  Hell.  But  the  Seventh  and  Eighth  are  each,  in  its  different  way, 
of  very  high  interest  indeed.  The  Seventh,  in  couplets,  contains  a 
vigorous  description  of  Winter,  attractive  in  itself  and  as  an  instance 
of  that  copious  and  vigorous  vocabulary  which  all  these  poets  show, 
and  curious  to  contrast  with  Thomson.  The  Eighth  has  a  curiosity 
still  higher ;  for  here  Douglas  indulges  in  that  very  quaint  combina- 
tion of  alliterative  and  metrical  prosody  which  was  still  sometimes 
attempted  at  this  time,  and  has  achieved,  perhaps,  the  most  remark- 
able example  of  it.  The  stanza  somewhat  resembles  that  of  Gaivain 
and  the  Green  Knight,  but  is  regularly  arranged  in  a  form  of  thirteen 
lines  bobbed  and  wheeled.  The  first  nine  are  heavily  alliterated, 
differing  from  those  of  The  Twa  Maryit  Wemen  by  havmg  strong 
not  weak  endings,  and  rhymed  ababababc ;  then  comes  a  triplet, 
rhymed,  of  three  iambics  with  equivalence,  and  then  a  final  line  c  of 
four  syllables  only.  The  vocabulary  of  the  piece  is,  outside  the 
"  Flytings,"  the  most  crabbed  and  fantastic  even  of  these  Scottish 
poems,  and  not  a  few  of  the  words  can  merely  be  guessed  at.  The 
tenor  of  the  whole  is  satirical  on  the  state  of  the  world. 

The  Ninth,  beginning  in  six-Hned  stanzas,  but  soon  passing  into 
couplets,  is  still  ethical  in  tone  ;  and  the  Tenth  (in  five-lined  stanzas) 
theological ;  while  the  Eleventh  deals  with  chivalry,  both  sacred  and 
profane.  The  Twelfth,  "  ane  singular  lerned  prolog  "  of  the  descrip- 
tion of  May,  again  ranks  among  the  best,  and  is  in  couplets ;  ^  and 
there  is  a  similar  one  on  June  for  the  egregious  Vegius  his  work. 

It  is,  let  it  be  repeated,  much  more  on  these  Prologues  (where  he 
has  evidently  set  his  mind  upon  giving  specimens  of  his  powers  in 
various  matters  and  forms)  than  on  his  two  long  pieces  that  the  esti- 
mate of  Gawain  Douglas  should  be  based.  That  estimate  cannot  be 
of  the  highest,  for  the  poet  has  too  little  detachment  frgmj:he^  mere 
literary  forrns  and  fashions  ofjiis  time,  and  is  far  too  much  under  the 
prevalent  delusion  of  the  identity  of  "rhetorike"  and  ^poetry.  But  it 
should  be  relatively  and  by  allowance  high.  He  has  in  a  very 
eminent  degree  that  feeling  for  nature  by  which  the  poets  of  his 
country  have  ever  since  been  honourably  distinguished ;  he  has  a 
very  good  mastery  of  metrical  form,  and  he  perhaps  shows  the  good 
side  (it  must  be  allowed  that  he  also  shows  the  bad)  of  the  "  aureate  " 
or  rhetoriqueiir  language  better  than  any  poet,  either  in  English  or  in 
French,  of  his  time  and  school. 

1  Here  is  a  fine  passage  :  — 

For  to  behald  it  was  a  gloir  to  see, 
The  stabylit  windis  and  the  calmit  sea, 
The  soft  scisoun,  the  firmament  serene. 
The  lowne  illumynat  air  and  fyrth  amene. 


'> 


CHAPTER  IV 


LATER  ROMANCES  IN  PROSE  AND  VERSE 

Sir  Generydes,  etc.  —  Sir  Launfal  —  'Y\\&  verse  Morte  Arthur  —  Golagros  and 
Gawane  and  Rauf  Coilyear  —  Malory  —  Lord  Berners  —  Caxton's  translated 
romances 

The  difficulty  in  distinguishing  the  romances  ^  of  the  fifteenth  century 
from  those  of  the  fourteenth  has  been  already  referred  to.  With  rare 
exceptions,  it  is  doubtful  whether  we  possess  anything,  originally  of  the 
fifteenth,  in  verse  which  is  really  of  great  merit.  Beins  of  Harnploii, 
Guy  of  lVa?-wick,  the  Charlemagne  stories,  and  the  rest  continued  to 
be  copied  or  rehandled ;  and  though  it  pleased  Chaucer  to  make  fun 
of  the  style,  this  does  not  seem  to  have  had  much  effect  on  its  popu- 
larity. In  particular,  the  Arthurian  legend,  which,  except  in  the 
Northern  or  Gawain  division,  appears  not  to  have  attracted  very 
much  attention  in  the  fourteenth  century,  recovered,  to  our  eternal 
advantage,  much  of  its  popularity  in  the  fifteenth.  The  non- 
Arthurian  romances,  verse  and  prose,  of  the  time  are  but  of  small 
interest.  A  fair  example  of  them  is  Sir  Generydes,  which  must 
almost  to  a  certainty  have  been  originally  French,  l)ut  of  which  no 
French  original  is  known,  while  two  different  English  versions  —  one 
in  octosyllabic  couplets,  printed  by  Dr.  Furnivall  for  the  Roxburghe 
Club,  and  one  in  rhyme-royal,  printed  by  Mr.  Aldis  Wright  for  the 
E.E.T.S.  —  are  in  existence.  Sir  Generydes  -  is  a  fair 
example  of  the  common  form  of  the  romance  of  chivalry,  Generydes, 
but  has  little  more  (though  certainlylio""Tess)  individ^u-  *^"^- 
ality  than  the  average  nineteenth-century  novel.  Torrent  of  Portugal,^ 
a  sliorter  story  of  the  same  class,  is  in  Sir  TJiopas  metre  ;  Octoviafi, 
a  wicked  mother-in-law  story,  mentioned  before  as  possibly  earlier,  is, 
as  printed  by  Weber  (there  is  another  version),  in  a  slightly  modified 

1  For  the  chief  romance-collections,  see  notes,  pp.  82  and  102. 

2  I  use  the  E.E.T.S.  edition. 

8  Ed.  Halliwell,  London,  1842.     Re-edited  for  the  E.E.T.S.  by  Dr.  Adam. 

o  193 


194  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

form  of  that  stanza,  rhymed  aaabab,  with  the  b  lines  shortened,  instead 
of  the  usual  aa  long,  b  short,  cc  long,  b  short. 

The  best  romances  in  verse  not  strictly  ballad-romance  (see  next 
chapter),  and  the  worst,  belong  to  the  Arthurian  division.  At  the  head 
of  the  former  we  may  put,  despite  its  libel  on  Queen  Guinevere,  the 
beautiful  poem  of  Sir  Lautifal^  adapted  and  much  im- 
proved by  Thomas  Chester,  who  probably  lived  in  the 
second  quarter  of  the  fifteenth  century,  from  a  poem  of  Marie  de  France, 
centuries  older  and  not  improbably  metamorphosed  before  it  came  into 
Chester's  hands.  The  discredit  of  making  the  Queen  play  the  part 
of  Potiphar's  wife,  of  which  there  is  no  trace  in  the  better  Arthurian 
legends,  is  not  his.  But  the  actual  story  of  Launfal,  with  his  fairy 
love,  his  unfortunate  divulging  of  their  passion,  his  punishment  and 
his  pardon,  is  one  of  the  most  exquKtt6'"oFaH  mediaeval  tales,  and  is 
quite  charmingly  told  by  Chester  in  the  Sir  Thopas  metre  doubled. 
The  beauty  of  which  this  stanza  is  capable,  especially  in  the  doubled 
form,  where  the  rhymes  run  aabccbddbeeb,  each  b  line  being  short, 
is  nowhere  better  shown,  nor  its  complete  freedom  at  its  best  from 
the  ding-dong,  sing-song  monotony  which  beyond  all  doubt  it  often 
puts  on,  and  which  Chaucer  has  so  wickedly  immortalised. 

Not  far  below  Laujifaljm  poetical  merit,  and  of  the  first  interest 

as  having   almost  demonstrably  served   as   direct  original  to   Malory 

{vide  infra),  is  the  Morte  Arthur,  which   Dr.   Furnivall 

Morte  printed  more  than  thirty  years  ago,-  a  piece  of  some  4000 
Arthur.  Jings,  arranged  in  quatrains  rhymed  abab,  which  not 
uncommonly  spread  into  sixains  or  octaves  of  the  same  arrange- 
ments. 

Laiicelot  of  the  Laik^  a  poem  in  heroic  couplets,  and  in  Scots  or 
some  other  extremely  northern  dialect  of  English,  is  ascribed  to  the 
end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  and  if  so,  is  the  latest  Arthurian  poem 
of  the  genuine  kind  (before  the  legend  began  to  be  merely  "trans- 
lated," as  we  find  it  in  Spenser)  that  we  possess. 

Meanwhile  one  of  the  most  conscientious,  but  of  the  very  dullest, 
of  the  vast  army  of  dull  versifiers  of  the  time  had  busied  himself 
with  the  great  matter  which,  perhaps,  at  the  same  time,  was  taking 
in  a  sense  almost  final  form  in  prose  at  the  hands  of  a  very  different 
person.  "Kerry"  (Henry)  Lonelich,  skinner,  a  subject  of  King 
Henry  the  Sixth,  was  evidently  as  pious  as  his  namesake  and  master, 
and  in  his  different  vocation  as  ineffective.  His  Merlin  is  not  yet 
accessible  in  print,  save  for  an  extract  of  Dr.  Kdlbing's.*  His  Holy 
Grail  has  been  twice   printed   by   Dr.  Furnivall,^  and  is  one  of  the 

1  Printed  in  Ritson's  first  volume.         2  London  and  Cambridge,  1864. 

'  Ed.  Skeat,  E.E.T.S.  ■*  In  his  edition  ol  Arthour  and  Merlin. 

6  For  tiie  Roxburghe  Club  and  the  E.E.T.S. 


CHAP.  IV        LATER   ROMANCES   IN   PROSE   AND   VERSE  195 

most  curious  books  in  existence,  the  wonderful  interest  and  cliarm  of 
the  matter,  which  might  have  been  thought  likely  either  to  stir  a 
translator  into  genius  or  compel  him  to  silent  despair,  being  ap- 
proached with  a  cheerful  doggedness  of  incompetency  difficult,  if  not 
impossible,  to  parallel  elsewhere.  Hardly  any  other  story  could 
possibly  survive  such  a  translator ;  no  other  translator,  one  would  hope, 
could  have  failed  to  catch  fire  from  such  a  story.  But  except  from 
his  matter,  which  flames  like  the  infant  Havelok  in  the  rude  hands  of 
Grim,  there  is  no  spark  of  illumination  in  Lonelich,  who  thumps  out 
his  couplets  by  the  help  of  "  sikerly  "  and  '*  everidel,"  of  "  verament " 
and  "echone,"  in  a  manner  well-nigh  intolerable. 

In  the  way  of  alliterative  romance  we  have  to  put  to  the  credit  of 
the  century  in  all  probability,  or  rather  certainly,  two  very  interestipg 
poems  in  Scots,  Golagros  and  Gawafie  and  Rauf  Coilyear.  ^  For 
neither  of  these  have  we  MS.  authority,  though  we  know  Golagros  and 
that  both  did  exist  in  the  Asloan  MS.  ;  and  our  printed  '^^Z"/Coii^ 
Raiif  Coilyear  IS  as  late  as  1572.  But  we  have  an  allu-  year. 
sion  to  this  same  poem  by  Gawain  Douglas  as  early  as  1503, 
and  Golagros  and  Gawane  was  published  by  Chepman  and  Millar 
among  the  incunabula  of  the  Scottish  press  in  1508.  Both  are  in 
the  thirteen-line  alliterate^,  and  rhymed  stanza  with  wheel  {y.  supra^  p. 
192).  Golagros  and  Gawane  belongs  evidently  to  the  Cumbrian  branch 
of  the  Arthurian  legend,  and  presents  some  very  close  resemblances 
to  the  latter  part  of  the  Aivntyrs  of  Arthur.  Rauf  Coilyear,  on  the 
other  hand,  belongs  to  the  other  great  family,  and,  so  far  as  we 
know,  is  the  only  original  Charlemagne  poem  in  English.  It  is  one 
of  the  numerous  and  generally  interesting  family  of  the  "  King  and  the 
Tanner"  class,  the  king's  unknowing  associate  here  being  a  ''collier" 
i.e.  charcoal-burner),  and  the  king,  as  has  been  said,  no  less  a 
person  than  Charlemagne.  It  is  a  very  spirited  poem.  Nobody  has 
.succeeded  in  identifying  the  author  of  either  tliis  or  Golagros;  but 
it  is  not  at  all  impossible  that  both  may  have  one  poet,  and  most 
probable  tliat  he  lived  at  the  end  of  our  century,  and  was  one  of 
Dunbar's  "makers."  If  so,  he  was  by  no  means  the  worst  of  them, 
and  not  very  far  from  the  best,  except  Henryson  and  Dunbar  himself. 

Practically  nothing  is  known  of  the  author  of  the  greatest  of  all 
English  romances,  prose  or  verse  —  of  one  of  the  greatest  romances  of 
the  world  —  a  book  which,  though  in  mere  material  a  compilation,  and 

1  Golagros  and  Gawane  has  been  reprinted  by  Pinkerton  in  Scot/is/i  Poems, 
1792;  by  Laing  (a  great  rarity)  in  1827;  by  Madden,  with  otlier  Gawaine  pieces, 
in  1839;  and  by  Mr.  Amours  in  Scottish  Alliterative  Poems,  cited  above.  There 
is  also  a  German  rt-priiit.  Rauf  Coilyear  can  be  found  in  Mr.  Amours's  volume, 
in  one  of  the  volumes  of  the  E.K.I'.S.,  Charlemagne  Romances,  and  also  in  Laing's 
several  times  reprinted  Ancient  and  Popular  Poetry  of  Scotland  (last  edited  by 
Small,  Edinburgh,  1885). 


196  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

sometimes  cleaving  rather  closely  to  its  multifarious  texts,  is,  despite 
the  occasional  misjudgment  of  unhappy  criticism,  a  great  and  original 
book.  Caxton,  the  printer  {vide  infra,  chap,  vi.)  —  who,  instead  of, 
like  most  early  printers,  giving  us  early  editions,  and  mostly  bad 
ones,  of  the  classics,  which  were  quite  safe,  gave  us,  to  the  infinite 
advantage  of  England,  early  models  of  composition  in  English,  and 
preserved  to  us.  in  this  instance  at  least,  an  English  text  which  might 
but  for  him  have  perished  —  tells  us  that  the  A  forte  Darthiir  was  trans- 
lated in  the  ninth  year  of  King  Edward  IV.  (that  is  to  say,  in  1470, 
fifteen  years  before  he  himself  published  it)  by  Sir  Thomas 
^°'^^'  Malory,  Knight.  Caxton's  follower,  Wynkyn  de  Worde, 
in  the  second  edition  of  1496,  makes  the  name  "  Maleore."  Malory 
or  Mallory  is  both  a  Yorkshire  and  a  Leicestershire  name,  but  there 
are  absolutely  no  materials  for  identifying  Sir  Thomas ;  the  later 
suggestions  that  he  was  a  Welsh  priest,  not  an  English  knight,  are 
baseless  guesses,  and  we  do  not  know  in  the  very  least  why,  when, 
or  where  he  executed  his  book.  What  we  do  know,  from  the  verse 
Morte  and  from  Lonelich,  is  that  a  strong  revived  interest  in  the 
Arthurian  Legend  came  in  about  the  middle  of  the  century,  and  this 
is  to  all  appearances  one  of  the  fruits  of  it.^ 

If  so,  it  is  incomparably  the  most  precious.  It  is  probable  that, 
though  among  the  laborious  and  respectable,  but  rather  superfluous, 
inquiries  into  origins,  none  has  yet  been  discovered  for  the 
"Beaumains"  story  and  for  a  few  other  things,  Malory  "did  not 
invent  much."  The  fifteenth  century  was  not  an  inventive  time,  and 
there  was  much  better  work  for  it  to  do  than  second-rate  invention. 
Then  and  then  only  could  the  mediaeval  spirit,  which  was  not  quite 
dead,  have  been  caught  up  and  rendered  for  us  with  a  still  present 
familiarity,  with  the  unconscious  but  unmistakable  touch  of  magic 
which  approaching  loss  reflects,  and  in  English  prose,  which,  unlike 
English  verse,  still  had  the  bloom  on  it  —  the  soon-fading  beauti  du 
diable  of  youth  and  freshness. 

Criticisms  have  been  made  on  Malory's  manner  of  selecting  and 
arranging  his  materials  —  criticisms  which,  like  all  unsuccessful 
exercises  of  the  most  difficult  of  arts,  come  from  putting  the  wrong 
questions  to  the  jury  —  from  asking,  "Has  this  man  done  what  / 
wanted  him  to  do  ?"  or  "Has  he  done  it  as  /  should  have  done  it?" 
instead  of  "Has  he  done  what  he  meant  to  do?"  and  "  Has  he  done 
this  well  ? "  Malory  might  perhaps,  though  in  his  time  it  would  have 
been  difficult  to  get  all  the  texts  together,  have  given  an  intelligent 
prkis  of  the  whole  Arthurian  Legend,  instead  of  which  he  selected  his 
materials    rather    arbitrarily,  and    indulged   in   what    looks   to    some 

1  The  book,  frequently  printed  up  to  the  seventeenth  century,  has  also  been 
repeatedly  reprinted  in  this. 


CHAP.  IV       LATER   ROMANCES   IN   PROSE   AND  VERSE  197 


critics  like  incomprehensible  divagation,  and  not  much  more  com- 
prehensible suppression.  He  might  have  arranged  a  regular  epic 
treatment  of  his  subject,  instead  of  which  it  is  often  difficult  to  say 
who  is  the  hero,  and  never  very  easy  to  say  what  special  contribution 
to  the  plot  the  occasionally  inordinate  episodes  are  making.  What 
he  did  do  consists  mainly  in  two  things,  or  perhaps  three.  He  selected 
the  most  interesting  things  with  an  almost  invariable  sureness,  though 
there  are  one  or  two  omissions  ;  and  he  omitted  the  less  interesting 
parts  with  a  sureness  to  which  there  are  hardly  any  exceptions  at  all. 
He  grasped,  and  this  is  his  great  and  saving  merit  as  an  author,  the 
one  central  fact  of  the  story — that  in  the  combination  of  the  Quest 
of  the  Graal  with  the  loves  of  Lancelot  and  Guinevere  lay  the  kernel 
at  once  and  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter.  And  last  (his 
great  and  saving  merit  as  a  writer)  he  told  his  tale  in  a  manner  which 
is  very  nearly  impeccable. 

There  is  one  practically  infallible  test  by  which  all  but  the  dullest 
and  most  incompetent  can  be  convinced  of  Sir  Thomas's  skill  in  this 
last  direction,  the  comparison  of  his  narrative  of  the  last  scenes  of  all 
with  that  in  the  verse  Morte  d'Arthio'e  above  mentioned,  which  was 
in  all  probability  his  direct  original,  and  which  was  certainly  written 
just  before   his  day.     Take   the  death  of  Arthur  itself,  or  the   final 
interview   of  Lancelot  and  the  Queen,   in  both  ;  compare  them,  and 
then  remember   that   Malory   has  been  dismissed  as    "a   mere   com- 
piler."    It  is  possible  that  his  art  is  mostly  unconscious  art  —  it  is  not 
much  the  worse  for  that.     But  it  is  nearly  as  infallible  as  it  is  either 
unconscious    or    thoroughly    concealed.      The    pictorial     power,  the 
musical  cadence  of  the  phrase,  the  steady  glow  ofjchiyalrousTeeling 
through out^the  noble  niorality  (for  the  condemnation  of  Ascham  and 
others  is  partly  mere  Renaissance  priggishness   stupidly  condemning 
things    medijEval   offhand,   and   partly    Puritan   prudery   throwing   its 
baleful    shadow   before),   the   kindliness,    the    sense   of    honour,   the 
melaqchqly    and    yet   never   either    gloomy   or    puling  sense   of  the 
inevitable  end  —  all  these  are  eminent  in  it.     It  has  been  said,  with 
perhaps  hardly  too  great  whimsicality,  that  there  is  only  one  bad  thing 
about  Malory  —  that  to   those  who  read  him  first  he  makes  all  other 
romances  of  Chivalry  disappointing.     But  the  fancy  may  at  any  rate  be 
fairly  retorted,  for  if  any  one  is  so  unfortunate  as  to  find  other  romances 
of  chivalry  disappointing,  there  is  Malory  to  fall  back  upon.     Merely 
in  English  prose  he  is  a  great  figure,  for  although  his  medium  would 
not  be  suitable  for   every   purpose,  it  is  nearly  perfect  for  his  own. 
Merely  as  the  one   great   central  storehouse    of  a  famous  and  fertile 
story  his  place  is  sure.     But  apart  from  all  these  extrinsic  considera- 
tions, it  is  surer  still  in  the  fact  that  he   has  added  to  literature   an 
imperishable  book. 


198  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

The  second  great  writer  or  translator  of  Romance  in  prose  during 
this  period,  John  Bourchier,  Lord  Berners,  was  born  a  little  before  the 
probable  date  of  the  writing  of  Ma\ory''s  Aforte  d"" Arthur  in  1467  and 
was  the  son  of  Humphrey  Lord  Berners,  who  fell  on  the 
Yorkist  side  at  the  battle  of  Barnet.  He  may  have  been 
a  Balliol  man ;  he  certainly  saw  much  both  of  war  and  diplomacy 
in  the  later  years  of  Henry  VII.  and  the  earlier  of  his  son;  he  was 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  in  15 16,  and  from  1520  onwards 
Governor  of  Calais.  It  would  seem  that  his  literary  work  all  dates 
from  this  last  period  of  his  life,  which  closed  in  1533.  His  Froissart 
began  to  appear  in  1523,  and  he  also  translated  (though  the  books 
did  not  in  some  cases  appear  till  after  his  death)  the  great  romance 
of  Huonof  Bordeaji2C3jhQ  much  inferior  late  Arthurian  story  Arthur 
of  Little  Britain,  Guevara's  Dial  for  Princes,  a  book  which  has  been 
tliougHt,  notl^thout  some  reason,  to  have  had  much  influence  on  the 
development  of  Euphuism,  and  another  Spanish  allegoric-chivalrous 
romance,  the  Castle  (originally  Prison)  of  Love?-  In  his  work  from 
the  Spanish  he  appears  to  have  used  not  the  originals  but  French 
versions. 

In  a  late  stage  of  writing,  prose,  and  indeed  verse,  translations 
have  very  little  interest,  and  are  merely  or  mainly  makeshifts  for  the 
use  of  those  who  cannot  read  the  originals.  In  the  early  stages, 
especially  of  prose  writing,  their  value  is  very  different,  and  this  con- 
stitutes the  attractions  of  our  fifteenth  and  early  sixteenth  century 
prose,  borrowed  as  it  almost  always  is  in  matter.  And  Lord 
Berners  raiiks__witli  Malory  as  its  most  gifted  practitioner.  His 
P'roissart  gives  him  the  greatest  opportunity,  and  he  has  availed 
himself  of  that  opportunity  to  the  utmost.  His  style  would 
not,  of  course,  be  suitable  for  every  purpose  or  even  for  many 
purposes,  but  in  his  combination  of  rhetorical  and  "  aureate " 
language  with  simpler  forms,  in  his  faint  retention  of  poetic_diction 
with  a  perfect  adjustment  to  those  needs  of  prose  fiction  or  of  romantic 
history  which  are  nearer  to  those  of  poetry  than  is  the  case  with  any 
other  division  of  prose,  he  is  certainly  unsurpassed,  and  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  he  has  been  equalled,  though  Mr.  William  Morris 
sometimes  ran  him  hard.  The  Hiton,  representing  a  late  French 
rehandling  of  one  of  the  most  romantic  of  the  chansons  de  geste,  has 

1  Not  to  be  confounded  with  the  very  much  earlier  book  of  the  same  name 
translated  from  Bishop  GrostSte's  French  a  little  before  or  a  little  after  1300,  and 
edited  by  Dr.  Weymouth  for  the  Philological  Society.  This  is  religious,  and  of 
some  linguistic,  but  very  little  literary,  interest.  As  for  Berners's  own  work,  the 
Froissart  \w».%  reprinted  by  Utterson  in  1812,  and  has  been  "reduced"  and  edited 
in  modernised  spelling,  but  otherwise  well  and  faithfully,  by  Mr.  Macaulay  for  the 
"  Globe"  Series  (1895).  Hiion  has  been  edited  by  Mr.  S.  L.  Lee  for  the  E.E.T.S. 
Utterson  also  reprinted  Arthur  of  Litiie  Britain,  but  it  is  not  common. 


CHAP.  IV       LATER    ROMANCES   IN   PROSE  AND   VERSE  199 

the  fault  common  to  most  such  rehandlings,  of  long-windedness  and 
surpkisage ;  but  still  it  gives  Berners  good  opportunity,  and  he  takes 
it  admirably.  The  part  which  Mr.  Lee  has  isolated  in  his  second 
volume  as  "  The  Story  of  Esclaramonde "  might  very  well  be  taken 
as  an  introduction  to  this  kind  of  romance  by  novices,  and  they  are 
to  be  pitied  if  they  do  not  go  on. 

Between  the  Morte  and  the  Froissart^CdiXton  and  his  successors 
had  made  very  large  additions  to  the  stock  of  romance  in  English. 
The  Histories  of  Troy,  more  than  ten  years  before  the  printing  of 
Malory,  Reyjiard  the  Fox,  the  Golden  Legend,  Paris 
and  Vienne,  the  Life  of  Charles  the  Great,  the  Four  translated 
Sons  of  Aymon,  Blanchardyn  and  Eglantine,  Godfrey  of  romances. 
Bulloigne,  the  Aeneidos,  which  so  did  vex  Gawain  Douglas  —  being 
Caxton's  own  contribution,  a  very  considerable  one,  as  most  of  them 
were  translated  as  well  as  printed  by  himself.  We  shall  speak  of 
Caxton's  prose  style  later :  here  we  are  chiefly  concerned  with  the 
romance  substance  of  his  work.  There  is  little  doubt  that  these  late 
romances,  especially  the  prose  ones,  had  an  immense  effect  on  the 
first  generation  or  two  of  readers  of  printed  books,  while  perhaps  their 
diffusion  in  print,  as  well  as  the  fact  that  the  versions  selected  for 
reproduction  or  translation  were  nearly  always  late  and  very  seldom 
of  the  best,  may  have  also  contributed  to  that  strange  disgust  with 
them  which  is  not  entirely  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  mere  pedantry, 
innocently  consequent  on  the  revived  study  of  the  classics  directly,  or 
by  the  touch  of  religious  and  Puritan  dislike  of  romance,  which  soon 
supervened.  At  the  same  time,  this  crop  of  romances,  and  the 
attention  paid  to  it,  had  also  beyond  all  question  much  to  do  with  the 
heroic  enthusiasm  of  Elizabethan  days,  and  with  that  after-glow  of 
chivalry  itself  of  which  the  noblest  and  most  undying  monument  is 
the  Faerie  (2ueene.^ 

1  Although  as  much  room  as  possible  has  been  given  to  the  romances,  far 
more  would  be  required  to  do  them  real  justice.  Indeed,  the  division  branches 
off  into  almost  infinite  subvarieties  —  for  instance,  the  curious  series  of  Visions  oi 
Hell  and  Purgatory,  of  which  the  Visions  of  Tundale  (fifteenth  century),  ed. 
TurnbuU  (Edinburgh,  1843)  is  a  good  example.  The  minor  Proj^  romances  are, 
as  a  rule,  of  much  less  interest,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  standard  collection  of 
them  by  W.  J.  Thorns,  2nd  ed.  3  vols.  London,  1858. 


CHAPTER  V 

MINOR   POETRY   AND   BALLADS 

Date  of  Ballads  —  The  Nut-browne  Mayde  —  "I  sing  of  a  maiden  "  —  The  Percy 

Folio  —  Graysteel 

Bad  as  the  reputation  of  the  fifteenth  century  is  for  poetry  in  England 
(and  indeed  in  most  countries  except  Italy)  it  will  have  been  seen 
that  there  are  notable  individual  exceptions.  And  a  still  better 
face  is  put  upon  the  matter  when  we  come  to  what  is  called  minor 
poetry  and  especially  to  Ballads. 

In  a  history,  and  especially  a  short  history,  of  this  subject  disserta- 
tions on  purely  speculative  points  are  out  of  place,  and  perhaps  in  no  case 
is  this  more  so  than  in  regard  to  the  origins  of  Ballad  literature  gener- 
ally and  the  date  of  English  Ballad  literature  in  particular. 
Ballads.  There  may  be  said  to  be  here,  as  generally,  three  main 
opinions,  or  groups  of  shaded  opinion ;  the  first  assign- 
ing a  remote,  and  if  possible  even  contemporary,  origin  to  ballads  that 
have  any  pretence  of  history,  and  as  ancient  a  one  as  possible  to 
those  which  are  purely  romantic ;  the  second  postponing  the  date  to 
comparatively,  or  in  some  cases  quite,  modern  times ;  and  the  third, 
which  endeavours  to  assign  not  merely  a  general  middle  term  but 
a  particular  age  in  which  the  literary  sentiment,  as  yet  not  absorbed 
by  a  literary  class,  existed  fluidly  and  at  large,  and  found  its  special 
bent  in  ballad-making.  It  may  be  observed  in  passing  that  the 
second,  while  disagreeable  to  sentiment,  is  also  quite  contrary  to 
probability,  and  has  scarcely  any  direct  evidence  to  support  it. 
Between  the  first  and  third,  opinion  rather  than  demonstration  must 
decide,  but  it  is  not  impertinent  to  remark  that  besides  the  opposition 
on  their  surface,  a  very  important  order  of  difference  is  involved, 
which  may  be  indicated  by  the  question,  "  Are  romances  and  early 
epics  conglomerates  of  ballad,  or  are  ballads  disintegrations  of  epics 
—  romance-episodes  worked  up  into  ballad  form  ? " 

To  the  present  writer  the  balance  of  probability,  for  reasons  too 
numerous  and  intricate  to  be  more  than  partially  and  generally  stated 

200 


CHAP.  V  MINOR   POETRY  AND   BALLADS  201 

here,  seems  to  incline  to  the  supposition  that  the  fifteenth  century  was 
the  special  time  of  ballad-production  in  England  ;  while  not  probability 
merely,  but  something  like  direct  evidence,  shows  that  during  this  time 
and  the  early  sixteenth  the  romances,  while  they  were  lengthened 
in  prose,  underwent  a  pretty  general  process  of  shortening  and 
modifying  in  verse.  Among  the  facts  pointing  to  these  conclusions 
may  be  advanced  the  change  during  the  fourteenth  century  from 
French  and  Latin  to  English  as  the  vehicle  of  avowedly  political 
poems  dealing  with  the  events  of  the  day,  and  therefore  dated ;  the 
famous  ballad  of  Chevy  Chase,  the  oldest  of  its  class,  if  not  of  all  our 
ballads,  which  in  its  primitive  form  certainly  dates  within  a  decade 
or  so  of  the  battle  of  Otterburn  itself;  the  general  language  and 
colour  of  the  ballads,  which  is  scarcely  ever  of  a  tone  more  archaic 
than  that  of  1400;  and  lastly,  the  testimony  of  the  famous  Percy 
Folio,  the  most  important  single  collection  of  antique  ballads  that  we 
have.  It  is  known  that,  as  far  as  actual  writing  goes,  the  folio  is  not 
older  than  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  that  some  of 
the  texts  contained  in  it  are  not  older  than  that  date.  But  the 
majority  are  very  much  older,  and  yet  pretty  certainly  not  older  than 
the  fifteenth.  In  the  balladised  versions  which  this  MS.  contains  of 
romances  like  Sir  Laiinfal,  Sir  Degare,  and  a  dozen  others,  which  are 
pretty  certainly  of  fifteenth  or  early  sixteenth  century  date,  we  get 
not  merely  interesting  direct  evidence  of  the  process  which  the 
romances  themselves  were  at  this  time  undergoing,  but  inevitable 
collateral  suggestions  of  the  ballad  influence,  which  beyond  all 
reasonable  doubt  was  creating  as  well  as  reshaping.  Like  the  oldest 
of  our  ballads,  the  oldest  of  our  carols  also  date  from  this  time ;  and 
while  in  England  proper  formal  poetry  of  substance  is  undoubtedly 
at  a  lower  level  than  previously,  regular  as  well  as  irregular  lyric  is 
at  a  distinctly  higher.  Except  Alison  and  the  best  of  its  companions, 
there  is  indeed  nothing  so  good  in  this  division  of  English  Hterature 
before  the  fifteenth  century  as  the  two  best  things  of  that  century's 
own,  while  it  has  others  not  inferior. 

These    two   best  things,  both   anonymous,  are  the   famous   ballad 
of  the  NiU-browne  Mayde,  and  the  less  famous,  but  not  less  exquisite 
carol  of  Our  Lady,  beginning  "I  sing  of  a  maiden."     For  the  first 
of  tliese  we  have   a   much    earlier   authority  than  Percy,      ^h  tv  / 
indeed,   as    is    generally   known,   it   was    modernised   by       broume 
Prior  long  before  the  publication  of  the  Reliques,  and  had       ^'''y^e. 
actually    been    reprinted    critically   in    a    very    remarkable    work,   the 
Prolusions  of  Capell,  the  Shakesperian  .scholar,  in  1760.     It  appeared 
first    in   Arnold's    Chronicle,   a   book  published   at  Antwerp  in    1502. 
It   cannot   be    necessary  to   say  very  much   about   so  well  known   a 
thing ;    yet  it  has  as  a   rule    been   rather  under-  than   over-praised. 


202  THE  FIFTEENTH  CENTURY  book  iv 

The  ring  and  swing  of  the  metre^  of  which  no  previous  example 
seems  to  exist,  and  which  argues  very  considerable  development  of 
the  language,  the  felicity  of  the  alternate  refrain,  the  singular  skill 
with  which  the  variations  of  equivalent  feet,  disyllabic  and  trisyllabic, 
is  managed  so  as  to  prevent  monotony,  and  the  adaptation  of  the 
whole  to  the  sentiment,  imagery,  and  incident,  are  not  less  remark- 
able than  the  tenderness  and  sweetness,  never^n  the  least  mawkish, 
of  that  sentiment  itself,  the  dramatic  management  of  the  story,  and 
the  modest  cogency  of  the  moral.  The  piece  is,  as  Its~oWn  time 
would  have  said,  a  very  "  margarite  "  of  English  verse  for  that  time, 
and  indeed  a  pearl  of  poetry  for  ever. 

Nor  is  the  shorter,  simpler,  and  far  less  known  carol  ^  inferior  in 
charm ;    indeed,   in    the    quality    properly    called    exquisiteness  it  is 

even   superior.      The    best    of    the    Caroline    poets,   our 
maidfn/'*    chief  masters  in  this  quality,  would  have  been  in  danger 

of   over-elaborating    it,    or   of   faintly    "  smirching "    the 
ineffable  grace   of  the  lines  — 

He  came  also  still 

Where  his  mother  was, 
As  dew  in  April 

That  falleth  on  the  grass. 

He  came  also  still 

To  his  mother's  bower, 
As  dew  in  April 

That  falleth  on  the  flower. 

He  came  also  still 

Where  his  mother  lay, 
As  dew  in  April 

That  falleth  on  the  spray. 

In  no  previous  verse  had  this  ^olian  music  —  this  "harp  of  Ariel" 
that  distinguishes  English  at  its  very  best  in  this  direction,  alike 
from  the  fuller  but  less  unearthly  harmonies  of  Provencal,  Italian,  and 
Spanish,  from  the  sharper  sound  of  French,  and  from  the  less  elfish 
though  still  fairy  sound  of  German  —  been  given  to  the  world. 

If  there  is  nothing  else  quite  equal  to  these  things,  there  is  not 
a  little  which  comes  fairly  near  them.  We  may  with  advantage 
compare  the  older  part  of  the  Percy  Folio  both  with  some  other 
English  things  and  with  some  minor  and  anonymous  Scottish 
poetry  of  the  time.     A  complete  detailed  analysis,  even  in  the  most 

1  First  printed  by  Wright  for  the  short-lived  Warton  Club  in  1855  (p.  30  of  A 
Collection  of  Carols)  ;  reprinted  by  Mr.  Bullen  in  his  Carols  and  Poems  (London, 
1886J. 


CHAP.  V  MINOR   POETRY   AND    BALLADS  203 

compressed  form,  of  the  contents  of  the  "  Manuscript  "  ^  is  impossible 
here ;  but  some  remarks  on  the  most  important  groups,  and  a  few 
individuals  among  those  of  its  contents  which  certainly 
or  probably  date  from  the  period  with  which  we  are  now  percy  Folio 
dealing,  can  hardly  be  without  value.  It  contains,  in 
the  first  place,  a  group  of  Robin  Hood  Ballads,  which,  of  course, 
share  in  the  general  uncertainty  pertaining  to  all  notices  of  that  cele- 
brated person  or  eidolon.  It  is  possible  that  some  of  these  are  in  the 
oldest  form  as  old  as  the  fourteenth  century,  but  probable  that  most 
of  them  date  from  our  time.  In  the  second  place,  we  have  a  large 
group  of  broken-up,  modernised,  and,  it  must  be  added,  for  the  most 
part  vulgarised,  Arthurian  ballads  or  short  romances  :  —  King  Arthur 
and  the  King  of  Cornwall  Sir  Lancelot  of  Dulake,  The  Turk  and 
Gowin  (Gawaine),  The  Marriage  of  Sir  Gaivain  (the  famous  tale  of 
the  Loathly  Lady),  Sir  Lambwell  (Launfal),  Merlin,  Arthur's  Death, 
The  Green  Knight.  Closely  connected  with  these  is  a  still  larger 
group,  in  which  the  same  process  has  been  applied  to  miscellaneous 
romances  of  adventure,  some  of  which  we  possess  in  longer  forms 
and  some  of  which  stand  alone  in  the  shorter.  Such  are  Sir  Cauline 
(one  of  the  finest),  Sir  Degree  (Sir  Degar^),  Sir  Triamore,  Sir 
Eglamour,  Guy  and  A?narant,  Guy  and  Colebrand,  Joht  the  Reeve, 
and  others.  Another  and  extremely  important  class  consists  of  the 
Historical  Ballads,  of  which,  as  it  happens,  very  importantly,  the  great 
majority  concern  the  fifteenth  and  early  sixteenth  century :  —  The 
Siege  of  Rouen  (Henry  V.'s),  The  Murder  of  the  Princes,  The  Rose  of 
England,  Bosworth  Field,  Lady  Bessie,  Sir  Andrew  Barton,  Flodden 
Field,  Scottish  Field,  Musselborough  Field  (Pinkie),  and  others. 
Lastly,  there  are  the  more  romantic  ballads,  such  as  the  Heir  of  Lynne, 
the  Nut-browne  Mayde  itself,  and  many  more,  which  gave  Percy's  book, 
extracted  from  this  folio,  its  main  charm. 

An  interesting  and  not  unfairly  representative  specimen  of  the 
contents  of  this  invaluable  collection  is  the  once  extremely  popular 
romance  of  Sir  Eger,  Sir  Grime  (Graeme?),  and  Sir  Gray  steel, 
which,  till  the  contents  of  the  MS.  were  made  public, 
had  only  been  known  from  a  printed  and  watered-down  '^"^'^ " ' 
eighteenth-century  version  abstracted  by  Ellis.  The  piece  is  prob- 
ably not  very  early  —  we  hear  nothing  of  it  before  the  end  of  the 
fifteenth  century  —  but  it  is  mosMjkely^one,  and  a  happy_one.  of 
those  instances  whereof  several  have  been  noTed  in  the  last  chapter 
and  in  this,  in  which  the  fifteenth  century  gathered  up  and  reshaped 
for  the  last  time  the  best  traits  of  the  earlier  romance.  Winglaine, 
the  Belle  Dame  Sans  Merci ;  her  opposite  the  Lady  Loosepain  (not 

*  Ed.  Hales  and  Furnivall,  3  vols,  and  supplement,  London,  1867. 


204  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

such  a  pretty  name  as  Nepenthe,  but  not  different  in  meaning),  all 
graciousness  and  grace ;  the  well-meaning  but  rather  venturous  than 
strong  Sir  Eger ;  his  faithful  friend  Sir  Grime ;  the  mysterious 
Graysteel  in  his  Forbidden  Country  —  all  these  make  an  excellent 
tale  told  in  some  fifteen  hundred  couplet  verses,  with  no  great 
poetical  accomplishment  (indeed,  most  of  the  Folio  texts  are 
degraded  by  centuries  of  careless  and  tasteless  copying),  but  by  no 
means  ill. 

It  is  only  by  reading  and  re-reading  (a  very  pleasing  task)  such 
books  as  this  edition  of  the  Percy  Folio,  as  Laing's  above  cited 
Ancient  and  Popular  Poetry  of  Scotland,  as  Mr.  W.  C.  Hazlitt's 
Early  Popular  Poetry,  as  the  (also  above  cited)  works  of  Utterson  and 
Hartshorne,  and  as  Mr.  Wright's  Collections  of  Political  Poetry  for  the 
"  Rolls  Series,"  and  his  Carols  for  the  Percy  and  Warton  Societies,^ 
that  the  general  character  and  substance  of  fifteenth-century  and 
early  sixteenth-century  poetry  can  be  properly  appreciated.  Even  after 
these  gleanings,  pretty  abundant  but  frequently  duplicated,  there  is 
probably  not  a  little  still  in  MS.  ;  yet  what  we  have  suffices.  We 
see  in  it  only  occasional  evidence  of  very  distinct  poetic  gift,  and 
still  seldomer  much  command  of  accomplished  poetic  form  ;  but  we 
also  see  that  vernacular  verse  was  thoroughly  established  by  this 
time,  that  there  was  a  popular  taste  for  it,  if  a  rough,  uncultivated,  and 
easily  satisfied  one ;  and  that  it  was  being  applied  to  all  sorts  of 
subjects  in  all  sorts  of  spirits.  In  other  words,  the  soil  was  being 
well  stirred  and  the  seeds  were  being  plentifully  and  widely  scattered. 
It  did  no  harm  that  some  time  was  to  pass  before  anything  more  than 
a  wilding  harvest  came.^ 

1  See  also  J.  A.  Fuller-Maitland,  English  Carols  of  the  Ffteenth  Century 
(London,  n.d.). 

2  The  Ballads,  after  much  piecemeal  editing  for  a  hundred  years,  have  at 
last  been  put  in  a  standard  edition  by  the  late  Professor  Child's  monumental  col- 
lection, The  English  and  Scottish  Popular  Ballads,  5  vols,  in  10  parts,  Boston 
(Mass.)  and  London,  1882-98. 


CHAPTER   VI 

MISCELLANEOUS    PROSE 

Importance  of  fifteenth-century  prose — Pecock  —  His  style  and  vocabulary  — 
Fortescue,  Capgrave,  Fabyan  —  Caxton  —  Fisher — His  advances  in  style  — 
More  —  Latimer  —  Co  verdale  —  Cranmer 

The  prose  of  the  fifteenth  and  early  sixteenth  century  —  or,  in  other 
words,  the  prose  from  Fortescue  to  Fisher  —  supplies,  with  the  almost 
sole  exception  of  the  work  of  Malory  and  Berners,  which  has  been 
treated  above,  little  or  nothing  that   is  delectable  to  the    , 

,.  T-,  1  ,  ,.   ,.  Importance 

mere  literary  consumer.  But  to  the  student  of  literary  of  fifteenth- 
history  it  is  one  of  the  most  important  periods  of  the  "^^"'""^  Pi^os^- 
whole  subject.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  great  exercising-ground  —  the  great 
school-time  —  of  English  prose :  the  period  in  which  the  nearly 
unconscious  experiments  of  Chaucer  and  Wyclif  and  Mandeville 
were  expanded  and  multiplied,  sometimes  with  an  almost  conscious 
purpose  of  developing  prose  style,  and  always  with  the  practical 
effect  of  so  doing,  by  writers  in  the  most  widely-diverging  branches 
of  literature  —  history  and  law,  political  and  ecclesiastical  controversy, 
sermons,  letters,  philosophy  of  a  sort. 

Reginald  Pecock,  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph  and  Chichester,  and  author, 
among  much  other  work,  Latin  and  English,  of  tlie  Repressor  of  Over 
Much  Bla»ii>iff  of  the  Clergy^  is  an  interesting  person  from  more 
points  of  view  than  one.  His  very  life  was  dramatic 
enough,  and  mpralled  the  favourite  moral  of  the  century 
—  the  effects  of  the  Wheel  of  Fortune  —  with  singular  force.  As  is 
usual  with  men  of  his  time,  we  know  neither  his  birthplace  nor  his 
birth-date  ;  Ijut  the  former  was  probably  Wales,  and  the  latter  pretty 
certainly  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century.  He  went  to  Oxford 
and  became  Fellow  of  Oriel  in  1417,  soon  afterwards  taking  orders. 
There  was  no  dispute  about  his  erudition.  In  143 1  he  was  made 
Master   of  Whittington    College,    London,    and    thirteen   years   later 

1  Ed.  Babington,  "  Rolls  Series,"  a  vols.  London,  i860. 

205 


2o6  THE  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

appointed  to  the  bishopric  of  St.  Asaph.  Up  to  this  time,  when  we 
may  suppose  him  to  have  been  about  fifty,  all  things  had  gone 
smoothly  with  him.  But  he  was  soon  to  experience  the  reverse  of 
the  wheel,  which  came  about  in  a  manner  not  entirely  clear,  and 
probably  due  as  much  to  the  violent  party  politics  of  the  time  as  to 
his  personal  faults.^  It  is,  moreover,  evident  that  Pecock,  both  in 
sermons  and  in  his  works,  adopted  that  most  perilous  of  all  courses, 
the  attempt  to  justify  orthodoxy  and  authority  by  paradoxical  and 
irregular  kinds  of  reasoning.  He  met  the  complaints  against  the 
bishops  by  preaching  at  St.  Paul's  Cross  that  bishops  were  not  bound 
to  preach ;  and  the  Repressor  attacks  Lollardy  with  arguments  which 
his  enemies  either  seriously  thought,  or  affected  for  their  own  ends  to 
think,  as  heretical  as  the  views  he  combated.  He  had  been  befriended 
by  the  good  Duke  Humphrey  of  Gloucester,  but  after  Gloucester's 
murder  he  seems  to  have  made  friends  with  Margaret  and  Suffolk, 
and  obtained,  in  1550,  his  translation  to  Chichester.  Suffolk  was 
extremely  unpopular,  but  as  Pecock  was  not  arraigned  for  heresy  for 
seven  years  to  come,  it  seems  excessive  to  connect  his  fall  with  the 
favourite.  However,  it  was  distinct  enough  when  it  came,  whatever 
the  cause.  He  was  accused  of  treating  authority  disrespectfully  in 
his  works,  as  well  as  of  heresy  in  setting  up  reason  (though  on  the 
orthodox  side)  as  the  criterion  of  religious  truth.  He  was  condemned, 
had  the  choice  of  recantation  or  the  secular  arm,  recanted  abjectly, 
handing  his  books  to  the  executioner  to  burn,  resigned  or  was  deprived 
of  his  bishopric,  and  probably  spent  the  short  remainder  of  his  life  in 
jtrict  confinement  at  Thorney  Abbey. 

The  extreme   importance    of  Pecock's   position    in   the  history  of 

English  prose — a  position  which,  from  its  original  and  representative 

character,  will  save  us  much  repetition  if  it  be  dwelt  on  here  —  consists 

mainly   in   two  points :    tlip    effpft  upon  style_  which   the 

vocalnilary.    purpose  of  his  books^  enabled,  or  rather  obliged,  him  to 

attempt   and    partly    produce,    and    his   vocabulary.      As 

regards  the  first  point,  it  must  be  remembered  that,  though  there  may 

have  been  gross  ignorance   and    intellectual   sloth  among  the  lower 

friars  and  monks,  the  educated  and  academic  clergy  of  the  fifteenth 

century    were,    with    certain    allowances,    trained    with    much    greater 

intellectual   keenness   and    severity   than   any  class    of    men   at   the 

present  day,  the  much  sneered-at  scholastic  discipline  providing  and 

enforcing  an  intellectual  askesis  to  which  there  is  no  modern  parallel. 

But  all  this  training  went  on  in  Latin,  and  the  problem  was  how  to 

conduct  a  dispute  on  the  same  lines  in  English.      Wyclif  had  been 

1  He  had,  however,  excited  the  most  violent  personal  and  religious  antipathy. 
Gascoigne's  Liber  Veritatum  {vide  supra,  p.  117)  is  permeated  with  a  sort  of  refrain 
of  execration  of  "  Reginaldus  Pecok.     Wallicus  origine,  episcopus  Assavensis." 


CHAP.  VI  MISCELLANEOUS   PROSE  207 


an  adept  in  scholastic  argument,  but  when  he  had  occasion  to 
employ  it  he  had  mostly  used  Latin,  and  his  English  works  were 
mainly,  though  not  entirely,  addressed  to  the  vulgar.  The  lapse  of 
more  than  half  a  century  had  made  it  not  merely  possible,  but  desir- 
able, to  change  the  general  veime  from  Latin  to  English,  and  to 
address  clergy  and  laity  at  once.  It  is  very  probable  that  this 
divulgence  helped  to  irritate  Pecock's  enemies  against  him :  but  that 
is  beside  our  present  point,  which  is  that,  having  undertaken  to 
conduct  arguments  of  scholastic  theology  in  the  vernacular,  he  had 
to  adapt  that  vernacular  itself  to  the  strictly  accurate  thought,  and 
the  precise  terminology,  required  by  scholastic  habits.  He  did  not 
entirely  succeed,  but  he  succeeded  in  a  degree  really  surprising,  and 
one  which  could  not  but  enlarge  the  powers  of  English  correspond- 
ingly. Beside  the  mere  narrative  of  Mandeville  and  Trevisa,  the 
popular  scientific  exposition  of  Chaucer's  Astrolabe,  and  the  popular 
invective  (  for  it  is  often  little  more)  of  the  average  Wyclifian  tract, 
there  now  took  its  place  downright  argument  in  English,  the  setting 
forth  in  vernacular  dress  of  the  long-proved  technicalities  and 
terminologies  of  the  schools  in  a  tongue  understanded  of  the  people. 

The  vocabulary  which  Pecock  adopted  or  invented  for  this 
purpose  has  special  interest.  It  is  on  the  one  side  necessarily  more 
technical  than  Chaucer's,  and  on  the  other  hand  it  is  deliberately 
more  archaic  and  vernacular.  In  particular,  we  see  in  it  abundant 
examples  of  a  process  of  thoroughgoing  "Teutonification"  of  Latin, 
Romance,  and  even  Greek  forms,  which  would  have  almost  satisfied 
the  champions  of  "ungothroughsomeness"  for  "  impenetrability"  in 
o\ir  own  times.  Pecock  lias  "  about-writing  "  for  •'  circumscription  "  of 
a  coin;  "aforebar"  and  "beforebar"  for  "prevent";  "alight"  not 
in  the  modern  sense,  but  =  "  alleviate  "  ;  "  apropre  "  for  "  appropriate  " 
(an  instance  of  a  general  tendency  of  his  to  cut  off  Latin  suffixes)  ; 
'•beholdable,"  an  audacious  Anglicising  of  "theoretic";  "closingly" 
for  "inclusively";  "customable"  for  "habitual";  "endly"  for 
"  finally " ;  nay,  he  even  retains  the  old  English  "  undeadly "  for 
"  immortal."  And  that  these  and  a  vast  number  of  other  vernacu- 
larities  were  deliberate  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  he  has  no  horror  of 
foreign  terms  as  such,  where  he  cannot  get  a  vernacular  form,  though 
when  he  can  find  or  make  the  latter  he  always  prefers  it.  In  fact, 
though  this  compound  of  forms  that  never  took  permanent  place  in 
the  laniiuage,  with  archaisms  on  the  one  hand,  and  Latinisms  on 
the  other,  makes  Pecock's  pages  look  very  harsh  and  obscure,  it  is 
clear  that  his  scheme  was  a  possible  one ;  that  it  actually  did 
exercise  English  in  form,  and  enrich  it  in  matter,  to  no  small  degree; 
and  that,  though  the  classical  reaction  of  the  Renaissance  prevented 
much  of  his  vocabulary  from  receiving  final  letters  of  naturalisation, 


2o8  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

a  good  deal  more  than  has  actually  been  naturalised  might  have 
been  admitted  with  no  disadvantage. 

No  other  of  the  early  fifteenth-century  prose  writers  —  i.e.  those 
born  certainly  or  probably  within  the  verge  of  the  fourteenth,  or  but 
a  little  later  —  equals  Pecock  in  original  and  representative  character, 
or  Malory  in- charm.  But  John  Capgrave  and  Sir  John 
Capgrave,"  Fortcscue,  at  least,  deserve  to  keep  here  their  traditional 
tabyan.  places,  if  Only  because  each  admitted  a  new  subject  — 
law  in  the  one  case,  original  history  in  the  other — to  the  liberty  of 
English  prose.  Fortescue,  whose  not  certain  birth  and  death  dates 
are  usually  given  as  1394  and  1474,  was  a  member  of  the  famous 
western  family  of  his  name,  an  Oxford  man,  a  lawyer,  and  in  1442 
Chief-Justice  of  the  King's  Bench.  He  was  a  Lancastrian  through- 
out the  war;  but  after  Tewkesbury  rallied  to  Edward  IV.,  though  he 
had  to  make  a  distinctly  ignominious  recantation  in  print.  Of  his 
very  numerous  works,  some  of  which  are  in  Latin,  the  most  important 
in  English  is  the  rather  well-known  Governance  of  England,  one 
passage  of  which,  the  famous  contrast  between  the  unruly  indepen- 
dence of  the  Englishman  and  the  slavish  cowardice  of  France,  is 
equally  notable  and  characteristic.  Capgrave,  born  in  1393  at  Lynn, 
died  in  1464.  He  was  a  monk,  and  wrote  niost  voluminouslyjn  Jboth 
languages.  His  Chronicle  of  ^itglajid  is  his  main  Title  to  admission 
here.  No  two  styles  could  well  be  more  different  than  his  and 
Pecock's,  the  former  being  not  indeed  incorrect,  but  devoid  of 
character,  singularly  free  from  archaic  obscurity  and  archaic  relish 
alike,  suited  fairly  for  plain  business-like  narration,  but  hardly 
for  anything  else,  and  on  the  whole  more  like  Mandeville,  with  the 
zest  and  poetic  quality  taken  out,  but  the  short  simply-linked 
sentences  remaining,  than  like  any  other  of  his  predecessors.  Allow- 
ing for  the  advance  of  some  fifty  years,  the  style  of  the  next  historian 
of  note,  Robert_J^bj^n,  who  represents  the  second  half  of  tjie 
century  as  the  Prior  of  Lynn  does  the  first,  is  not  unlike  Capgrave's.^ 

The  importance  of  Caxton  in  English  prose  was  by  no  means 
merely  ministerial,  merely  limited  to  the  fact  that  he  was  the 
introducer  of  Malory's  immortal  book,  and  of  a  little  other  good 
matter  to  the  English  reading  public,  or  that  he  was  the 
first  practitioner  of  the  great  art  of  printing  among  us- 
For  very  much  of  his  extensive  work  was  not  merely  printed,  but 
written  by  himself;  and  though  it  is  perfectly  true  that  the  matter 
was,  save  in  an  infinitesimal  degree,  translated,  yet  that  in  the  circum- 

1  Fortescue's  chief  work  has  been  edited  by  C.  Plummer,  1885;  his  whole 
works  by  Lord  Clermont.  Capgrave's  Chronicle  is  in  the  "  Rolls  Series,"  ed. 
Hingeston  (1858);  his  long  verse  St.  Katharine  has  been  given  by  the  E.E.T.S. 
The  standard  edition  of  Fabyan  is  Sir  Henry  Ellis's  in  i^il*^- 


209 


CHAP.  VI  MISCELLANEOUS   PROSE      . 

stances,  as  was  pointed  out  before,  does  not  diminish  his  claims.  It 
was  impossible  for  any  one  of  intelligence  to  render  Latin  or  French 
into  English  without  exercising  the  youthful  language  in  the  airs, 
the  graces,  the  crafts  of  its  elder.  There  is  no  more  interesting 
passage  of  its  kind  than  that  where  Caxton,  in  the  prologue  to  the 
Recuyell  of  the  Histories  .of  Troye,  tells  us  how  "  I,  having  no  great 
charge  of  occupation,  took  a  French  book  and  read  therein  many 
strange  and  marvellous  histories,  wherein  I  had  great  pleasure  and 
delight,  as  well  for  the  novelty  of  the  same  as  for  the  fair  language 
of  French,  which  was  in  prose  so  well  and  compendiously  set  and 
written,  that  viethoiight  I  understood  the  sentence,  and  substance  of 
every  matter^  One  sees  at  once  the  sentiment  and  the  aim  not  of 
Caxton  merely,  but  of  a  dozen  and  a  hundred  known  and  unknown 
translators  of  French  and  Latin  in  these  early  days,  seeing  "the 
fair  language  of  French,"  or  the  grave  and  stately  language  of  Latin, 
reflecting  how  destitute  English,  at  least  in  prose  (for  they  had  no 
doubt  about  their  Chaucer,  even  if  they  did  a  little  unadvisedly  couple 
Gower  and  Lydgate  with  him),  was  of  such  fairness,  such  gravity, 
such  stateliness,  and  determining,  so  far  as  in  them  lay,  to  give  readers 
in  the  vernacular  not  merely  the  bare  matter,  but  the  matter  with 
some  art.  Nor  is  Caxton  himself  to  be  by  any  means  lightly  spoken 
of  for  accomplishment  in  this  respect.  He  tells  us  here  and  else- 
where of  his  difficulties  in  adjusting  his  broad  and  rude  Kentish 
dialect  (we  know  that  Kent,  near  as  it  was  to  London,  was  up  to  the 
fourteenth  century  certainly  farther  from  a  literary  dialect  than 
Northumbria  itself"),  how  he  tried  to  make  a  prose  style  that  should 
do  for  prose  something  not  too  far  below  what  Chaucer  had  done 
for  verse.  To  a  very  great  extent  he  succeeded,  though  he  some- 
times exceeded  in  the  direction  of  literalness.  Take  him  with 
Pecock,  who  was  probably  not  twenty  years  his  senior,  and  we  see 
that  his  form,  if  not  quite  so  interesting  to  the  historian,  is  far  more 
adapted  for  general  literature ;  take  him  with  Malory,  who  was 
probably  of  his  own  age,  and  we  find  from  a  different  point  of 
comparison  the  same  result.  It  is  clear  that  Caxton  was  in  at  least 
two  senses  a  man  of  letters,  that  he  had  the  secret  of  literary  crafts- 
manship. 

The  middle  third  of  the  fifteenth  century  appears  to  have  been 
less  fruitful  in  the  birth-dates  of  persons  important  in  literature  than 
any  period  of  equal  Icngtii  for  the  last  six  hundred  years  at  least. 
Indeed,  between  Caxton,  wlio  was  probably  born  about  141 5,  and 
Fisher,  who  was  (again  probably)  born  just  aTjout  half  a  century 
later,  it  would  not  appear  that  a  single  writer  of  the  sliglitest  importance- 
in  the  history  of  English  prose  first  drew  in  luiglish  air.  But  the 
last    thirty   or    thirty-five    years    of    the    century    did    something    to 


2IO  THE  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

clear  away  the  reproach  with  Lord  Berners  (1467-1532),  Fisher 
himself  (1465-1535),  Sir  Thomas  More  (1478-1535),  Sir  Thomas 
Elyot  ( 1 488-1 546),  and  the  early  controversialists  and  Biblical  trans- 
lators of  the  Reformation,  among  whom,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
prose,  Cranmer  probably  and  Latimer  certainly  take  the  first  rank. 
Of  Berners  we  have  spoken ;  the  others .  must  have  some  notice 
here. 

Justice  to  Fisher's  character  as  a  man,  an  ecclesiastic,  and  (with 
allowances  for  a  certain  want  of  strength)  a  politician  has  been  done 
for  a  long  time  ;  indeed,  even  at  the  times  when  anti- "  Popish  "  feeling 
ran  highest  in  England,  his  fidelity  to  honour  and  con- 
science, and  his  hapless  fate,  had  preserved  him  from 
obloquy.  But  it  was  not  till  the  republication  of  his  English  works  by 
Mr.  Mayor  for  the  E.E.T.S.^  that  it  was  possible  for  justice  to  be 
generally  done  to  his  position  in  the  history  of  prose.  He  was  a 
Yorkshireman,  was  born  at  Beverley,  and  was  educated  at  Cambridge, 
where,  through  his  connection  with  Lady  Margaret,  the  mother  of 
Henry  VH.,  he  had  much  to  do  with  the  founding  of  Christ's  and 
St.  John's  Colleges.  His  patroness  made  him  her  confessor  in  1502, 
the  next  year  he  became  the  first  incumbent  of  her  professorship  of 
divinity,  while  in  another  twelvemonth  he  was  made  Bishop  of 
Rochester  and  Chancellor  of  his  University.  For  many  years  he 
was  an  active  bishop,  a  great  friend  to  tlie  new  classical  learning,  and  a 
j)ersona  grata  at  the  courts  both  of  Henry  VIL  and  his  son.  The 
affair  of  the  divorce  alarmed  his  conscience,  and  he  seems  to  have  been 
the  dupe  of  the  "  Maid  of  Kent "  ;  while  his  election  to  the  Cardinalate, 
after  he  had  been  imprisoned  for  treason,  so  irritated  the  passionate 
king  that  he  beheaded  Fisher  as  a  practical  repartee. 

Fisher's  English  works  as  yet  published  consist  of  a  long  Trea- 
tise, practically  made  up  of  Sermons,  on  the  Penitential  Psalms, 
a  funeral  Sermon  on  Henry  VH.,  another  on  Lady  Margaret,  a 
third  against  Luther,  and  a  fourth  preached  on  Good 
'fn\tyte."*  Friday,  with  two  little  tractates  written  in  prison,  a 
Spiritual  Consolation  to  his  sister  Elizabeth,  and  the 
Ways  to  Perfect  Religion.  Thus  almost  the  whole  of  his  work  is 
oratorical  at  heast  in  profession.  But  this  matters  little,  for  the 
wKole  literature  of  the  time  was  so  saturated  with  the  idea  of 
"rhetoric"  that  everything  took  more  or  less  the  rhetorical  if  not 
oratorical  turn.  And  Fisher's  rhetoric  never  has  the  very  least  touch  of 
the  impromptu  about  it.     On  the  contrary,  he  is  one  of  the  very  earliest 

1  1876.  Good  judges  had,  however,  always  appreciated  Fisher,  and  he  duly 
figures  in  the  remarkable  Specimens  of  Prose  Writers  (3  vols.  London,  1807)  to 
which  George  Burnett  gave  his  name,  but  of  which  Burnett's  friend,  comrade  at 
Balliol,  and  fellow-"  Pantisocrat,"  Southey,  was  the  real  inspirer. 


CHAP.  VI  MISCELLANEOUS   PROSE  211 

English  writers  in  whom  we  can  discern  the  deliberate  selection  and 
practice  of  certain  means  and  methods  wholly  to  achieve  style.  He 
has  got  beyond  the  painful  effort  of  Pecock  to  forge  a  vocabulary 
and  arrange  a  syntax  capable  of  conveying  the  effects  of  Latin 
argument  in  the  vernacular.  He  is  not,  like  Caxton.  endeavouring 
dimly  to  get  in  English  results  (what,  he  does  not  quite  understand) 
as  pleasant  as  those  of  French.  He  has  already  discovered,  and 
deliberately  experiments  for,  rhetorical  effect  with  the  peculiar  resources 
provided  by  the  double  dictionary  —  Teutonic  and  Romance  —  of 
English,  as  well  as  by  the  more  general  devices  of  cadence,  parallelism, 
and  the  usual  iigures  of  speech.  The  simple  but  extraordinarily 
effective  plan  of  coupling  a  "  Saxon "  and  a  Latin  word,  which  is  so 
noticeable  in  the  Authorised  Version  of  the  Bible,  and  which  may 
have  arisen  before  the  rhetorical  advantage  of  it  was  perceived,  from 
the  mere  convenience  of  addressing  one  term  to  "  lered "  and  the 
other  to  "  lewed "  folk,  appear  in  him  constantly.  ''  Wood  "  [mad] 
and  "cruel,"  "  horrible  "  and  "  fearful,"  "  bruckle  "  [brittle]  and  "  frail," 
"end"  and  "conclusion,"  and  a  thousand  more  stud  his  pages. 
Further,  he  has  discovered  the  effectiveness  —  more  dangerous  and 
more  likely  to  surfeit  —  of  the  triplet  —  "fasting,  crying,  and  coming  to 
the  choir,"  "worldly  honours,  worldly  riches,  and  fleshly  pleasures." 
Inversion,  a  device  so  naturally  suggested  by  the  different  order  of 
Greek,  Latin,  and  English,  has  no  secrets  for  him,  and,  as  inversion 
always  does,  suggests  cadence.  He  is  aware  of  the  assistance  given 
in  colouring  and  varying  prose  effect  by  the  admixture  of  long  and 
short  sentences ;  and  it  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that  we  find  in 
him,  and  for  the  first  time,  examples  of  the  rhetorical,  as  well  as  of  the 
logical,  construction  and  use  of  the  paragraph.  Side  by  side  with  his 
classical  grace  he  has  something  of  the  vcrnacularity  of  Latimer,  and 
he  makes  use  of  the  quaint  mystical  and  allegoric  comparisons,  which 
the  Middle  Ages  elaborated  from  Scriptural  and  patristic  use,  with  a 
felicity  which  occasionally  does  not  come  much  short  of  that  of  the 
greatest  rhetoricians  of  the  seventeenth  century.  In  fact,  were  it 
not  for  the  spelling  and  for  the  obligatory  Latin  quotations,  he  is 
altogether  wonderfully  in  advance  of  his  time. 

Fisher's  great  companion  in  misfortune,  Sir  Thomas  More,  holds 
a  less  distinguished  position  in  the  strict  history  of  strictly  English 
literature  than  is  generally  thought.  His  famous  Utopia  was  never 
En{rlished    l)y    himself    at    all,  nor    bv    others    till    some 

.     "  ^  .  ■  More. 

tune  after  his  death.      It    is    therefore   quite    preposterous 
to   quote   it   under    his    name    as    belonging   to    KnL,'Iish    prose;    we 
might  as  well  include  Homer,  Froissart,  and   Machiavelli  as  English 
writers.        His    extensive    polemical    writing    is    not    remarkable    in 
style,  and  is   .spoilt    by   the    violence    which   pervaded   both   sides  in 


212  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

Reformation  controversy.  To  speak  of  him,  therefore,  as  "the  Father 
of  English  prose  "  is  to  apply  a  silly  phrase  in  a  fashion  monstrously 
unhistorical.  Even  the  History  of  Richard  III.,  which  is  his  chief 
claim,  and  (if  his)  a  sound  one,  to  a  place  in  the  story  of  style,  has 
been  much  overpraised.  The  eulogies  of  critics  like  Hallam  were 
probably  determined  by  the  fact  that  it  is  an  early  and  not  unhappy 
example  of  the  rather  colourless  "  classical "  prose,  of  which  a  little 
later  we  shall  find  the  chief  exponents  to  be  Ascham  and  his  friends 
at  Cambridge.  It  is,  of  course,  a  good  deal  better  than  Capgrave,  and 
it  is  free  from  Pecock's  harshness  and  crudity  of  phrase.  But  as  it 
cannot  on  the  one  hand  compare  for  richness,  colour,  and  repre- 
sentative effect  with  the  style  of  Berners,  one  of  the  two  best  writers 
of  prose  nearly  contemporary  with  More,  so  it  is  not  to  be  men- 
tioned with  that  of  Fisher,  the  other,  for  nice  rhetorical  artifice 
and  intelligent  employment  of  craftsman-like  methods  of  work.  But 
it  is  much  more  "  eighteenth  century "  than  either,  and  this  com- 
mended it  to  Hallam ;  while  More's  pleasant  wit  and  great  intellectual 
ability  naturally  set  it  above  the  work  of  mere  translators  or  com- 
pilers. Sir  Thomas  has  a  secure  place  in  English  history,  and  no 
mean  one  in  that  very  interesting  history  of  works  of  distinction  com- 
posed in  Latin,  since  the  arrival  of  the  vernaculars  at  years  of  discre- 
tion, which  has  yet  to  be  written.  But  his  jjlace  in  the  strict  History 
of  English  literature  is  very  small,  and  not  extraordinarily  high. 

As  Fisher  occupies  the  most  commanding  position  among  the 
divines  of  the  time  in  reference  to  original  and  skilful  handling  of 
English  style,  so  the  opposite  side  furnished  the  most  remarkable 
and  successful  examples  of  what  could  be  done  by 
carrying  out  his  principles.  Tyndale,  the  next  com- 
petent translator  of  the  Bible  to  Wyclif,  is  more  noteworthy  for  his 
hapless  fate  and  for  a  vigorous  controversial  pen,  than  for  distinct 
literary  merit ;  but  Latimer,  Coverdale,  and  Cranmer  must  be  better 
spoken  of.  Hugh  Latimer  ^  indeed  —  who  was  born  in  1489  of  a 
family  of  Leicestershire  yeomen,  was  educated  at  Clare  Hall,  Cam- 
bridge, became  Bishop  of  Worcester  in  1539,  and  was  burnt  in 
1555  at  Oxford  —  holds  a  very  important  and  somewhat  peculiar 
position,  ranking  with  Bunyan,  Cobbett,  and  in  a  lesser  degree  Defoe, 
as  the  chief  practitioner  of  a  perfectly  homely  and  vernacular  style. 
Such  a  style  naturally  connects  itself  with  an  intense  egotism ;  and 
Latimer  is  as  egotistic,  though  not  as  arrogant,  as  Cobbett  himself. 
He  was  a  thoroughly  honest  and  a  thoroughly  practical  man,  no 
partisan  in  the  bad  sense  (that  is  to  say,  in  the  way  of  winking  at 
practices  by  friends  which  he  would   have   stormed  against  in  foes), 

1  Latimer  is  well  presented  in  two  little  volumes  of  Mr.  Arber's  invaluable 
reprints.     The  Ploughers  and  Seven  Sermons. 


CHAP.  VI  MISCELLANEOUS   PROSE  213 

with  all  the  taste  of  the  common  people  for  vivid  homely  illustration, 
and  sometimes,  as  in  the  universally  known  description  of  the  paternal 
household,  capable  of  extraordinarily  graphic  presentment  of  fact. 
Beyond  the  range  of  personal  description  and  shrewd,  unadorned 
argument  or  denunciation  his  literary  gifts  would  probably  not  have 
extended  in  any  case  very  far.  But  as  a  popular  sermon-writer  in 
his  own  days,  or  as  a  popular  journalist  in  these,  he  had  in  the  one 
case,  and  could  have  had  in  the  other,  but  very, few  rivals  and  no 
superiors.  Nor  is  it  improper  to  notice  that  his  raciness  and 
vernacularity  were  specially  useful  as  correctives  of  the  rather 
monotonous  correctness  which  the  imitation  of  Ciceronianism  in 
English  was  likely  to  bring  in. 

The  merits  of  Coverdale  and  Cranmer  are  rather  matters  of 
imputation  and  lending  than  of  certain  attribution  by  right,  the  claims 
of  the  one  resting  on  his  supposed  principal  share  of  the  merits  of 
the  early  Tudor  translations  of  the  Bible,  those  of  the  other  partly  on 
this,  but  still  more  on  his  reputed  authorship  of  a  large  part  of  the 
Edwardian  Liturgy.  Miles  Coverdale,  who  was  born  in 
Yorkshire  about  1488,  and  educated  at  Cambridge, 
became  a  Protestant  exile  on  the  Continent,  and  was  busy  on  more 
versions  than  one  of  the  Scriptures,  chiefly  in  the  fourth  decade  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  He  became  Bishop  of  Exeter  in  1551,  and 
though  he  suffered  imprisonment  in  the  Marian  persecution,  was  not 
restored  later,  dying  in  1569  as  merely  an  incumbent.  If  (which 
does  not  seem  to  be  absolutely  certain)  he  was  the  actual  translator 
of  the  Bible  of  1535  which  goes  by  his  name,  there  is  no  doubt  that 
some  of  the  best  phrasing,  for  sound  and  sense,  of  the  great  Authorised 
Version  is  originally  due  to  him.  His  prologue  and  other  editorial 
matter  certainly  seems  to  contain  not  a  little  of  the  peculiar  music 
which  has  always  been  associated  with  the  English  Bible,  and  which 
the  revisers  of  a  few  years  ago  showed  such  extraordinary  ability  in 
removing  whenever  they  had  an  opportunity.  It  must,  however,  be 
said  that  even  for  this  quality  there  are  advocates  of  Tyndale's  claims 
in  opposition  to  Coverdale. 

The  praise  claimed  for  Cranmer  —  that  of  being  the  chief  author 
of  the  Collects  and  Prayers  of  the  Anglican  Liturgy  —  is  even  higher, 
inasmuch  as  the  matter,  though  necessarily  showing  common 
forms  of  phrase  and  common  stocks  of  matter,  is  more 

■    •       1/^-  1  ■»»•!  !••  Cranmer. 

origmal.  Cranmer  was  born  m  Nottinghamshire  in 
1489,  became  a  Fellow  of  Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  took  a  great 
(at  least  large)  part  in  the  affair  of  the  divorce,  and  without  holding 
any  bishop's  see  i)rcvi()usly,  was  ai)pointed  direct  to  the  Primacy  at 
Warham's  death  in  1532.  He  was  burnt  at  Oxford  in  1556.  His 
character  as  a  man  does  not  concern  us.     But  it  is  only  fair  to  say 


214  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

that  the  considerable  body  of  his  doctrinal  and  controversial  works 
displays,  as  far  as  the  matter  will  admit,  a  command  of  melodious 
word-arrangement  not  much  inferior  to  that  which  is  to  be  found 
passim  in  the  Liturgy.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that  this  peculiar 
style  —  the  swan-song  of  Middle  English  transferred  from  verse  to 
prose  —  was  less  the  property  of  any  individual  man  than  abroad  in 
the  air  at  the  time ;  and  that  it  found  utterance  whenever  fit  voice 
and  fit  matter  came  together,  from  Malory  to  Cranmer  and  from 
Berners  to  Coverdale.  Hardly  ever  afterwards  could  the  touch  of 
archaism  be  attained  without  deliberate  pastiche ;  never  before  could 
the  writers  boast  the  possession  of  a  JulLvqcabulary  and  a  tolerably 
exercised  practice.  The  rude  vulgarity  of  partisan  controversy,  the 
learned  dulness  of  argumentative  exposition,  often  mar  this  music; 
but  where,  as  in  the  Prayer-book,  the  mattfirjndited  is  of  the  best, 
ti»ef^the  style  is  of  the  best  likewise  —  of  such  a  Kest  as  was  never" 
agSin  to  be  naturally  proaOced^and  hardly  ever  to  be  imitated  by  the 
most  loving  and  delicate  art. 


INTERCHAPTER  IV 

The  general  lessons  of  the  fifteenth  century  ^  are  rather  unusually  easy 
to  disentangle ;  indeed,  the  very  want  of  intrinsic,  and  so  misleading, 
interest  leaves  these  lessons  all  the  more  exposed. 

In  poetry  we  have  little  or  no  progress  to  chronicle,  and  a  sur- 
prisingly small  amount  of  positive  achievement,  this  latter  being 
found  almost  wholly  in  the  small  group  of  the  better  Scottish  poets 
and  in  the  anonymous  writers  of  ballads  and  carols.  Negatively 
the  century  may  be  said  to  have  done  at  least  one  very  good  thing  — 
to  have  shown  by  the  repeated  practice  of  persons,  sometimes  pos- 
sessed of  actual  genius,  that  the  revived  alliterative  schemes,  even 
crutched  and  bolstered  with  rhyme  and  stanza  arrangement,  would 
not  do.  Also,  in  pursuing  another  branch  of  the  same  poetic  maze 
of  "  passages  that  lead  to  nothing,"  it  may  be  said  to  have  shown 
very  clearly  the  danger  of  a  too  stiff  and  elaborate  poetic  diction. 
Otherwise  its  poetical  practice,  in  the  higher  and  more  regular  poetic 
kinds,  was  a  rather  touching,  but  for  the  most  part  hopelessly  unsuc- 
cessful, attempt  to  make  one  good  custom  corrupt  the  world,  to 
continue  Chaucerian  form  and  Lorrisian  matter  long  after  the  latter 
had  lost  any  real  connection  with  poetic  power,  and  without  the  gifts 
of  language,  of  humour,  of  study  of  nature  and  humanity,  which  had 
given  value  to  the  former. 

Yet  there  had  more  than  possibly  arisen  during  this  very  time  — 
there  had  to  a  certainty  come  into  far  more  extensive  use  than  ever 
before,  a  kind  of  popular  and  only  half-literary  poetry,  which  was 
gradually  to  supply  solvents  for  this  stiffness,  breath  and  life  for  this 
lack  of  inspiration,  to  stir  the  blood  of  the  great  new  literary  poets  of 
the  next  age  like  a  trumpet,  to  give  Sliakespeare  himself  scraps 
worth  decking  his  own  fabric  with,  models  for  his  own  unapproach- 
able and  inestimable  lyrics,  and  last,  but  far  indeed  from  least,  by 
the  very  irregularity  of  its  apparently  artless  art,  to  maintain  and  to 

•As  in  the  case  of  Middle  English,  there  is  no  single  book  to  which  the 
student  can  be  referred  for  this  period;  and  as  there,  Morley,  Ten  Brink,  and  the 
latest  Warton  do  not  completely  supply  the  want. 

215 


2i6  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book 

extend  that  sort  of  liberty  which  is  the*  glory  and  the  essence  of 
English  poetry.  It  is  a  curious  thing  that  this  liberty  has  been, 
throughout  our  history,  in  much  more  danger  than  the  political 
freedom  which  has  occupied  historians  at  such  length,  simply  because 
the  attempts  on  it  liave  been  made  not  by  tyrants  from  without  but 
by  mistaken  persons  from  within.  Even  now  there  are  folk  who  will 
not  face  the  plain  fact  that  Chaucer  allowed  himself  trisyllabic  feet, 
but  try  to  get  him  into  the  hard  and  fast  dungeon  of  the  decasyllabic 
by  slurs  and  elisions  and  all  manner  of  unnatural  tricks.  His  own 
immediate  successors  no  doubt  tried  to  tell  their  syllables  as  exactly 
as  they  told  their  beads.  But  the  blessed  liberty  of  the  ballad  was 
beside  them  all  the  time,  and  served  as  an  alternative  to  and  a  pro- 
test against  their  theory. 

Very  closely  connected  with  this  matter  is  the  already  noted 
change  of  pronunciation  which  certainly  went  on  throughout  the 
century,  though  we  are  in  the  profoundest  ignorance  of  its  details, 
and  can  only  dimly  appreciate  its  results  in  the  new  verse  of  Surrey 
and  Wyat  afterwards.  A  good  deal,  no  doubt,  was  due  to  the  in- 
creasing disuse  and  at  last  total  abolition  of  the  final  e,  with  the  con- 
sequent substitution  of  plurals  in  s  for  es  and  the  like,  the  dropping 
of  the  infinitive  en.,  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  For  it  must  be  (though  it 
is  not  always)  remembered  that  a  process  of  this  kind  is  a  very  far- 
reaching  one.  You  cannot  merely  cut  a  syllable  off  a  word  and 
leave  the  sound-value  of  the  rest  as  it  was.  The  lopping  and 
topping,  in  at  least  some  cases,  must  affect  the  balance  of  the  word, 
shift  its  centre  of  gravity,  alter  its  relations  to  other  words  in  the 
verse  or  the  sentence.  The  strange  tricks  played,  for  instance,  by 
Wyat  with  the  syllable  eth.,  and  his  apparent  belief  in  the  propriety 
of  rhyming  it  by  itself,  without  any  regard  to  what  comes  before, 
must  have  ultimate  reasons  of  this  sort,  though  we  may,  even  as  in  a 
glass  darkly,  have  difficulty  in  seeing  what  they  were.  So,  too,  the 
increasing  isolation  of  the  country  and  the  language,  as  both 
strengthened  the  disuse  of  the  glib  trilingualism  which  distinguished 
such  a  man  as  Gower,  must,  with  other  subtle  and  obscure  influences 
of  the  same  kind,  have  had  effect.  We  see  something  of  this  effect 
in  the  half-defiant,  half-despairing  doggerel  of  Skelton,  as  well  as  in 
the  patient  plodding  of  Hawes. 

The  details  of  the  uprising  of  the  great  hybrid  between  poetry 
and  prose  —  Drama  —  we  still,  for  the  same  reasons  of  convenient 
juxtaposition,  reserve  to  the  next  Book ;  but  more  even  than  in  the 
last  Interchapter  it  is  important  to  observe  that  its  earlier  forms 
were  now  perfectly  familiar  to  the  English  nation,  if  they  had  as  yet 
(till  the  very  close  of  the  period)  scantily  commended  themselves  to 
the   regular    practitioners   of  English    literature.      The    mystery   and 


IV  INTERCH AFTER   IV  217 

miracle-play  had  perhaps  for  centuries  —  certainly  for  some  century  and 
a  half —  been  practiced  by  the  not  always  rude  mechanicals  of  prob- 
ably every  great  town  in  the  kingdom.  The  farce-interludes,  originally 
introduced  to  prevent  the  effect  being  too  solemn,  springing  naturally 
out  of  such  scriptural  incidents  as  the  Tower  of  Babel,  or  grafted 
without  too  much  violence,  as  in  the  famous  "  Mak  "  scenes  of  the 
Second  Shepherds''  Play,  had  gradually  detached  themselves,  and  con- 
stituted almost  an  independent  kind.  The  Morality  was  simply  the 
dramatisation  of  the  Rose  allegory  —  the  favourite  matter  of  the  time 
thrown  into  what  was  fast  becoming  its  favourite  form.  That  re- 
ligious feeling  after  the  Reformation  exaggerated  the  dislike  of 
Catholicism  for  dramatic  performance  as  such,  and  did  not  maintain 
the  exceptional  tolerance  for  religious  drama,  mattered  little.  The 
excessive  earnestness  and  sternness  of  the  time  required  easement  in 
some  direction,  and  found  it  in  this ;  nor  was  it  till  nearly  a  century 
and  a  half  after  the  close  of  our  period  that  Puritanism  could  have  its 
way  with  the  drama. 

Of  prose,  as  the  details  given  in  the  last  chapter  sufficiently  show, 
it  is  possible  to  speak  with  less  allowance.  That  the  period  gives 
one  of  the  best  books  in  English  literature  may  be  partly,  though  it 
certainly  is  not  wholly,  an  accident ;  that  the  translations,  not  yet 
final,  but  substantively  formed,  of  the  Bible  and  the  adaptations  of 
the  Liturgy  at  its  close  have  supplied  nearly  four  centuries  since  with 
models  of  exquisite  cadence,  of  enchanting  selection  and  arrangement 
of  vocabulary,  is,  if  not  an  accident,  the  result  of  a  concatenation  of 
circumstances  not  all  of  which  —  not  even  the  most  of  which  —  are 
literary. 

But  it  is  no  accident,  it  is  of  the  essence  of  the  literary  history 
and   development    of  tlie    time,  that  the  resources,   the   practice,  the 
duties,  the  opportunities,  of  prose  continue  during  the  whole  course  of 
the  period  steadily  to  expand,  to  .subdivide    themselves,  to    acquire 
diversity,  adequacy,  accomplishment.     That  this  is  done  for  the  most 
part   through    the    medium    of   translation  and    compilation    does    no 
harm,  but  on  the  contrary  does  a  great  deal  of  good ;  that  a  certain 
amount  of  the  practice  is  in  the   nature  of  not  always  successful  ex- 
periment is  nothing  to  be  ashamed   of,  or  to  be  annoyed  at,  but,  on 
the    contrary,  a   fair   reason   for    satisfaction  and    pride.     No    single 
secret  of  the  greatness    of  English    literature    exceeds  in  importance 
the  fact  that  Englishmen    have  never  been  satisfied  to  import  or  to 
copy  a  literary  form  bodily  from    any  other    language  or  country,  as 
Spain    adopted    Italian  artificial  poetry,  and  as  France    adopted    the 
Senecan  drama;  and  this  has  of  itself  necessitated  constant  and  very 
often    unsuccessful    experiment  before    the    right    kind   or    the    right 
adjustment  has  been  hit  ujjon. 


2i8  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY  book  iv 

It  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that  the  fifteenth  century,  with  a 
few  years  backward  into  the  fourteenth  and  onwards  into  the  six- 
teenth, plays  the  same  part  in  regard  to  English  prose  that  the 
thirteenth  century,  with  probably  (for  our  knowledge  is  dimmer  here) 
a  few  years  backward  into  the  twelfth  century  and  certainly  more 
than  a  few  forward  into  the  fourteenth,  plays  in  regard  to  English 
verse.  The  necessary  stocks  of  material,  some  of  which  will  have  to 
be  rejected,  are  accumulated ;  the  necessary  plant  and  methods  of 
working,  not  a  little  of  which  will  have  to  be  perfected,  are  slowly 
and  painfully  elaborated.  Additional  lateness  in  time,  and  perhaps 
less  difficulty  in  kind,  give  us  indeed  a  more  perfect  result  in  Malory's 
prose  than  we  can  find  in  the  verse  of  any  poet  between  Layamon  and 
Hampole ;  but  mutatis  mutandis  the  historical  position  is  the  same, 
and  the  historical  gains  and  results  not  so  very  different.  No  single 
prose  writer,  not  even  Hooker,  was  in  any  near  future  to  do  for  the 
one  what  Chaucer  in  the  later  fourteenth  century  did  for  the  other, 
but  that  again  was  a  consequence  of  the  necessities  of  the  case. 

It  is  not  the  least  of  the  advantages  and  pleasures  of  that 
historical  study  of  literature  which  has,  with  halting  footsteps,  it  is 
true,  at  last  followed  the  historical  study  of  politics  and  social 
development,  that  it  provides  these  "condolences,"  these  "vails" 
in  the  seemingly  dullest  period  of  the  actual  literary  course. 
The  airy  generahser  may  flap  his  wing  disdainfully  at  the  fifteenth 
century  and  hurry  to  pastures  more  succulent ;  the  merely  indolent 
person  may  decline  the  labour  necessary  to  acquaint  himself  with  it. 
But  both  will  do  what  they  do,  and  decline  what  they  decline,  at  their 
peril.  Nor,  while  criticism  accompanies  history,  is  there  any  peril  on 
the  other  side.  There  is  not  the  least  danger  of  any  but  pedants  — 
that  is  to  say,  the  same  genus,  but  a  different  species  of  it.  as  the 
generalisers  —  neglecting  Shakespeare  or  Spenser  because  they  take 
the  pains  to  read  Barclay  and  Bokenam.  Yet  shall  those  who  decline 
to  take  notice  of  Barclay  and  Bokenam  run  no  small  risk  of  not  fiilly 
understanding  even  Spenser,  even  Shakespeare. 


BOOK   V 

ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO  THE   DEATH 
OF   SPENSER 

CHAPTER   I 

PRELIMINARIES  —  DRAMA 

Unbroken  development  of  Drama  from  Miracle  Plays  —  Origin  of  these  —  The 
Miracle-Play  cycles,  etc. —  Non-sacred  episodes — Moralities — The  Four 
Elements  —  Other  Interludes  —  John  Heywood  and  The  Four  PF^  Thersites 

—  Other  Interludes  —  Their  drift  —  Bale's  King  jfohn  —  Ralph  Roister  Doister  — 
Gammer  Gurton's  Needle  —  Gorboduc  —  Other  early  attempts  —  The  demand 
and  the  supply —  Early  plays  by  Gascoigne  and  others —  Disputes  as  to  plays 

—  Difficulties  in  their  way 

The  outburst  of  En'glish  Drama  is  so  pre-eminently  the  glory  of  the 
Elizabethan   period  of  literature   proper,  that   it  has  seemed  on  the 
whole  better  to  take  no  detailed  notice  in  the  preceding  Books  of  the 
early  experiments  —  not   very   early,   not   very   numerous, 
and  not  of  the  first  importance  in  literature  —  which  we    a^eKa^rrTent 
possess  in  that   literary  kind.     Among  other  advantages     of  Drama 
of  postponing  the  treatment  of  these  to  this  special  place,     "^"piays^.^*^ ' 
not  the  least  is  the  emphasis  which  can  perhaps  best  be 
given  by  such  an  arrangement  to  a  protest  against  certain  sentences 
of  the  late  Professor  Morley's  —  sentences  astonishing  in  so  careful 
a  student  of  literature  and  so  attached  a  lover  of  the  drama.     "The 
Modern   Drama,"  .says   Mr.   Morley,^  "  did   not  in  any  way  arise  out 
of  the  Miracle  Plays.     Miracle  plays  did  not  pass  into  morality  plays; 
nor   did   moralities    afterwards    pass    into    the   dramas.     The    modern 
drama   arose  out   of   the    study   and   imitation   of  classical    plays   in 
schools  and   universities."     Of  these   assertions   the   first   three   must 
be  directly  traversed,  and  the  fourth  largely  corrected.     The  modern 

1  English  Plays,  p.  2. 
219 


220    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH    bk.  v 

drama  did  arise  out  of  the  Miracles.  The  Miracles  did  pass  into  the 
Moralities.  The  Moralities  did  pass  into  modern  dramas.  And 
though  the  imitation  of  the  ancient  classical  drama,  and  its  perform- 
ance in  schools  and  universities,  coloured,  shaped,  generally  in- 
fluenced, the  modern  drama  most  momentously,  this  drama  no  more 
arose  out  of  them  than  Spenser  arose  out  of  Virgil,  or  Hooker  out  of 
Cicero. 

According  to  the  system  adopted  in  this  book,  we  need  concern 

ourselves   little   with   the   thin   and   dubious   subject   of    the    earliest 

mediceval  drama  in  Latin,  and  in  the  vernaculars  other  than  English. 

It   is    sufficient   to   say   that   at   last,  probably   about   the 

these."  tenth  century,  the  extreme  disapprobation  with  which 
the  Church  had  always  regarded  dramatic  performances 
—  a  disapprobation  justified  not  only  by  the  moral  scandals  of  the 
ancient  theatre  but  by  its  direct  association  with  the  persecution  of 
Christianity  —  gave  way  very  partially  and  very  slowly,  in  obedience 
to  the  well-known  principle  of  enlisting  strong  human  tastes,  as  far 
as  could  be  lawfully  done,  on  the  side  of  religion.  Whether,  as  is 
sometimes  and  plausibly  contended,  this  was  partly  the  result  of  a 
natural  and  imperceptible  development  of  the  dramatic  side  of  the 
Church  services  themselves  may  be  left  undecided.  It  is  sufficient 
to  say  that  we  have  from  France  Latin  mystery  or  miracle  plays 
which  may  be  of  the  eleventh  century,  Latin  mixed  with  a  little  French 
nearly  as  early,  and  plays  wholly  in  French  which  are  as  old  as  the 
twelfth.  It  is  possible,  from  notices  that  remain,  that  there  may 
have  been  English,  or  partly  English,  plays,  if  not  of  this  same 
century,  at  any  rate  of  the  thirteenth.  But  those  that  we  have  are 
much  later,  the  earliest  ^  of  them  not  being  older  than  the  fourteenth. 
And  whereas  at  least  two  famous  examples  remain  of  purely  secular 
French  plays  from  the  thirteenth,  nothing  of  the  kind  is  found  in 
English  till  the  end  of  the  fifteenth,  if  not  even  later.  Further, 
though  we  have  a  few  miracle  plays  proper  —  that  is  to  say,  plays  the 
subjects  of  which  are  taken  from  the  lives  of  the  saints  and  the  acts 
ascribed  to  Our  Lady  —  the  majority  of  them  are  mysteries,  i.e. 
dramatisations  of  the  sacred  history.  Those  which  were  wont  to  be 
performed  by  the  guilds  or  trades  of  the  towns  remain  to  us  in  four 
large  collections  and  a  few  other  batches  and  single  examples.  Of 
these  some  account  may  now  be  given. 

1  This  is  usually  taken  to  be  the  Harrowing  of  Hell,  first  printed  by  Halli- 
well,  and  assigned  to  the  reign  of  Edward  IL  It  is  an  interesting  piece  in  not 
quite  250  lines  of  octosyllabic  couplet,  but  rather  rudimentarily  dramatic.  A 
prologue  introduces  it ;  Christ  and  Satan  interchange  some  half-score  speeches  of 
summons  and  refusal;  the  janitor  runs  away,  and  our  Lord,  binding  Satan,  is 
welcomed  by,  and  graciously  answers,  the  patriarchs  in  turn. 


CHAP.  I  PRELIMINARIES  — DRAMA  221 

The  four  great  collections,^  known  by  the  names  of  their  place 
of  performance,  are  the  York,  Wakefield  (also  called  Towneley,  from 
the  former  owners  of  the  MS.),  Coventry,  and  Chester  xhe  Miracle- 
plays.  The  first  extends  to  forty-eight  pieces,  and  Play  cycles, 
may  go  back  to  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century ; 
the  second  to  thirty,  the  MS.  being  a  century  later;  the  Coventry 
(same  date)  to  forty-two ;  and  the  Chester  (of  which  we  have  no 
MS.  older  than  the  eve  of  the  sixteenth)  to  twenty-four.  We  have 
also  one  of  a  Newcastle  cycle,  one  of  a  Dublin,  an  East-Anglian 
version  of  Abraham  and  Isaac,  one  Norfolk  "  Sacrament  Play," 
besides  the  so-called  "  Digby  Mysteries,"  and  the  oldest  of  all,  the 
Harrowi7ig  of  Hell,^\\\c\\\i2i?,  been  thought  to  be  possibly  as  old  as 
the  first  quarter  of  the  fourteenth  century.  The  details  of  the  per- 
formance of  these,  though  very  far  from  uninteresting,  concern  the 
history  not  of  literature  but  of  the  stage.  It  is  enough  to  say  that 
they  were  usually  divided  among  the  handicrafts  of  a  town,  and  per- 
formed by  them  on  large  movable  stages  or  storied  waggons  in 
different  open  places.  Of  their  strictly  literary  character  some  account 
is  necessary. 

As  may  be  presumed  from  the  great  numbers  contained  in  each 
collection,  the  individual  play  is  very  short  as  a  rule,  indeed  rather 
an  "  Act "  of  the  whole  than  a  separate  drama.  But  there  is  great 
diversity  of  length.  For  instance,  the  very  interesting  Second 
Slieplierds'  Flay  of  the  Towneley  or  Wakefield  set  has  between  700 
and  800  lines;  the  first  of  the  York  set  does  not  go  beyond  180. 
The  metre  in  which  they  are  written  is  extremely  various.  We  find 
both  rhyme  and  alliteration  —  the  two  being  sometimes  combined; 
long  and  short  lines;  lyrical  stanzas 'of  the  most  various  and  com- 
plicated kind,  couplets,  octosyllables  alternately  rhymed,  and  other 
variations  —  no  single  metre  predominating  with  anything  like  the 
same  distinctness  as  that  shown  by  the  octosyllabic  couplet  in  the 
French  analogues  and  originals. 

A  very  little  examination  of  these  plays  will  show  the  astonishing 
fallacy  of  the  ])roposition  that  the  modern  drama  did  not  grow  out  of 
them.  Miss  Toulmin  Smith  has  drawn  attention  to  the  interest- 
ing fact  tliat  the  York  or  Northern  cycle  of  mystery  plays  bears 
a  remarkable  resemblance,  in  order   and   choice  of  subjects,  to   the 

1  Tlu-se  arc  now  accessible  in  the  foliowinc;  editions: —  York,  ed.  Miss  L.  T. 
Smith,  Oxford,  1885;  Chester,  ed.  Ueimling.  Tart  I.  E.E.T.S.  1892;  Towneley. 
ed.  England  and  Pollard,  E.E.T.S.  1897 ;  Coventry,  ed.  Halliwell,  Shakespeare 
Society,  1841  (reprint  in  hand  for  E.E.T.S.)  ;  Digby,  twice  edited  by  Dr.  Furni- 
vall  for  the  New  Shakespeare  Society  in  1882,  and  for  the  E.E.T.S.  in  1896. 
A  most  excellent  selection  from  all  these,  with  others  from  the  Harrowing  of  Hell 
to  early  sixteenth-century  pieces  like  Tliersites  and  IJalc's  King  Jolin,  will  be 
found  in  Mr.  A.  W.  Pollard's  English  Miracle  Flays  (Oxford,  1890). 


222     ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO  SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

invaluable    Scripture-history   paraphrase   in   verse   called    the    Cursor 
Mtindi  {j.ndc  p.  71),  also  Northern,  and  probably  not  much  anterior 

to  the  cycle  itself  in  date.     In  fact,  the  development  of 
epUodes^      verse-stories,   sacred    and    profane,    into    prose    tales   on 

the  one  hand  and  dramas  on  the  other,  which  we  find 
exemplified  in  French,  beyond  all  doubt  took  place  after  a  similar 
fashion  in  English.  And  almost  from  the  first  in  both  languages  we 
find  the  strict  throwing  of  the  Scripture  history  into  narrative  *'  by 
personages,"  as  the  instructive  French  phrase  has  it,  incessantly 
diversified  by,  and  gradually  breaking  up  into,  episodes  and  inter- 
ludes of  chiefly  ftircical  matter,  which  is  only  indirectly  connected,  or 
not  connected  at  all,  with  the  main  subject.  Instances  of  indirect 
connection  are  to  be  found  especially  in  the  story  of  the  Ark  and  of 
the  Tower  of  Babel,  both  of  which  were  fixed  on  almost  from  the 
first  as  opportunities  for  comic  by-play  and  digression.  The  great 
instance  of  the  sheer  addition  is  the  famous  Second  Shepherds''  Play 
above  referred  to,  where  the.  rogueries  of  "  Mak,"  the  sheep-stealer, 
are  simply  though  not  unnaturally  superadded  to  the  Gospel  story  of 
'*  While  shepherds  watched  their  flocks  by  night."  So  the  Magdalene 
legend  gives  the  germ  (of  which  authors  eagerly  av^ail  themselves) 
not  merely  of  comic,  but  of  absolutely  romantic  treatment.  In  other 
words,  Stcunda  Pastoriim  of  the  Towneley  and  the  Digby  Magdalene 
simply  give  us  comedy  and  tragedy,  or  at  least  romantic  drama,  ready 
to  hand,  as  additions  in  each  case  to  the  Bible  matter.  When  these 
things,  especially  the  farce  parts,  had  once  been  given  as  zests  and 
relishes,  they  were  sure  to  be  expected  as  a  main  element  of  the 
banquet,  and  by  degrees  to  be  presented  by  themselves. 

So  again,  nothing  can  be  stranger  or  (except  in  so  far  as  matters 
partly  of  opinion  can  never  be  said  to  be  absolutely  true  or  false) 
falser  than  the  statement  that  the  Morality  did  not  arise  out  of  the 

Miracle  Play,  and  did    not   in   turn   hasten   the   modern. 

Drama,  having  by  means  of  the  miracle  play,  and  the 
miracle  play  only,  taken  regular  rank  as  a  department  of  literature, 
and  especially  of  popular  literature,  was  bound  to  undergo  in  the 
order  of  its  appearance  the  various  changes  which  passed  over 
literature  generally.  In  other  words,  and  descending  from  the 
general  to  the  particular,  it  was  certain  to  experience,  and  to  show 
traces  of,  the  overwhelming  spirit  of  allegorising  which  came  upon 
Europe  in  the  late  fourteenth  and  throughout  the  fifteenth  century. 
It  did  show  them  very  strongly  indeed,  and  the  result  was  the 
Morality.  This  naturally  did  not  altogether  supersede  the  Miracle 
Play  proper;  but  it  took  place  beside  it,  the  Biblical  personages  of 
the  older  form  giving  place  to  personified  abstractions  exactly  as  the 
knights  of  romance  proper  gave  way  to  the  Grand-Amours  and  King 


CHAP.  1  PRELIMINARIES  — DRAMA  223 


Harts  of  allegorical  romance.  The  titles  of  the  Moralities  given  in 
Mr.  Pollard's  excellent  selection  of  this  division  of  Drama  —  The 
Castle  of  Perseverance,  Every  Man,  The  Four  Elements,  Magnifi- 
cence—^'^\\  without  going  further,  suggest  and  almost  fully  explain 
the  nature  of  this  class  of  composition,  and  the  list  could  be  largely 
extended  from  French,  and  not  a  little  from  English,  sources. 
Generally  speaking,  the  Morality  either  morals  the  whole  life  of  man 
after  the  fashion  of  Hawes  and  Douglas,  or  selects  a  particular 
vice  or  virtue  for  similar  treatment.  In  form  it  does  not  differ  much 
from  a  miracle  play,  though,  being  as  a  rule  later,  it  shows  the 
metrical  and  other  changes  of  the  time.  Yet  it  maintains  that 
singular  indulgence  in  lyrical  arrangement  which  has  made  some, 
hardly  with  exaggeration,  call  the  Miracle  Play  itself  the  chief  store- 
house of  formal  lyric  in  Middle  English. 

This  variety  of  drama  has  generally  undergone,  and  must  be 
said  to  a  great  extent  to  deserve,  the  reproach  of  being  one  of  the 
very  'dullest  divisions  of  literature.  The  fearful  prolixity  which 
attacked  all  letters  during  the  fifteenth  century  did  not  spare  it,  and 
though  English  Moralities  are  perhaps  shorter  than  French,  the 
Castle  of  Perseverance  above  referred  to  extends  to  the  very  respect- 
able, or  disreputable,  length  of  3500  lines.  By  degrees  either  the 
name  began  to  carry  a  damaging  connotation  with  it,  or  the  thing 
was  felt  to  require  relief.  At  any  rate,  the  Interlude  —  it  is  not  known 
exactly  how  or  when  —  arose  in  its  place.  There  is  no  certainty  as  to 
the  extent  to  which  the  proper  meaning  of  the  term  "  interlude  "  attaches 
to  this  class  of  composition ;  but  it  continued,  in  name  and  substance 
both,  to  be  composed  for  reading,  if  not  for  acting,  in  the  remoter 
parts  of  England  (especially  Wales)  till  within  the  present  century. 
Many  interludes  are  simply  moralities ;  but  the  obviously  correcter 
meaning  of  the  word  corresponds  closely  to  the  French  farce,  and  is 
so  used  of  the  interludes  in  Sir  David  Lyndsay's  great  MoT^Wty -Sot ie 
{vide  ante,  p.  177).  The  farce-interlude  naturally  continued  that 
farce-episode  of  the  Miracles  and  Mysteries  which  has  been  already 
noticed;  and  though  the  regular  French  fashion  of  weaving  mystery, 
morality,  sotie,  and  farce  in  a  tetralogy  does  not  seem  to  have 
obtained  with  us,  the  Interlude  gradually  detached  itself  more  and 
more  from  its  companions.' 

We  shall  see  this  very  distinctly  if  we  take  the  plays  contained 
in  the  two  first  volumes  of  Hazlitt's  Dodsley,'^  most,  if  not  all,  of  which 

1  It  is  important  and  interestinfj  to  notice  tliat  in  the  work  of  the  last  of  the 
"giant  race  before  the  flood,"  Shirley,  we  have  actually  subsisting  examples  of 
the  Interlude  proper,  and  its  resultant  play,  in  the  Contention  of  Honour  and 
Riches   and  ' Honoria    and  Mammon. 

2  15  vols.  London,  1874-76. 


224    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH    bk.  v 

are   of    the    Interlude   kind.       The    Four   Elements    is   of    the   kind 
nearest  to  a  Morality,  and  indeed  almost  confusable  with  that.     The 

characters   are    the   Messeno;er  (showing  traces  of  classi- 
Elements.     ^'^   influence).    Nature     (^Afatura    N'aturata),    Humanity, 

Studious  Desire,  Sensual  Appetite,  The  Taverner,  Ex- 
perience, Ignorance,  "and  if  ye  list  ye  may  bring  in  a  Disguising." 
As  usual  in  this  class  of  play,  the  dramatis  personae  so  clearly  betray 
the  whole  course  of  the  action  that  one  does  not  quite  see  what  need 
there  was  for  it,  and  rather  understands  the  frequent  disinclination  of 
the  early  dramatist  to  provide  these  tell-tale  drajnatis  personae  at  all. 
Humanity  is  coached  by  Nature,  and  more  in  detail  by  Studious  Desire  ; 
becoming  a  little  tired  by  this  improving  company,  he  is  bewitched 
by  Sensual  Appetite,  whom  The  Taverner  seconds  very  zealously. 
Then  come  in  Experience  and  Studious  Desire,  who  talk  Geography. 
Humanity  is  fought  for  by  them  on  the  one  side,  by  Sensual  Appetite 
and  Ignorance  on  the  other,  and  is  left  undecided,  pleading  his  case 
with  ambiguous  arguments  to  the  returning  Nature.  The  whole  of 
this  piece,  like  most  of  the  early  dramas,  is  versified  in  a  sort  of 
doggerel  which  takes  for  basis  sometimes  a  longer  line,  sometimes 
a  shorter,  and  may  be  called,  rather  for  convenience  than  strict 
exactitude,  doggerelised  heroic  or  Alexandrine  and  doggerelised  octo- 
.syllable.  The  whole  class  of  metre  exemplifies  the  same  influences 
which  show  themselves  in  Skelton  and  have  been  already  discussed. 
The  piece  dates  probably  from  the  first  or  second  decade  of  the 
sixteenth  century. 

Calisto  and  Meliboea  is  a  rendering  of  the  famous  Spanish  satiric 
medley  of  the  Celestina.  Every  Man  and  Hick  Scorner  are  again 
moral    interludes,    but   with    a    difference,   the   first   inclining   to   the 

general     lines    of    the     Morality    as    above    given,     the 
Interludes,     second  a  very  early  example  (it  was  printed  by  Wynkyn 

de  Worde)  of  the  invective  so  frequent  in  English 
against  the  deboshed  youth  who  returns  from  foreign  travel  all 
the  worse  for  it.  Allegorical  characters,  however,  are  almost  as 
freely  introduced  in  the  one  as  in  the  other,  and  the  metre  is 
still  doggerel.  On  the  other  hand,  The  Pardoner  and  the  Friar, 
which  is  one  of  the  works  of  John  Heywood,  the  chief  named 
author  of  this  stage  of  drama,  has  nothing  allegorical  about  it,  and  is 
simply  a  dramatised  dialogue  between  the  two  characters,  in  which 
the  stock  satire  on  the  occupations  of  both  is  introduced.  The 
World  and  the  Child  and  God's  Promises  are,  the  first  a  pure 
Morality,  the  second  a  cross  between  Morality  and  Mystery.  But 
on  The  Four  PP,  another  and  the  chief  work  of  Heywood,  we  must 
make  longer  stay. 

John  Heywood  is  said  to  have  been  a   Londoner  and  possessed 


CHAP.  I  PRELIMINARIES  — DRAMA  225 

of  some  property.  He  was  educated  at  Broadgates  Hall,  Oxford, 
which  afterwards  became  Pembroke  College,  and  is  said  to  have 
been    a    friend   of    More.      He   seems    to    have    been   a  ,  ,    „  , 

JonnHeywooQ 

consistent    Roman    Catholic,   and   after   some   trouble   in  and  The  Four 

P  P 

Edward's  reign  became  one  of  the  few  literary  favourites 
of  Mary,  and  exiled  himself  after  her  death,  dying  at  an  uncertain 
period  some  twenty  years  after  Elizabeth's  accession.  His  son  Jas- 
per Heywood  was  also  a  man  of  letters.  John,  besides  being  a 
dramatist  as  far  as  his  time  admitted,  was  a  writer  of  epigrams  and 
proverbs.  T/ie  Four  PP  is  a  really  amusing  farce  in  doggerel  shorts 
and  longs,  wherein  a  Palmer,  a  Pardoner,  a  Pothecary,  and  a  Pedlar 
tell  tales  of  their  own  and  each  other's  trades,  and  compete  whicli 
shall  tell  the  greatest  lie  —  the  prize  being  won,  as  many  know  who 
never  read  the  play,  by  the  Palmer's  assertion  that  he  never  saw  a 
woman  out  of  temper.  The  fun  is  rather  infantine,  and  the  literary 
merit  not  great ;  but  the  advance  on  any  previous  dramatic  matter  in 
going  direct  to  character  for  the  interest,  and  the  incidental  allusion 
to  places  and  manners,  make  it  important. 

Another  piece,  trivial  in  itself  but  important  for  our  purpose,  is 
T/iersites,  which  seems  by  some  allusions  to  the  birth  of  Edward  VI. 
to  be  dated  pretty  exactly  at  1537.  It  is  a  sort  of  Morality  of 
Boasting,  in  Interlude  form  and  with  concrete  characters 
instead  of  abstractions  —  to  wit,  Thersites  himself;  Mulci- 
ber,  a  smith ;  Mater,  a  mother ;  Miles,  a  knight ;  and  Telemachus,  a 
child.  Mulciber,  at  Thersites'  request,  makes  him  arms,  the  dialogue 
including  a  great  deal  of  play  on  the  word  "sallet,"  as,  but  much 
more  briefly,  in  Shakespeare. 1  The  braggart's  mother  begs  him  not 
to  endanger  himself,  but  he  scorns  her  and  brags  ever  more  loudly. 
He  engages  in  combat  with  a  snail,  and  after  much  vaunting  and 
horseplay  claims  the  victory,  because  the  beast  draws  in  its  horns. 
Miles,  who  has  supervened,  suggests  himself  as  a  worthier  antagonist ; 
but  Thersites  runs  away  and  hides  behind  his  mother,  who  succeeds 
in  protecting  him.  Then  Telemachus  brings  a  letter  from  Ulysses, 
and  the  mother  is  forced  by  her  ungrateful  son's  violence  to  pronounce 
elaborate  burlesque  charms  on  the  pair,  till  Miles  returns  and  drives 
Thersites  off. 

All  this  is,  of  course,  excessively  childish,  but  we  must  remember 
that  it  was  the  actual  childhood  of  the  drama,  that  the  mere  gain  of 
live  persons  for  abstractions  was  immense,  and  that,  after  all,  these 
plays  were  still  a  mere  expansion  of  the  burlesque  interludes  and 
passages  in  the  miracles.  The  drama  was  only  in  a  go-cart,  but  it 
was  learning  to  walk. 

The   Interlude   of    Youth   relapses   upon    general    characters,    but 

1  2  Henry  VI.  iv.  10, 
Q 


226    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE   TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

endows  them  with  greater  life  and  individuality  than  is  usual  in  the 
Morality  scheme ;  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  not  very  differ- 
ently named  Lusty  Juventus,  which,  however,  is  both 
Interludes,  longer  and  heavier.  Jack  Juggler  forms  a  curious  pair 
with  Thersites.  There  we  had  classical  names  for  a 
modern  farce ;  here  a  classical  drama,  the  Amphitryon,  is  travestied, 
though  only  to  the  extent  of  the  misfortunes  of  Sosia,  not  those  of 
Amphitryon  himself.  The  title-hero  plays  the  part  of  Mercury  out  of 
mere  mischief,  to  tease  and  annoy  Jenkin  Careaway.  The  piece  is 
one  of  the  liveliest  of  its  class,  and  shows  the  beneficial  effect  which 
the  imitation  and  engrafting  of  the  classical  drama  on  the  native 
stocks  was  producing.  But  it  also  shows  most  unmistakably  that  the 
modern  play  did  not  arise  out  of  imitation  of  the  classical  drama 
alone,  or  even  principally.  The  Nice  Wanton  is  noteworthy  for 
being  neither  allegorical  nor  the  dramatisation  of  any  known  story  — 
for  though  the  names  Dalilah  and  Xantippe  are  used  for  the  light 
heroine  and  the  shrew  her  mother,  no  incident  or  condition  associated 
with  the  names  themselves  is  brought  in.  Xantippe  has  three 
children,  Barnabas,  Ismael,  and  Dalilah,  of  whom  the  first  is  a  good 
child,  and  the  two  others  ne'er-do-wells,  who  are  easily  seduced  by 
the  Iniquity  1  of  the  piece,  and  both  come  to  the  worst  of  ends.  The 
History  oj  Jacob  and  Esau  is  simply  the  Bible  story  dramatised,  no 
longer  according  to  miracle-play  conditions,  but  to  those  of  the 
interlude-morality.  And  The  Disobedient  Child  has  once  more  an 
attempt  at  originality.  It  is  the  dramatised  story  of  an  imprudent 
marriage,  by  which  the  bridegroom  offends  his  father,  and  only 
obtains  a  violent  shrew  for  a  wife.  There  is  not  much  dramatic 
ability  about  it,  but  it  displays  more  attention  to  style  and  literary 
language  than  most,  and  is,  indeed,  said  to  be  the  work  of  a  Cam- 
bridge man,  Thomas  Ingeland. 

Lastly,  the  Marriage  of  Wit  and  Science  returns  to  the  pure 
Morality  scheme  as  regards  plot  and  personages,  but  is  regularly 
divided  into  acts  and  scenes,  and  has  some  attempt  at  orderly 
dramatic  presentation.  The  New  Custom,  the  Trial  of  Treasure, 
and  other  pieces  of  the  same  kind  do  not  add  anything  very  new  to 
the  list  of  varieties  obtainable  from  the  above  analysis. 

But  we  can  see  quite  sufficiently  from  it  how,  just  as  the  Morality 

is  the  Miracle  or   Mystery,  with  Qualities,  Virtues,  Vices,  personified 

States    of    Life,   and    so   forth    substituted    for   Scripture 

jrift."^        characters,  so   the    Interlude   is  the    Morality,  sometimes 

merely   changed   in    name,   more    often   lightened   in   the 

farce  direction  as  regards  handling,  and  adapted  to  a  very  wide  range 

1  Here  a  "Vice"  in  both  senses  —  clown  and  tempter.  The  Vice,  as  is  well 
known  from  the  Shakespearian  use,  was  often  merely  or  mainly  the  former. 


CHAP.  I  PRELIMINARIES  — DRAMA  227 

of  subjects  —  scriptural,  moral,  classical,  social,  and  what  not  —  with  a 
constantly  increasing  tendency  towards  the  adoption  of  the  regular 
classical  division  of  acts  and  scenes,  and  towards  the  independent 
selection  and  working  out  of  dramatic  stories,  invented  or  borrowed, 
in  such  a  fashion  that  the  resultants  must  fall,  not  into  the  arbitrary 
divisions  of  Mystery,  Morality,  or  Interlude,  but  into  the  natural  ones 
of  Tragedy,  Comedy,  and  that  mixed  kind  which  is  perhaps  most 
conveniently,  though  rather  improperly,  named  "Drame"  in  French. 
There  is  still  no  reason  for  displacing  from  their  position  as  early,  if 
not  certainly  the  earliest,  representatives  of  comedy,  tragedy,  historical 
•  drama,  and  farce,  the  famous  pieces  entitled  Ralph  Roister  Doister, 
Gorbodiic,  King  John,  and  Gammer  Gurton''s  Needle.  Romantic 
drama,  an  original  kind  and  a  high  one,  was  naturally  not  so 
early,  and  we  do  not  meet  with  real  examples  of  it  before  Lyly  and 
Peele. 

Of  these,  Bishop  Bale's  King  John^  which  has  been  dated  about 
1547,  is  the  least  important,  and  its  right  to  be  regarded  as  the  first 
of  our  historical  dramas  has  even  been  denied,  on  the  plea  that  it  is 
only  a  didactic  interlude  with  a  historical  subject.  This 
seems  a  little  hard,  for  Bale  is  surely  entitled  to  the  ^""^jlkJ!"^ 
credit  of  seeing  that  the  didactic  interlude  —  that  is  to 
say,  the  play  in  the  only  state  it  had  then  reached  —  was  capable  of 
being  applied  to  historical  subjects,  and  so  becoming  the  historic 
play  in  time.  His  object  here,  as  in  all  his  other  literary  work,  was 
no  doubt  polemical  —  to  advance  the  cause  of  the  Reformation  by 
exhibiting  the  patriotic  objection  to  the  power  of  the  Pope ;  and  his 
play  does  not  exhibit  much  dramatic  grasp.  But  he  had  already 
written  Protestant  mysteries,  and  evidently  had  a  pretty  clear  inkling 
of  the  popularity  and  possibilities  of  the  drama.  He  chiefly  employs 
the  long  slinging  rhymed  doggerel  which,  as  has  been  noted,  is  the 
standard  metre  of  this  entire  class  of  transition  plays,  as  was  natural 
at  a  time  when  blank  verse  had  not,  or  had  barely,  been  introduced, 
and  when  the  unsuitableness  of  elaborate  rhymed  stanzas  was  becom- 
ing more  and  more  evident,  as  the  action  of  the  plays  became  more  and 
more  intricately  dramatic. 

The  three  others  are  of  more  importance.     Ralph  Roister  Doister,''' 

1  Ed.  Pollard,  op.  cif.  supra.  Bale,  a  Suffolk  man,  born  with  Uunwich  in 
1495,  went  to  Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  took  orders,  married,  fled  to  Germany 
in  1547,  became  Bishop  of  Ossory  in  1552,  fled  again  under  Mary,  and  on  return- 
ing received  from  Elizabeth  a  prebend  at  Canterbury.  He  died  in  1563.  Bale 
was  not  a  very  bright  example  of  a  Reformi.T  in  ail  ways,  but  he  wrote  a  good 
deal,  including  a  bibliography  (one  of  the  first)  of  English  literature,  and  no  less 
than  twenty-two  plays,  of  which  five  only,  in  whole  or  part,  survive.  These, 
except  Kiiii^  7''^'".  ^""c  sacred-moral  in  type. 

2  In  Haziitts  Dodsley,  iii.     Also  separately  in  Mr.  Arber's  Reprints. 


228     ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH    bk.  v 

the  oldest  and   most   accomplished  in  its  own  class,  is  the  work   of 
Nicholas   Udall,  successively    headmaster   of  Eton  and   Westminster, 

who  must  have  written  it  about  or-  before  1550. 
^'^^mhter"'  Udall  was  a   Hampshire  man,  and   is  supposed   to   have 

been  about  forty  at  his  death  in  1556.  He  was  educated 
at  Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford,  and  was  a  good  scholar  as  well  as 
a  harsh  master  (he  whipped  poor  Tusser,  the  doggerel-verse  writer 
on  husbandry,  very  much),  a  translator,  and  the  author  of  some  Latin 
plays  on  sacred  subjects.  But  he  would  now  be  merely  a  name  but 
for  Ralph  Roister  Doister,  the  intrinsic  merit  of  which  is  considerable, 
though  it  has  been  denied,  and  which  as  a  point  de  reptre  in  English 
literary  history  is  simply  of  the  first  importance.  It  is  indeed 
almost  by  itself  sufficient  to  correct  erroneous  notions  as  to  the  parts 
respectively  played  by  the  Interlude  and  the  classical  play  in  the 
formation  of  the  modern  drama.  A  man  who  wrote  Ralph  Roister 
Doister  without  knowing  or  having  heard  of  Plautus  would  no  doubt 
be  a  genius  of  extraordinary  originality ;  but  a  man  who, 
knowing  Plautus,  and  not  having  the  traditions  of  the  Miracle, 
Morality,  and  Interlude  stage  before  him,  imitated  Plautus  pre- 
cisely after  the  fashion  of  Ralph  Roister  Doister  would  be 
an  unintelligible  portent.  The  plot,  though  simple,  is  far  more 
complex,  and,  above  all,  far  more  regular,  than  that  of  any 
mere  Interlude,  but  the  play  is  wholly  built  on  Interlude  lines. 
Matthew  Merygreek,  an  ingenious  improvement  upon  the  "  Vice " 
of  the  earlier  plays,  out  of  mischief  induces  Ralph,  a  brain- 
less braggart  and  simpleton  beau,  to  pay  court  to  Christian  Custance, 
the  betrothed  of  an  absent  merchant,  Gawin  Goodluck.  The  discom- 
fiture of  the  gull' who  is  actually  beaten  off"  by  Custance  and  her 
handmaids,  the  by-play  of  those  handmaids  themselves,  the  misunder- 
standing with  Goodluck  created  by  false  reports,  and  the  reconcilia- 
tion, make  a  very  fair  dramatic  scheme,  which  is  carried  out  in 
rhymed  doggerel  of  the  middle  length,  not  so  short  as  that  of  most 
Interludes  nor  so  long  as  that  of  Gammer  Giirtoti's  Needle. 

This  still  more  famous  piece,  ^  which  contains  (though  some  say  it 

only   borrows)    one    of    the    best     convivial    songs    in    the.  English 

language,   was  acted   at    Christ's    College,    Cambridge,  in    1566.     Its 

Gammer     ^"^^^''O'''  ^r  Supposed  author,  John  Still,  was  a  member  of 

Gurton's     that    College,    and,    is    guessed    to    have     been    born    at 

AT"     til  c>     ^  ^  o 

Grantham  about  1534,  being  thus  a  very  much  younger 
man  than  Udall,  and,  in  fact,  a  member  of  another  generation.  In 
1570  Still  became  a  beneficed  priest,  in  two  years  more  Dean  of 
Bocking,    successively  Master   of    St.    John's   and   of  Trinity,    Vice- 

1  Hazlitt's  Dodsley,  ibid. 


CHAP.  I  PRELLMINARIES  — DRAMA  229 

Chancellor  of  his  University,  and  Bishop  of  Wells,  where  he  died  in 
1608.  He  had  lived  to  see  the  English  drama  (of  which  he  had,  ex 
hypothesi,  written  one  of  the  first  complete  examples,  and  the  first  to 
be  acted  at  either  University)  arrive  at  its  highest  perfection  ;  and  it  is 
said  that  when  Vice-Chancellor  he  had  to  protest  against  the  very 
practice,  that  of  acting  English  plays  at  Universities,  which  he  had 
initiated.  The  play,  though  a  broad  farce  in  tone,  is  arranged  as  a 
regular  comedy,  and  the  losing  and  finding  of  the  needle  which  has 
been  employed  to  mend  the  garments  of  Gammer  Gurton's  man, 
Hodge,  is  carried  on  by  Hodge  aiTd  the  Gammer;  Tib,  her  maid; 
Cock,  her  boy ;  Diccon  the  BedTam  (mad  beggiU"),  the  Vice  or 
mischief-maker  of  the  play ;  a  neighbour.  Dame  Chat,  and  her  maid, 
Doll ;  Master  Baily,  another  neighbour,  and  his  servant.  Spendthrift ; 
Doctor  Rat  the  Curate ;  and  Gib  the  Cat.  The  language  is  mainly 
dialect,  and  the  vehicle,  as  observed  above,  is  doggerel  rhyme  of  the 
longest  form — extending  to  fifteen  or  sixteen  syllables.  It  is  written 
with  spirit  and  managed  with  skill,  but  unfortunately  the  language  is 
of  the  coarsest  kind  —  coarse  even  for  this  class  of  play,  the  authors 
of  which  are  rarely  refined.  The  magnificent  drinking-song  of  "Back 
and  side  go  bare,  go  bare,"  introduces  the  second  act,  has  nothing 
particular  to  do  with  the  action,  and  may  be  older  than  the  play. 

It  is  impossible  to  imagine  a  greater  contrast  to  this  jovial  piece 
than  the  tragedy  of  Gorbodiic,^  or,  as  it  is  otherwise  called,  Ferrex 
and  Porrex,  which  was  published,  though  surreptitiously,  a  year 
before  GaDwier  Gurto/i's  Needle  was  performed,  and  had  ^  ,  , 
itself  been  acted  five  years  earlier,  in  1561.  In  the 
second  and  authorised  editions,  which  did  not  appear  till  1570,  the 
name  was  changed  as  above  given.  The  authorship  has  generally 
been  attributed  to  Thomas  Sackville  and  Thomas  Norton,  and  though 
some  champions  of  Sackville  have  tried  to  claim  the  whole  for  him,  this 
is  rather  a  mistaken  partisanship.  The  rich  and  stately  melody  of 
the  Induction  and  the  Complaint  of  Buckingham  (vide  infra)  certainly 
neither  .suggests  nor  requires  to  be  eked  out  by  the  wooden  dulness 
of  this  dreary  play,  which  is  simply  of  interest  and  importance  (and  it 
has  a  great  deal  of  both)  historically  and  not  intrinsically. 

In  structure  Gorboduc  is  a  .regular  play  on  the  strictest  model  of 
Seneca  the  tragedian,  with  a  slight  concession  to  the  popular  taste 
in  the  matter  of  "  dumb  shows."  Gorboduc  himself  is  King,  and 
Videna  Queen,  of  Great  Britain.  They  have  two  sons,  Ferrex  and 
Porrex,  who  quarrel,  and  four  dukes,  Cornwall,  Albany,  Logres,  and 
Cumberland.  Each  prince  has  a  counsellor,  and  has  a  parasite. 
There  is  a  messenger  to  tell  Ferrex's  death,  and  a  messenger  to  tell 

1  See    Works  of  Thomas  Sackville,  ed.  Sackville-West,  London,  1859, 


ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO  SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 


the  Duke  of  Albany's  rebellion.  The  chorus  consists  of  four  ancient 
and  sage  men  of  Britain,  and  there  is  a  secretary  and  a  counsellor  to 
the  King  to  make  up  the  tale  of  pairs  or  quartettes.  No  action 
happens  on  the  stage,  and  the  whole  play,  with  the  exception  of  the 
chomses  (the  stanzas  of  which  bear  some  marks  of  Sackville's  hand), 
is  couched  in  correct  but  ineffably  dreary  decasyllabics,  in  which  the 
sense  usually  lapses  with  the  line,  and  the  whole  stumps  on  with  a 
maddening,  or  rather  stupefying,  monotony. 

The  full  importance  of  Gorboduc,  and  of  the  imitations  of  the 
Senecan  drama  generally,  will  be  better  seen  later,  when  we  come  to  the 
actual  period  of  Elizabethan  drama  proper ;  meanwhile  it  will  be  best 

to  give  some  account  of  the  productions  of  the  "twilight" 
attern"ts.^    period  —  the  first  twenty  or  four  and  twenty  years  of  the 

Queen's  reign,  when  irregular  and  tentative  experiments 
on  the  mixed  lines  of  the  Interlude  in  the  broad  sense  and  the 
classical  play  were  frequent,  and  when  the  taste  for  dramatic  enter- 
tainments was  constantly  growing,  but  when  no  one  had  as  yet  hit  on 
a  really  promising  vein  to  work.  It  is  a  division  of  literature  which 
is  not  very  easy  for  the  historian.  Little  of  it  is  of  any  intrinsic 
value ;  a  great  deal  has  disappeared,  or  has  never  been  printed ;  of 
what  is  actually  open  to  study  most  is  anonymous,  or  practically  so ; 
and  the  real  dates  of  nearly  all  the  plays  are  very  uncertain,  owing 
to  the  interval  which  usually  elapsed  between  performance  and 
publication,  and  the  invariable  habit  of  writing  up  popular  plays  from 
time  to  time  by  the  stock  poets  of  the  different  companies. 

Despite  all  the  pains  which  have  been  spent  on  this  very  popular 
matter,  the  growth  of  the  theatre  proper  —  that  is  to  sa}-,  of  an  estab- 
lishment for  the  production  of  stage  plays  only  —  is  still  obscure.     As 

generally  happens  in  such  matters,  the  most  reasonable 
and  t^he^supply.  P^'^^     ^^     to     acquiesce   in  uncertainty    on    non-material 

points,  and  to  recognise  and  hold  fast  by  the  material 
ones.  For  some  two  centuries  probably,  the  acting  of  plays  in  one 
way  or  another  by  town  guilds,  by  "  servants  "  at  court,  by  "  servants  " 
of  the  great  houses,  which  were  in  effect  minor  courts,  by  monastic 
and  collegiate-clerical  households,  etc.,  had  been  constantly  in- 
creasing; and  from  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century  onwards 
the  appetite  of  the  population  generally  had  been  thoroughly 
awakened.  By  degrees  the  trade  performances,  though  they  did  not 
for  some  time  disappear,  dropped ;  and  the  monastic  troops  (if  we 
may  use  the  w^ord)  were  cut  off  by  the  Dissolution ;  but  the 
"children" — choristers  of  the  great  churches  that  survived  the 
Reformation  —  and  the  "  servants  "  of  great  houses  remained.  And 
yet.  again,  by  degrees  these  "  servants "  formed  themselves  into 
regular  companies,  who,  though  they  might  retain  for  protection  the 


CHAP.  I  PRELIMINARIES  — DRAMA  231 

name  of  some  nobleman,  were  not  really  any  longer  members  of  his 
household,  but  gave  themselves  up  entirely  to  satisfying  the  demand 
for  plays.  This  demand  had  to  be  met  on  the  producing  side  as 
well  as  the  performing,  and  so  came  into  being  the  profession  of  the 
dramatist,  generally  combined  with  other  literary  functions,  but  some- 
times not  so,  and  often  including  the  vocation  of  actor,  though 
sometimes  also  not. 

The  most  important  name  of  the  dramatists  of  the  early  part  of 
Elizabeth's  reign,  ne.xt  to  that  of  Sackville,  is  that  of  George 
Gascoigne,^  some  notice  of  whose  life  and  other  work  will  be  found 
below.  His  dramatic  production  includes  two  pieces,  ^^^.j  |^  ^, 
both  translations  or  adaptations  from  the  Italian,  The  Gascoigne  and 
Supposes  —  a  prose  comedy,  the  first  of  the  kind  in  °' 
English,  from  Ariosto,  and  Jocasta,  a  tragedy  Englished  (with  Francis 
Kinwelmershe)  not  from  any  of  the  classical  plays  of  Laius'  line,  but 
from  Lodovico  Dolce's  Giocasta.  But  many  other  persons  known  and 
unknown  fell  into  the  new  way.  The  Cambyses  of  Thomas  Preston, 
Fellow  of  King's  College,  Cambridge,  and  Master  of  Trinity,  is  said 
to  be  as  old  as  Gorboduc  itself.  It  is  founded  upon  Herodotus,  but  is 
written  partly  in  eights  and  sixes,  partly  in  doggerel,  has  a  Vice  or  purely 
comic  character  named  Ambidexter,  three  comic  ruffians,  Ruff,  Huff, 
and  Snuff,  and  is  altogether  a  curious  compromise  between  an 
interlude  and  a  regular  play.  The  Dai)ion  and  Pythias  of  Richard 
Edwards,  acted  three  years  later,  and  written  by  a  Christ  Church  man, 
who  was  Master  of  the  Children  of  the  Queen's  Chapel,  is  a  more  sober 
production  in  long  doggerel,  with  hardly  more  than  one  comic  episode 
or  interlude,  which  turns  on  the  favourite  legendary  character  of 
Grim  the  Collier  of  Croydon.  The  short  and  curious  Appii(s  and 
Virginia  by  "  R.  B.,"  which  has  been  thought  to  come  between 
these,  is  not  in  doggerel  but  in  regular  fourteeners,  or  eights  and 
sixes,  rhymed  sometimes  in  couplet,  sometimes  in  quatrain ;  and  the 
inevitable  admixture  of  comedy,  or  rather  horseplay,  is  usually  small. 
But  the  best  piece  of  this  kind  and  period  is  the  Tancred  and  Gis- 
miind  oi  Robert  Wilmot,  which  was  acted  before  the  Queen  in  1568, 
and  reiHiblished  in  1592.  The  blank  verse  of  this  (which  was 
originally  rhymed  in  quatrain),  though  much  "stopped,"  is  less  wooden 
than  that  of  Gorboduc  ;  the  fire  of  the  original  story  in  Boccaccio,  which 
is  so  admiral)ly  revived  in  Dryden's  version,  is  by  no  means  absent; 
and  the  chief  fault  is  the  al)sence  of  any  really  dramatic  action,  and  the 
alternation  of  the  dialogue  between  tedious  set  speeches  of  enormous 
length  and  snip-snap  stichomythia.  But  with  these  drawbacks 
Tancred  and  Gismund  is  the  most   poetical   play  before  Peele  and 

1  Gascoigne's      Works,    ed.    Hazlitt,    London,    1868.      Most    of    the     others 
mentioned  are  in  his  DoJsley,  vols.  iv.  sqq. 


232    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE   TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH    bk.  v 

Lyly,  if  not  before  Marlowe.  Of  somewhat  similar  character,  though 
nearl}'  twenty  years  younger,  and  therefore  belated  in  the  dawn  of 
the  drama  proper,  is  the  odd  Misfortunes  of  Arthur,  performed  at 
Greenwich  Palace  in  1587,  and  composed  by  a  society  of  wits, 
among  whom  was  no  less  a  person  than  Francis  Bacon,  though  the  chief 
writing  is  said  to  have  been  due  to  Thomas  Hughes.  The  verse  of 
this  —  and  indeed  the  tone  generally  —  bears  a  strong  relation  to  that 
of  Tniicred  and  Gisinund.  It  has  a  chorus  in  elaborate  stanzas, 
dealing  with  the  death  of  the  King,  as  related  by  Geoffrey  rather 
than  Malory,  but  introduces  Welsh  names  (such  as  Angharad), 
which  must  have  been  due  to  Hughes's  reading  in  his  native 
language,  and  is  altogether,  if  not  exactly  a  successful  play,  a 
respectable  literary  curiosity.  The  stately  gloom  which  seems  so 
natural  to,  or  so  well  affected  by,  this  period  of  the  eve  of  greatness  is, 
out  of  Sackville,  nowhere  better  shown  than  here. 

Yet  we  have  pretty  certain  evidence  that  these  plays,  and  others, 
printed  and  unprinted,  still  extant,  are  but  a  small  part  of  the  actual 
theatrical  production  of  the  first  twenty  or  thirty  years  of  Elizabeth's 

reign.     The  lists  of  names  that  survive  prove  this,  and 
'^^plaj^s.^^  *°  prove  further  that  almost  every  kind  of  literature,  sacred 

and  profane,  classical  and  romantic,  historical  and 
imaginative,  was  being  dramatised.  But  the  historical  bickerings 
about  the  whole  question  of  stage  plays  prove  it  almost  better.  Full 
fifteen  years  before  the  appearance  of  the  first  plays  of  the  University 
Wits  in  the  early  years  of  the  eighth  decade  of  the  century,  these 
bickerings  appear.  The  Church  had  always  suffered  the  theatre  any- 
thing but  gladly ;  and  though  the  Puritans  disagreed  with  the 
Church  in  almost  all  ways,  here  they  went  beyond  her.  The 
Corporation  of  London,  like  its  analogues  in  most  other  towns, 
distinctly  inclined  to  the  ultra-Protestant  party ;  and  it  was  owing  to 
the  obstacles  thrown  by  it  in  the  way  of  stage-playing  that  the  first 
regular  theatres  were,  about  1576,  built  just  beyond  the  City  bounds, 
in  the  privileged  district  of  Blackfriars,  in  Shoreditch,  and  elsewhere. 
And  how  strong  the  feeling  ran  both  for  and  against  plays  at  this 
time,  from  which  we  have  no  plays  worth  speaking  of,  is  shown  by 
the  notable  history  of  Stephen  Gosson,i  whose  School  of  Abuse,  an 
invective,  partly  delivered  against  poetry  in  general,  but  mainly  against 
dramatic  poetry,  survives,  though  most  of  the  literature  which 
occasioned  it  is  lost,  w'ho  was  himself  a  "  University  Wit "  of  a 
generation  before  Peele  and  Lyly,  who  succumbed  to  the  fascination 

1  The  plays  of  Gosson  (1555-1624),  Catiline  s  Conspiracies,  Captain  Mario, 
and  Praise  at  Parting,  must  have  been  written  long  enough  before  1579,  the  date 
of  the  School  of  Abuse,  to  allow  for  his  conversion,  and  probably  just  after  he 
took  his  B.A.  at  Oxford  in  1576. 


CHAP.  I  PRELIMINARIES  — DRAMA  233 

of  the  stage,  wrote  plays,  acted  in  them,  was  converted  from  them 
by  religious  denunciations,  dedicated  his  pamphlet,  it  may  be  pre- 
sumed without  permission,  to  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  and  thereby  drew 
down  on  himself,  though  Sidney  with  characteristic  courtesy  does 
not  name  him  in  it,  the  famous  Apology  for  Poetrie  {vide  infra, 
chap.  iv.). 

Still,  active  as  was  the  demand,  plentiful  in  a  way  as  was  the 
supply,  and  high  as  feeling  ran  in  regard  to  the  theatre  generally,  the 
entire  work  of  this  long  period  —  it  must  have  been  nearly  forty 
years  from  Ralph  Roister  Doister  to  Tambiirlaine  —  is 
surprisingly  rudimentary.  The  drama,  though  divesting  Jhelrway.'" 
itself  gradually  of  some  of  its  extremer  crudities,  made 
remarkably  little  progress  towards  any  really  fresh,  vigorous,  and 
promising  form.  It  is  easy  enough  to  see  now  that  writers,  even  if 
they  had  possessed  more  genius  than  any  of  those  of  this  date  show, 
might  naturally  have  been  hampered  and  bewildered.  The  mediaeval 
forms,  of  which  the  latest  phase  was  the  Interlude,  were  slowly  but 
inevitably  passing  into  discredit,  and  were  indeed  quite  incapable  of 
serving  as  vehicles  to  any  ''  intricate  impeach  "  of  character-drawing, 
of  romantic  interest,  or  of  plot.  The  classical,  or  at  least  Senecan, 
model  which  was  forcing  itself  upon  all  Europe  was  alien  from  the 
English  spirit,  and  unable  to  give  voice  or  shape  to  English  conceptions 
of  drama.  And  what  is  more  than  this,  even  if  thei'e  had  been  a  style 
of  play  to  give,  there  was  as  yet  no  style  of  verse  to  give  it  in.  The 
impossible  doggerels,  longer  and  shorter,  were  indeed,  as  well  as  the 
fourteener,  giving  way  to  blank  decasyllabics ;  but  the  right  mould  of 
these  had  not  been  found.  The  writers,  bewildered  at  the  absence  of 
their  usual  guide-rope,  rhyme,  feared  to  drop  into  absolute  prose  if 
they  did  not  pull  the  verse  up  short  at  the  end  of  the  line  ;  there  was, 
moreover,  owing  perhaps  to  mistaken  deduction  from  Chaucer's 
practice,  perhaps  to  transferred  classical  teaching,  the  superstition 
about  middle  caesuras,  that  we  find  in  Oascoignc.  and  long  afterwards 
in  Dr.  Johnson.  The  Chaucerian  tradition,  though  not  fatal,  was 
unfavourable  to  trisyllabic  feet ;  and  altogether  the  measure  lacked 
the  spring,  the  variety,  the  characteristics  of  roll  and  break  by  turns, 
which  suit  the  dramatic  wave.  There  cannot,  indeed,  be  very  much 
doubt  that  if  a  generation  of  genius  had  come  a  little  earlier  than  it 
did,  perfected  drama  would  have  come  with  it.  But  it  was  fated 
that  the  last,  not  the  first,  years  of  the  Queen's  reign  should  see  that 
generation ;  and  drama  waited  with  the  rest. 


CHAPTER   II 

PRELIMINARIES —  PROSE 

Elyot  —  The   Cover nour  —  Cavendish  —  Leiand  —  Cheke  —  Wilson  —  Ascham  — 
His  Letters  —  Toxophilus  —  The  Schoolmaster  —  Their  characteristics 

The  middle  stage  between  that  older  literature  which  continues  till 
a  period  well,  but  not  very  far,  within  the  sixteenth  century  and 
Elizabethan  literature  proper  is  at  least  as  clearly  marked  in  prose 
as  in  verse  or  drama,  and  it  contains  matter  of  perhaps  greater 
intrinsic  interest  than  is  the  case  with  drama  at  least.  We  have 
seen  how  with  Fisher  English  prose  reached,  and  perhaps  for 
the  first  time,  the  state  of  deliberate  and  conscious  practice  of  the 
devices  of  style,  and  how  yet  farther  advance,  conditioned  in  the 
most  momentous  manner  by  the  nature  of  their  occupation,  appears 
in  the  work  of  the  early  Tudor  translators  of  the  Bible. 

Contemporary  with  these  latter  were  some  other  writers  who  have 
obtained  a  place,  from  which  it  is  not  necessary  to  oust  them,  in  the 
history  of  English  literature  —  Sir  Thomas  Elyot,  Leiand,  Cavendish, 
perhaps  a  few  more.  The  attraction  of  the  first  is 
indeed  rather  one  of  matter  than  one  of  manner,  and  it 
might  be  difficult  to  give  any  reason  except  the  fact  that  it  has  been 
twice  reprinted  in  the  present  century  i  for  the  position  held  by  The 
Boke  named  the  Governour,  still  more  difficult  to  account  for  the 
reprinting  itself.  Sir  Thomas  Elyot,  who  was  born  before  1490, 
was  the  son  of  a  judge,  and  though  not  a  member  of  the  famous 
Cornish  family  of  his  name,  appears  to  have  been  a  West  Countryman, 
his  forebears  having  been  connected  with  the  district  round  Yeovil. 
He  must  have  been  well  educated,  but  does  not  seem  to  have  gone 
to  either  University,  and  though  a  student  of  medicine,  is  said  not  to 
have  been  a  practitioner  thereof.  He  came  early  into  the  possession 
of  a  good  estate  near  Woodstock,  and  settled  there ;  but  was  made 
by  Wolsey  in  1523  Clerk  of  the  Council — an  office  which  seems  to 

1  In  1854  by  Mr.  A.  T.  Eliot,    and  in    1883  by   Mr.    H.   H.  S.  Croft  (2  vols. 
London).    The  latter  is  the  edition  used. 

234 


CHAP,  n  PRELIMINARIES  —  PROSE  235 

have  metaphysical  connection  with  literature.  He  published  the 
Governour  in  1531,  and  seems  to  have  been  recommended  by  it  to 
diplomatic  employments,  in  which  he  spent  the  rest  of  his  life.  He 
died  in  1546,  having  four  years  previously  been  elected  M.P.  for 
Cambridge. 

He  wrote  a  medical  work  called  the  Castle  of  Health,  a  Latin 
Dictionary,  some  dialogues,  and  other  things ;  but  his  fame,  such  as  it 
is,  rests  on  the  Governour.  This  is  one,  and  in  England  one  of  the 
first,  of  those  curious  treatises,  partly  of  politics,  partly  The  Govern- 
of  education,  which  the  study  of  the  classics,  and  more  "'"'• 
particularly  of  Plato,  multiplied  at  the  Renaissance  in  all  countries, 
and  not  least  in  our  own.  Ascham,  Lyly,  Mulcaster,  and  many 
others  take  up  from  their  different  points  of  view,  more  and  less 
scholastic,  the  theme  which  Elyot  set  them  the  example  of  handling. 
Incidentally  the  book  is  remarkable,  because  it  contains  the  earliest 
version  yet  traced  of  the  famous,  but  too  probably  apocryphal,  story 
of  Chief-Justice  Gascoigne  and  Henry  V.  when  Prince  of  Wales 
—  a  pious  invention  very  likely  to  flatter  the  powers  that  were. 
In  the  history  of  prose  style  Elyot  is  commendable  rather  than 
distinguished ;  free  from  obvious  and  glaring  defects  rather  than 
possessed  of  distinct  merits.  He  is  rather  too  much  given  to  long 
sentences ;  he  has  little  or  nothing  of  Fisher's  rhetorical  devices,  and 
while  the  romantic  grace  of  his  net  much  older  contemporary  Berners 
is  far  from  him,  so  also  is  the  deliberate  classical  plainness  of  his  not 
very  much  younger  contemporary  Ascham.  He  is  principally  valuable 
as  an  example  of  the  kind  of  prose  which  a  cultivated  man  of  ordinary 
gifts  would  be  likely  to  write  before  the  definite  attempts  of  Ascham 
and  his  school. 

George  Cavendish,  of  the  Suffolk  Cavendishes,  gentleman-usher  to 
Wolsey,  and  the  Cardinal's  biographer,  does  the  same  service  in 
showing  the  style  of  a  contemporary  less  cultivated,  bift  perhaps  of 
greater  natural  powers,  than  Elyot,  and  not  possessed  of 
the  special  literary  gift  of  Berners.  We  might  almost  call 
Cavendish  a  prose  Berners  —  and  his  account  of  the  greatness,  decline, 
and  fall  of  the  Cardinal  lias  something  of  Berners's  charm. 

On  yet  another  hand,  John  Leland  continues  for  us  the  useful, 
and  at  this  time  really  important,  function  of  the  "  literary  hodmen," 
as  they  have  been  contemptuously  and  ungratefully  termed.  He 
was  a  Londoner,  born  about  i  ;oo :  and  after  being  ,  ,  , 
thoroughly  educated  at  St.  Paul's  School  and  at  both 
Universities  (Christ's  College  in  the  one.  All  Souls'  in  the  other),  he 
travelled  for  a  long  time  on  the  Continent  and  assimilated  all  the 
learning  of  the  day.  This  was  the  time,  1533,  wlien  Henry  VIII. 's 
Renaissance  fancy  for  learning  had  not  been  checked  or  stunted  by 


236    ELIZABEIIIAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     13 k.  v 

his  own  passions  and  the  course  of  events  ;  and  Leland,  most 
fortunately,  was  furnished  with  a  roving  commission  to  examine  the 
antiquities  and  libraries  of  England.  His  investigations  anticipated 
the  disorganisation  in  almost  all  cases,  the  ruin  and  destruction  in 
some,  that  followed  the  Reformation,  and  his  collections  and  records, 
touching  not  merely  antiquities  proper  and  topography,  but  literary 
history,  are  of  inestimable  value  as  regards  matter.  As  regards 
form,  Leland  ranks  with  the  two  writers  just  mentioned,  but  below 
even  Elyot  so  far  as  any  particular  charm  of  style  is  concerned. 
His  phrase  is  sometimes  quaint  in  itself,  and  always  has  the  pleasant 
archaism  of  his  time ;  but  it  possesses  no  individual  savour,  and  is 
once  more  only  the  literary  vehicle  of  a  man  who  sets  down  what 
he  wishes  to  set  down  clearly  and  without  any  decided  solecisms,  so 
far  as  the  standard  of  correctness  of  his  own  time  is  fixed,  but  who 
neither  has  been  taught  any  kind  of  "rhetoric"  in  the  vernacular  nor 
cares  to  elaborate  one  for  himself. 

Very  different,  and  much  greater,  is  the  interest  of  a  school  or 
group  of  writers  somewhat  junior  to  these,  who  arose  as  practitioners 
of  prose  in  the  latest  days  of  Henry  VHL,  but  who  attained  their 
chief  eminence  in  the  reigns  of  his  son  and  daughters.  They  were 
the  direct  and  complete,  as  the  others  had  been  the  partial  and 
indirect,  result  of  the  new  study  of  the  classics,  and  especially  of 
Greek,  and  as  it  happened,  though  that  study  had  begun  earlier 
at  Oxford,  they  were  all  members  of  the  University  of  Cambridge. 
These  were  John,  afterwards  Sir  John,  Cheke,  Thomas,  afterwards 
Sir  Thomas,  Wilson,  and  Roger  Ascham.  The  last  named  is,  for 
actual  accomplishment  in  English,  the  most  important  of  the  three ; 
but  all  are  of  importance. 

Cheke  was  a  Cambridge  man  not  merely  by  education  but  by 
birth,  and  was  slightly  the  oldest  of  the  three,  as  Wilson  was  much 
the  youngest^.  He  was  born  in  15 14,  and  after  a  Grammar  School 
education  became  a  member,  and  in  1539  a  Fellow,  of 
St.  John''s  College,  while  three  years  later  he  "taught 
Cambridge  Greek"  as  Regius  Professor,  and  two  years  later 
again,  "  King,"  or  rather  Prince,  "  Edward "  as  tutor.  He  was 
lavishly  rewarded  by  his  pupil  or  his  pupil's  ministers,  and  received 
abbey-lands,  the  Provostship  of  King's,  knighthood,  and  a  privy 
councillorship.  He  was  implicated  in  the  design  to  place  Lady 
Jane  Grey  on  the  throne,  and  though  after  imprisonment  he  escaped 
abroad,  he  allowed  himself  to  be  caught,  and  had  to  disgorge  at 
least  some  of  his  gains,  and  to  recant  his  Protestantism  under  Mary. 
Nor  did  he  survive  to  see  the  wheel  turn  again  under  Elizabeth. 
Like  so  many  of  his  generation,  he  appears  to  have  been  a  time- 
server,  greedy,  a   sycophant,  and  of  no  personal  sense  of  honour  or 


CHAP.  II  PRELIMINARIES  —  PROSE  237 

consistency;  but  a  sincere  lover  of  learning  and  an  eager  promoter 
of  the  above  mixed  scheme  of  mental  education  and  political  training. 
In  philology  and  in  English  composition  he  had  some  crotchets  and 
a  good  deal  of  innovating  vivacity.  He  altered  the  pronunciation  of 
Greek ;  he  tried  to  alter  the  spelling  of  English ;  and  (as  we  have 
seen  from  Pecock's  practice)  not  exactly  for  the  first  time  he 
endeavoured  to  introduce  a  "  Saxon "  diction  at  the  same  time  that 
he  shared,  and  perhaps  caused,  Ascham's  predilection  for  the 
balanced  Latinised  sentence,  adjusted  rather  to  Greek  than  to 
Latin  in  its  simple  arrangement  and  order  of  words.  Cheke's 
position  in  this  history  is  rather  one  of  influence  than  of  per- 
formance, and  his  actual  composition  was  mainly,  though  not 
wholly,  in  Latin. 

Thomas  Wilson,  a  Lincolnshire  man,  passed  through  Eton  to 
King's  College,  Cambridge,  of  which  he  became  a  Fellow  in  1549* 
and  was  tutor  to  the  sons  of  the  Duke  of  Suffolk.  He  fled  the 
country  at  Edward's  death,  and  remained  abroad   during 

„         ,  ,  Wilson. 

the  whole  of  Mary's  reign,  though  he  suff^ered  actual 
torture  and  danger  of  his  life  from  the  Inquisition  at  Rome. 
Elizabeth  showed  him  great  favour,  making  him  Master  of  St. 
Katharine's  Hospital  (which  he  is  said  to  have  robbed  or  tried  to 
rob),  Secretary  of  State,  envoy  to  divers  countries,  and  even  Dean  of 
Durham,  though  he  had  never  taken  orders.  He  became  a  knight 
and  a  Member  of  Parliament,  and  died  in  1581,  being  then  about 
fifty-five.  His  works  are  various,  and  all  remarkable  as  examples  of 
practice,  but  the  chief  of  them,  the  Art  of  Rhetoric,^  which  appeared 
in  1553.  when  he  was  about  seven  and  twenty,  combines  practice 
with  theory.  It  is,  as  a  matter  of  course,  in  great  part  modelled 
upon  Quintilian,  and  the  rhetoricians  of  the  School  from  Martianus 
Capella  onwards,  but  part  is  original.  And  in  this  part  Wilson 
expresses  with  great  vigour  sentiments  similar  to  those  of  Cheke  and 
Ascham,  as  to  the  importance  of  writing  English  matters  in  English, 
and  for  Englishmen,  of  avoiding  strange  "ink-horn"  terms,  and 
aftected  Chaucerisms  (this  is  a  valuable  date-point),  as  to  the  ''foolish 
fantastical  who  Latin  their  tongues."  And  he  has  also  the  strong 
moral  tone  which,  though  his  own  practice  and  Cheke's  might  be  a 
little  wanting  in  some  respects,  distinguishes  the  whole  school. 

Neither  Cheke,  however,  nor  even  Wilson  can  be  called  a  great 
or  even  a  distinguished  writer;  Roger  Ascham'^  is  certainly  the 
latter,  if  not  quite  the  former.     He  was  a  Yorkshire  man,  born   in 

1  This  book  ought  to  bo  re-edited. 

2  Works  including  Ixtters,  sue  Gilos,  4  vols,  ("nominally  3),  London,  1865. 
Tflxophiliis  and  the  Schoolmaster  are  each  separately  accessible  in  Mr.  Arbcr's 
Krpriiils. 


238    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

1 5 15,  of  a  fair  stock.  He  entered  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge, 
in  1530,  and  learnt  Greek  from  his  scarce  elder  Cheke,  becoming 
Fellow  of  his  college  early,  and  before  very  long  Univer- 
sity  Reader  in  Greek  and  Public  Orator.  He  dedicated 
ToxopJiilus,  in  1545,  to  Henry  VIIL,  and  under  Edward  became 
tutor  to  the  Princess  Elizabeth,  and  Secretary  of  an  Embassy  to 
Germany.  Nobody  quite  knows  how,  without  any  overt  recantation, 
he  not  only  remained  unmolested  under  Mary,  but  was  actually  made 
her  secretary ;  while  he  was  also  favoured  by  his  old  pupil  after  her 
accession.  His  second  chief  work,  the  Schoolmaster,  was  written  late, 
and  not  published  till  after  his  death  in  1568.  Even  this  brief  story 
shows  that  he  must  either  have  had  extraordinary  luck,  or  have  been 
not  entirely  destitute  of  the  "  willow "  character  which  infected 
almost  all  public  men  in  Tudor  days.  There  are  also  indications 
in  his  very  pleasant  Letters  that  he  was  by  no  means  free  from  the 
rather  shameless  tendency  to  beg  which  was  common  to  all  but  a 
very  few  scholars  throughout  the  Renaissance.  But  these  epidemic, 
or  rather  endemic,  vices  of  the  time  excepted,  Ascham  appears 
to  have  been  a  very  agreeable  specimen  of  a  good  type  of  English- 
man :  humorous,  except  for  a  touch  of  Puritan  prudery  in  regard  to 
art  and  literature ;  learned,  and  much  more  ready  to  teach  others  than 
to  pride  himself  upon  his  learning ;  affectionate  to  his  friends  and 
family;  zealous  for  his  country  and  his  country's  language.  The 
famous  phrase  in  the  Toxophihis  about  "writing  this  English  matter 
in  the  English  speech  for  Englishmen  "  is  no  mere  figure  of  rhetoric 
or  bit  of  jingle,  but  a  sentence  to  which  the  author  adheres  as  far  as 
possible  throughout  his  work,  all  the  really  important  constituents 
of  which,  the  Toxophilus,  the  Schoolmaster^  and  the  Letters^  have 
already  been  named. 

Each    of   the   three   has    its    separate    interest    in    the   history   of 
English  prose,  and  the    three   together  give  their  author  a  very  im- 
portant place  in  that  history.     The  Letters,  as  is  natural,  rank  lowest, 
„.    ,  yet   very   far   from    low.       In    the    first    place,   when   we 

His  Letters.    ■'  ■'       ,  .  ,         ,  t^  ,,        .        i       i  i 

compare  them  with  the  Paston  collection/  the  only 
really  considerable  body  of  English  epistolary  correspondence  earlier, 
we  find —  not  merely  or  mainly  as  a  consequence  of  the  fact  that  we 
are  dealing  with  a  professed  scholar  instead  of  with  a  family  group 
of  men  and  women  of  the  upper  rank  indeed,  and  of  fair  education, 

1  This  famous  and  interesting  series,  first  published  by  Sir  John  Fenn  a 
century  ago,  and  definitively  edited  in  three  vols,  by  Mr.  Gairdner,  has  in 
literature  rather  less  importance  than  it  possesses  in  political  and  social  history. 
In  fact,  it  may  be  said  to  lack  the  one  kind  exactly  because  it  possesses  the  other, 
consisting  of  sirnple  straightforward  communications  of  fact  and  business  from 
entirely  unliterary  persons. 


CHAP.  II  PRELIMINARIES  — PROSE 


239 


but  of  no  special  bent  towards  literature  —  a  very  distinct  advance  in 
command  over  the  language  for  miscellaneous  purposes.  But  we 
also  find  something  more.  At  first  the  letters,  even  the  familiar 
letters,  even  those  to  ladies  and  close  personal  friends,  are  written  in 
Latin  —  the  language  which,  as  Ascham  elsewhere  candidly  confesses, 
and  as  we  can  well  understand  from  the  general  practice  of  the 
Renaissance,  came  much  easier  to  him  to  write  than  English.  But 
by  degrees  this  changes.  The  same  deliberate  purpose  which  led 
him  to  write  the  Tox-ophilus  in  the  mother  tongue,  assisted  beyond 
all  doubt  by  the  same  general  unconscious  "atmospheric"  influence 
which  was  not  peculiar  to  him,  induces  him  by  degrees  to  put  his 
work,  even  of  the  most  informal  kind,  in  English,  to  write  news  of  his 
German  tour  to  his  Cambridge  friends  in  that  language.  He  shows, 
in  short,  a  sense  of  the  fact  —  so  slowly  borne  in  upon  English  men  of 
letters,  even  so  much  later  and  greater  as  Bacon  and  Hobbes  —  that 
English  was  not  a  mere  makeshift,  a  mere  engine  of  condescendence 
to  children  and  grooms,  but  a  vehicle  of  literature,  not,  indeed,  perhaps 
quite  so  perfect  (no  man  circa  1550  could  be  expected  to  admit  that) 
as  Latin  or  Greek,  but  capable  of  being  immensely  improved,  and 
deserving  of  the  pains  necessary  to  improve  it.  But  Ascham's 
chosen  means  of  improvement,  his  aims,  his  ideal  of  English  style, 
naturally  appear  best  in  his  more  formal  and  ambitious  treatises.  It 
is  very  lucky  that  there  is  so  long  an  interval  between  the  composition 
of  these,  and  that  their  subjects  are  so  different.  Toxophilus  is  the 
work  of  a  man  of  thirty,  devoted  to  what  was  at  once 
his  own  favourite  recreation,  and  still  one  of  the  main-  '^'"''^'"^"^■ 
stays  of  the  national  greatness.  Of  course  there  is  a  good  deal  in  it 
which  is  very  remotely  connected  with  archery.  The  author  would 
not  have  been  a  humanist,  or  even  a  human  being,  if  he  had  not  aired 
a  good  deal  of  his  acquaintance  with  the  new-found  and  certainly 
not  too  much  prized  Plato,  if  he  had  not  allowed  large  scope  to  the 
passion  for  education  which  characterised  all  his  literary  generation, 
and  himself  very  particulariy.  There  are  many  more  tolerable  gaps 
in  English  literature  than  the  loss  of  that  Book  of  the  Cockpit,  with 
which,  much  later  in  life,  he  intended  to  accompany  it.  But  even 
by  itself  Toxophilus  gives  us  a  happy  picture  of  that  blending  of 
instruction  with  pastime,  which,  by  one  of  the  greatest  of  the  many 
pieces  of  good  luck  which  have  distinguished  English  history, 
occupied  the  minds  and  ideas  of  the  men  who  superintended  the 
transition  from  monastic  to  lay  studies  in  England,  and  carried  out 
the  views  of  Walter  of  Merton,  and  the  two  WilHams  of  Wykeham 
and  Wainfleet,  in  succeeding  centuries,  with  a  fortunate  development. 
The  Schoolmaster  is  naturally  more  serious,  yet  not  too  serious. 
Something  of  the  old  largeness  appears  in  the  first  book,  dealing  as 


240    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE   TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

it  does  generally  with  the  bringing  up  of  youth ;  nor  does  this  dis- 
appear by  any  means  wholly  in  the  second,  with  its  preciser  subject. 

On. the  ready  way  to  the  Latin  tongue  Ascham   may  go 
^^aster^^'    wrong ;   he  does  so  go  often,  as  in   his   polemic   against 

romance,  his  fatal  patronage  of  the  pestilent  heresy 
of  imitating  Greek  and  Latin  prosody,  not  merely  in  feet  but  in 
metres,  and  other  things.  But  in  general  he  is  an  early  and  an 
eloquent  defender  and  apostle  of  the  true  English  education  in  classics, 
and  in  the  vernacular  for  book-learning,  in  body-culture  and  healthy 
pastime,  as  well  as  in  book-learning  itself. 

And  one  at  least  of  the  errors  just  noticed  was  only  a  corruption 
of  the  best  and  central  principle  of  his  work  in  prose  —  the  borrowing 
of  all  possible  assistance  from  the  classical  tongues  in  the  formation 

of  a  good  English  style.  In  doing  this  he  stops  rigidly 
"^^eristks.^*^    short   of    classicising   the   vocabulary.      Cheke    does    not 

dislike  a  mere  Latinism,  or  Wilson  an  "  ink-horn "  term, 
more  than  Ascham  does.  Like  both,  and  even  more  than  both,  he 
hates  the  modern  foreign  languages,  and  seems  to  be  actuated  by  a 
positive  and  almost  personal  jealousy  —  not  entirely  groundless,  when 
we  remember  how  great  the  influence  of  French  had  been,  how 
great  that  of  Spanish  and  Italian  was,  and  was  to  be.  both  in  verse 
and  prose  —  of  their  colouring  and  guiding.  He  retains,  and  even  a 
little  abuses,  the  specially  English  device  of  alliteration,  and  has  a 
fancy  which  sometimes  almost  approaches  the  puerile,  for  arranging 
his  sentences  in  strings  or  piles  of  half-parallel,  half-antithetic  clauses, 
after  a  fashion  which  we  also  find  far  back  in  the  Middle  English 
period.  Indeed,  some  have  even  argued  for  a  kind  of  "Euphuism 
before  Eup/mes^^  in  Ascham  himself;  and  some  seeds  of  it  are  no 
doubt,  and  necessarily,  to  be  found  in  him.  But,  on  the  whole,  his 
ideal  of  an  English  clause,  an  English  sentence,  an  English  paragraph, 
is  struck  out  on  classical  models  —  clear,  not  too  long,  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  not  broken  up  into  snip-snap,  with  no  special  rhetorical 
figure  very  apparent,  and  with  the  old  poetical  cadence  and  colouring 
carefully  avoided,  but  sometimes  fairly  balanced,  arranged  not  seldom 
with  a  weighty,  yet  lucid,  sententiousness,  and  not  very  seldom  rising, 
with  some  cunning,  to  a  climax  which  permits  the  rounding  off  of 
the  paragraph  with  real  rhetorical  effect.  Ascham's  is,  in  short,  the 
first  accomplished  plain  style  in  English  —  the  first,  that  is  to  say, 
that,  while  deliberately  aiming  at  a  certain  amount  of  rhetorical 
effect,  rigidly  eschews  the  production  of  that  effect  by  any  such 
means  as  elaborate,  highly  coloured,  or  quaint  vocabulary,  by  unusual 
and  invented  tricks  of  arrangement,  or  by  anything  that  can  come 
under  the  phrases  (often  loosely  used,  but  intelligible)  of  ornate, 
poetical,  or  impassioned  prose. 


CHAP.  II  PRELIMINARIES  — PROSE  241 

The  classical  turn  communicated  to  English  prose  by  this  knot 
of  scholars  more  particularly,  and  encouraged  by  others  from  both 
Universities,  was  yet  further  promoted  by  the  continuing  habit  of 
translating  from  the  classics,  and  from  modern  writers  in  Latin. 
The  authors  of  these  translations,  except  in  a  few  cases,  mostly  later 
than  the  present  time,  such  as  those  of  North  and  Florio  (which  had 
great  direct  influence  on  English  prose,  and  were  themselves  notable 
examples  of  it)  hardly  fall  to  be  noticed  here.  But  the  influence  of 
their  practice  is  unmistakable.  The  great  innovation  of  Euphuism 
(vide  htfraj  chap,  vi.)  was  rather  an  unconscious  than  a  deliberate 
revolt  against  it ;  the  carrying  out  of  the  system  produced  in  Hooker, 
perhaps  the  most  accomplished  writer  of  strict  prose  (as  distinguislied 
from  the  half-poetical  vehicle  of  Malory  and  Berners)  that  appeared 
in  English  up  to  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century ;  and  even  the 
great  authors  of  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  were  deeply  influ- 
enced by  the  tradition  of  classicising.^ 

1  To  this  period  belong  the  later  Tudor  chroniclers,  the  chief  of  whom  is 
Holinshed  (1525-1578),  a  Cheshire  man,  it  is  said,  by  birth,  and  a  Cambridge  man 
by  education,  certainly  one  of  those  printer's  hacks,  or  gentlemen  of  the  press,  to 
whom  literature  has  owed  something.  Holinshed's  close  connection  with  the 
matter  of  Shakespeare,  the  divulgation  of  large  passages  of  him  by  Shakespeare's 
commentators,  and  perhaps  the  fact  that  his  Christian  name  was  Raphael,  have 
conciliated  to  him  an  almost  disproportionate  amount  of  esteem.  But  though  he 
has  no  extraordinarily  literary  qualities,  the  "  race  "  and  the  archaic  fashions  of  his 
manner  are  irresistibly  pleasant  to  us. 


CHAPTER   III 

PRELIMINARIES  —  VERSE 

The  state  of  poetry  c.  1530 — Good  effect  of  Italian  —  Wyatt's  life  —  Surrey's  — 
Wyatt's  forms  and  subjects  —  Those  of  Surrey  —  The  main  characteristics  of 
the  pair  —  Wyatt's  rhyme  and  rhythm — Surrey's  metrical  advance —  Tottel's 
Miscellany —  Other  miscellanies —  Verse  translations  —  Churchyard  —  Whet- 
stone —  Tusser  —  Turberville  —  Googe  —  Gascoigne  —  His  Instructions  —  His 
poems  —  The  Mirror  for  Magistrates  —  Sackville's  part  in  it 

The  same  character  of  transition  and  introduction  which  appears 
in  the  prose  and  the  drama  of  the  latest  years  of  Henry  VHI.,  of 
the   short    reigns   of    his   son   and   elder   daughter,   and   of   at   least 

the  first  half  of  the  long  one  of  his  younger, 
pSr/'c!'t53o.  appears   likewise   in    the    department    of    poetry   proper. 

Nay,  it  is  perhaps  even  more  remarkable  there,  for 
reasons  easily  obvious  to  any  one  who  has  read  the  preceding  Books 
and  chapters  with  care.  Up  to  1580,  at  or  about  which  year  the 
History  of  Elizabethan  Literature,  in  the  great  sense,  begins,  drama 
was,  and  had  been  from  its  very  origin,  merely  though  steadily  in 
the  making ;  it  had  never  reached  any  form  that  could  be  called 
artistically  complete.  Prose,  with  some  examples  far  more  absolutely 
excellent  than  any  that  drama  could  show,  and  with  a  much  quicker 
and  steadier  progress,  was  in  the  making  too,  and  had  never 
reached  perfection,  save  in  partial  and  peculiar  instances  and  forms. 
But  poetry  had,  as  we  have  seen,  gone  through  curious  successions 
of  9naxiiiia  and  vtinima.  After  it  had  assimilated  the  great  blend  of 
language  and  prosody  fashioned  during  the  earlier  part  of  the  Middle 
English  period,  it  produced  in  Chaucer  a  poet  of  the  first  class,  who 
stood  in  a  sense,  though  not  in  all  senses,  practically  alone.  It  made 
a  curious  relapse  from  metrical  upon  alliterative  prosody,  and  had 
produced  good  work  in  that.  It  had  seen  the  singular  outburst  of 
Scottish  Chaucerian  poetry.  It  had  provided  a  sort  of  underground 
growth  of  ballad.  But  in  England  itself  it  had,  after  Chaucer,  fallen 
off,  as  far  as  the  production  of  literary  poetry  of  great  merit  went,  in 
a  manner  which  has  still  rather  to  be  accepted   than  accounted  for; 

242 


CHAP,  lu  PRELIMINARIES  — VERSE  243 

and  the  inability  of  the  poets  to  sing  had  driven  them  to  endless  and 
strange  varieties  of  squeak  and  drone. 

However  Ascham  and  his  fellows  might  dislike  and  dread  and 
denounce  Italian  influence,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  way  of  safety 
was  first  opened  to  English  poetry  in  these  its  straits  by  Italy.  The 
sonnet  —  not  alone,  but  chiefly  —  was  the  means  of  inducing 
English  poets  to  gird  up  their  loins,  to  settle  the  poetical  °itatian!'° 
accentuation  of  their  language,  to  discard  doggerel  for 
regular  metre,  to  arrange  a  poetic  diction  which  should  be  neither 
stiff  with  the  "  aureate "  verbiage  of  the  rhetoricians,  nor  clownish 
with  the  vernacular  of  the  doggerellists.  Perhaps  mere  accident, 
perhaps  the  political  and  ecclesiastical  stress  of  the  years  between  the 
Reformation  and  the  accession  of  Elizabeth,  may  account  for  the 
interval  which  elapsed  between  the  composition  and  the  publication 
of  the  chief  documents  exhibiting  this  new  influence.  But  there  is  no 
explanation,  except  a  purely  fatalist  one,  for  the  fact  that  fully  twenty 
years  more  elapsed  between  the  actual  publication  and  the  following  of 
the  example  to  any  good  effect. 

If  there  has  ever  been  any  mistake  about  the  order  of  the  two 
poets  who  heralded  modern  EngHsh  poetry,  it  must  have  been  a  very 
strange  one,  the  dates  and  facts  about  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  and  Henry 
Howard,   by  courtesv,    Earl  of    Surrey,    being  altogether  ,    ., 

.'  .  .  .  Wyatt  s  life. 

too  clear  and  (despite  their  occasional  uncertainty)  too 
relatively  certain  to  excuse  the  slightest  confusion.  Both  were  short- 
lived ;  and  so  it  happened,  not  merely  that  Wyatt  was  considerably 
the  elder,  hut  that  he  died  when  Surrey  was  still  quite  a  young  man. 
The  father  of  Wyatt,  Sir  Henry,  was  a  person  of  distinction  in  Kent 
(though  it  is  not  clear  how  he  could  have  been,  as  some  authors  say, 
"a  baronet"),  and  the  poet  was  born  at  Allington  Castle  in  that 
county,  in  the  year  1503. 

He  was  sent  to  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  at  the  prepos- 
terously early  age  which  was  one  of  the  crotchets  of  the  Renais- 
sance, entering  at  twelve,  taking  his  Bachelor's  degree  at  fifteen,  and 
his  Master's  at  seventeen.  He  seems  to  have  married  very  early 
too,  was  a  gentleman  of  the  King's  bedchamber,  a  friend  of  Anne 
Boleyn,  and  knighted  in  1537.  He  had  his  share  of  the  imprison- 
ments which  were  the  lot  of  Henry's  courtiers,  and  perhaps,  if  he  had 
lived,  might  have  shared  Surrey's  fate,  liut  he  did  a  good  deal  of 
diplomatic  work  as  anil)assador  in  Spain  and  in  the  Netherlands,  and 
died,  being  undoubtedly  removed  from  the  evil  to  come,  in  1542,  on 
his  way  to  Falmouth,  where  he  had  a  mission  to  meet  the  Spanish 
Ambassador  and  convoy  him  to  London. 

Surrey's  birth-date  is  not  known,  but  it  is  guessed  at  15 17  or 
1518,  probably   in  the  spring  of  the  latter  year.     He   was  grandson 


244    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

of   the    victor    of    Flodden,   and    his    mother    was    Lady   EHzabeth 
Stafford,  daughter  of  that    Duke  of  Buckingham   who   fell   a   victim 

to  Wolsey's  jealousy.  He  was  thus  of  almost  the  noblest 
^  ^'  blood  in  England,  and  at  fourteen  he  was  nominally 
wedded  to  Lady  Frances  de  Vere,  of  a  strain  nobler  still.  They 
came  together  in  1535,  Surrey  meanwhile  having  been  a  sort  of 
companion  to  the  King's  illegitimate  son,  the  Duke  of  Richmond. 
He  seems  to  have  been  rather  a  lively  youth  and  young  man,  and 
got  into  frequent  minor  difficulties  with  the  law.  But  nothing  at  all 
serious  is  brought  against  him ;  and  his  lamentable  fate  when  he  was 
barely  thirty  was  due  simply  to  the  delirium  of  jealousy  and  blood- 
thirstiness  which  came  upon  Henry  in  his  last  days,  and  which,  if  he 
had  lived  a  little  longer,  would  have  finished  the  English  nobility.  A 
ridiculous  charge  of  high  treason  was  brought  against  Surrey,  and 
supported  by  more  ridiculous  charges  of  quartering  the  royal  arms. 
He  was  condemned  and  beheaded  in  January  1547,  nine  days  before 
Henry  himself  went  to  his  own  place. 

There  is  no  certainty  at  all  as  to  the  order  of  the  work  either  of 
Wyatt  or  of  Surrey,  though  certain  poems  of  both  date  themselves 
fairly  by  reference  to  known  events.  This  matters  the  less,  however, 
in  the  case  of  men  whose  lives,  as  has  been  seen,  were  short,  who 
represent  very  clearly  results  of  the  same  influences,  and  who,  as 
not  merely  from  probability,  but  from  Surrey's  lines  on  Wyatt's  death, 
we  know,  stood  to  each  other  half  in  the  relation  of  master  and  pupil, 
half  in  that  of  fellow-pupils  in  the  same  foreign  and  chiefly  Italian 
school.  It  will  be  well  first  to  give  a  brief  account  of  the  actual  work 
of  each,  and  then  to  make  some  remarks  on  their  common  or  peculiar 
characteristics. 

It  is  not  for  nothing  that  a  sonnet  stands  in  the  forefront  of  the 
collection  —  haphazard  as  that  collection,  no  doubt,  is — of  Wyatt's 
poems.     For,  various  and  remarkable  as  are  the  points  of  novelty  in 

the  work  of  the  pair,  the  introduction  and  practice  of  the 
or,^^".Kjo°™^ -Sonnet    forms    perhaps    the    most   remarkable   of    these. 

And  for  some  time  the  sonnets  (with  characteristics  to 
be  noted  presently)  continue  —  to  give  way  at  last  to  other  (almost 
entirely  love)  poems  in  rhyme-royal,  in  octosyllabic  couplets  and 
quatrains,  in  a  shortened  rhyme-royal  with  an  octosyllabic  instead  of 
a  decasyllabic  base,  and  in  some  fanciful  stanzas,  the  base  of  which, 
following  Skelton,  though  in  more  orderly  fashion,  goes  as  low  as  six 
syllables.  A  five-line  stanza  of  heroics  appears,  and  also  eights  and 
sixes,  which  may  have  been  originally  intended  either  for  that  form  or 
as  fourteeners  with  middle  rhyme.  Moreover,  there  appears  also  a 
curious  form,  which  was  very  much  favoured  by  all  the  poets  of  the 
mid-sixteenth   century,   though   the    objections   to    it    are  great,   the 


CHAP.  Ill  PRELIMINARIES  — VERSE  245 

alternate  Alexandrine  and  fourteener  rhymed  in  couplets.  There 
are  also  rondeaux  and  other  lyrical  forms,  though  few  and  cautiously 
attempted ;  and  last  of  all  we  find  certain  epistles  of  a  satirical  kind 
and  certain  translations  of  the  Psalms,  couched  in  heroic  quatrains 
arranged  with  curiously  interlaced  rhymes,  as  well  as  sometimes  in 
ottava  rima. 

The  forms  and  contents  of  Surrey's  poems,  with  one  notable 
exception,  are  not  very  different  from  those  of  his  master's  —  sonnet, 
quatrains,  interlaced  heroic-couplets,  the  jog-trot  fourteener  and 
Alexandrine,  in  which  he  even  translates  Ecclesiastes 
and  the  Psalms.  The  subject  is  mostly  love,  and  satire  Surrey 
is  absent.  But  the  added  item,  which  is  of  the  very 
first  importance,  is  a  translation  of  the  second  Aeneid  in  blank  verse, 
of  which  there  are  no  known  earlier  examples  in  Lngllikll,  11)ul1^Ii,"sb," 
has  been  noted  in  its  place,  there  are  signs  of  something  like  it  in 
Chaucer's  prose  Tale  of  Melibee.  We  can  only  guess  how  the  idea 
came  to  Surrey  or  to  some  other  unknown  person,  if  (which  there  is 
no  reason  to  suppose)  he  borrowed  it.  Although  there  is  no  blank 
verse  in  French  up  to  this  date  (or  indeed,  except  as  a  curiosity, 
since),  rhymeless  verses  were  attempted  a  little  earlier  than  Surrey's 
date  in  Italian.  It  is,  of  course,  very  likely  that  these  gave  Surrey, 
as  they  gave  the  Spaniards,  the  hint ;  but  it  is  not  quite  impossible 
that  this  hint  was  not  needed.  It  was  a  common  and  natural  effect 
of  the  worship  of  the  classics  to  look  down  on  rhyme  as  a  barbarous 
thing ;  and  it  was  not  a  very  extraordinary  audacity  for  a  man, 
translating  what  was  then  thought  the  chief  poetic  achievement  of 
antiquity,  to  resolve  to  imitate  Virgil  directly  in  not  using  this  savage 
gaud.  Nor,  when  alliteration  had  long  been  borrowing  rhyme  and 
stanza  from  metre,  would  it  be  unnatural  for  metre  to  borrow  rhyme- 
lessness  from  alliteration.  Nor  is  it  absolutely  impossible  that 
Surrey  would  have  gone  the  entire  length  of  the  next  generation  and 
have  attempted  not  merely  unrhymed  English  verse,  but  unrhymed 
English  hexameters,  if  the  language  had  been  sufficiently  under  his 
command.  It  was  lucky  that  it  was  not;  for  though  it  is  impossible, 
as  every  fresh  attempt  shows,  that  the  hexameter  can  ever  rank  in 
English  as  anything  but  a  rather  awkward  totir  de  force,  we  might 
have  had  some  trouble  in  getting  rid  of  it,  whereas  in  blank  verse 
dccasyllaljles    Surrey  at   once   endowed   the   language  with    its  most 


natural,  tliough   latest   won,  and  for  certain   purposes   most  effective, 
variety  of  verse. 

'•  If  the  language  had  been  more  under  his  command,"  it  has 
been  said  ;  and  the  words  will  aptly  introduce  one  of  the  two  chief 
points  for  notice  in  the  poetry  of  Wyatt  and  Surrey.  It  has  been 
repeatedly  indicated  in  the  last  Book  that  either  one  cause  or  one  con- 


246    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

comitant  of  the  weakness  of  fifteenth-century  poetry  in  England  was 
that  the  poets  more  and  more  lost  this  control  of  language.  The 
The  main  char  ''^^^ons  are  not  positively  known,  and  cannot  be  dogmat- 

acteristics  of  ically  laid  down  ;  they  have  little  or  nothing  to  do  with 
=  pair-  individual  genius,  though  it  certainly  would  appear  that 
Chaucer's  English  is  in  a  state  of  premature  and  forced  perfection  to 
'  which  his  successors  could  not  attain,  and  which,  before  any  fit  heir 
appeared,  had  become  archaic.  It  would  appear  likewise  that  the 
completion  of  the  constitution  of  English  proper,  the  final  severance 
from  the  Continent,  and  the  changes  of  which  the  disappearance  of 
the  final  uttered  e  is  the  most  remarkable,  had  brought  about,  or  had 
at  least  been  followed  by,  some  not  clearly  intelligible  change  in  the 
whole  tonality  and  vocalisation  of  the  tongue.  The  new  pronounced 
English  was  not  adjustable  to  Chaucerian  prosody,  and  it  did  not 
find  what  it  wanted  in  alliterative  verse.  The  results  were  that 
extraordinary  stumbling  and  plunging,  that  driving  of  the  chariot  as 
if  with  locked  wheels,  which  we  have  noted  in  Lydgate,  in  Occleve, 
and  even  in  Hawes,  and  from  which  Skelton  only  escaped  (when 
he  did  escape)  by  a  series  of  clumsy  gambades  in  doggerel.  Yet 
this  doggerel  did  good  by  teaching  the  language  at  least  to  move 
with  some  flexibility,  if  with  little  elegance,  and  now  came  Wyatt  and 
Surrey  v^^ith  the  severe  manage  of  the  sonnet  and  the  rest  to  get  it 
r(ito  something  like  graceful  movement  in  regular  form. 

What   hard  work   they  had  to  do,  and  to  what  extent  they  were 
still  beaten   by  the  antinomianism  of  the  language  in  its 

and  rhythrru'  State   of  flux,   will    best    be   shown   by   printing   Wyatt's 
first   sonnet    (which    is   by  no  means    a  specially  terrible 
example),  with  foot-divisions  and  a  few  quantifying  accents :  — 

The  long  |  love  that  |  in  my  |  thought  I  |  harber 
And  in  |  my  heart  |  doth  keep  |  his  re  |  sidence, 
Into  I  my  face  |  presseth  |  with  bold  |  pretence, 
And  there  |  campeth  |  display  |  ing  his  |  banner : 
She  that  |  me  learns  |  to  love  |  and  to  |  suffer, 
And  wills  |  that  my  |  trust  and  \  lust's  1  neg  |  ligence 
Be  rein  |  ed  by  rea  |  son,  shame,  |  and  rev  |  erence, 
With  his  I  hardi  |  ness  tak  |  es  displeasure, 
Wherewith  |  love  to  |  the  hart's  ^  fo  |  rest  he  |  fleeth, 
Leaving  |  his  en  |  terprise  |  with  pain  |  and  cry, 
And  there  |him  hi  |  deth  and  |  not  ^p  |  peareth.  | 
What  may  |  I  do?  |  when  my  |  master  |  feareth, 
But  in  I  the  field  |  with  him  |  to  live  |  and  die, 
For  good  I  is  the  |  life  |  ending  faithfully. 

1  Printed  inTotfel  "  luste's  "  and  "  harte's,"  but  I  do  not  think  any  metrical 
value  was  meant  to  be  given  to  the  e. 


CHAP.  Ill  PRELIMINARIES  — VERSE  247 

There  are  several  things  to  be  observed  in  this  —  the  way  in  which 
the  advantage,  if  not  necessity,  of  a  final  couplet  forced  itself  on 
these  very  earliest  practitioners  of  the  English  sonnet,  the  remnant 
of  the  allegorical  personification  of  the  fifteenth  century,  and  others. 
But  the  chief  of  all  is  the  nervousness  and  uncertainty  of  the  quantifi- 
cation and  rhyme.  We  have  already  left  the  sheer  verse-prose  of 
Lydgate  and  Occleve  at  their  worst,  as  well  as  the  mere  doggerel  of 
Skelton  at  his  best.  But  the  poet  still  hobbles,  at  times  painfully. 
In  one  line,  as  we  see  above,  he  is  driven  to  make  "  takes  "  a  dis- 
syllable, and  to  put  an  entirely  non-natural  quantification  upon 
"hardiness,"  and  "displeasure,"  which  should  simply  change  places 
in  a  nonsense  verse.  More  surprising  perhaps  —  for  this  liberty  of 
stress  is  frequent  in  Chaucer,  and  continues  to  Spenser  and  even  to 
Shakespeare  —  is  the  mistiness  which  seems  to  beset  him  in  the 
matter  of  rhyme.  It  is  clear  that  the  first,  third,  and  fourth  rhymes  of 
the  sestet  are  on  the  Hh  only,  yet  he  cannot  resist  the  double  rhyme 
"  feareth  "  and  "  appeareth,"  though  it  not  merely  conflicts  with  the 
single  rhyme  of  "  fleeth,"  but  itself  introduces  a  quite  false  rhythm  into 
the  lines,  making  them  in  effect  feminine-rhymed  nine-syllable  lines, 
and  not  decasyllables  at  all. 

But  these  stumbles  were  inevitable  in  picking  the  way  up  the 
steep  and  stony  path  from  the  abysses  to  which  English  poetry  had 
descended,  and  the  very  stumbles  themselves  are  gain,  inasmuch  as 
they  warn  the  stumbler  to  pick  his  way  more  carefully  next  time. 
Wyatt  has  the  plain,  straight  (and  also  strait)  ways  of  the  sonnet  and 
his  other  forms  to  guide  him ;  he  has  the  enormous  advantage  of 
fresh  models,  different  from  the  thousand  times  borrowed  ones  of  a 
century  and  more  past ;  and  above  all,  he  has  the  gift  of  poetic  phrase, 
which  we  meet  again  in  him  after  many  days. 

Into  a  bitter  fashion  of  forsaking 

is  perhaps  better  than  any  single  line  in  southern  English  since 
Chaucer ;  and  wlien  we  meet  with  such  single  spies  we  know  that 
they  will  come  in  battalions  soon. 

Wyatt  found  an  apt  pupil  in  Surrey,  and  there  is,  in  fact,  more 
progress  between  these  two  almost  contemporary  writers  than  we 
find  after  them  in  the  more  than  thirty  years  between  Surrey's  death 
and  the  ShephenVs  Calendar.     Henrv  Howard  perceived      c 

u  u       1  •  r  '  Surrey  s 

the   absolute    necessity   of  accepting  a  certain  rhythmical       metrical 
standard    for    a    word,    and    not    varying    its    values   and      ^"'vance. 
balance   entirely   at    the   pleasure,   or   rather   the    need,  ot    the   poet. 
There  is  even  in  him  a   rudimentary   discovery,  or   rediscovery,  of  a 
matter  of  still  greater  importance,  the  power  which  an  English  poet 
possesses  of  varying   the    harmony  and    composition    of   his  line  by 


24S     ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

shifting  the  place  of  the  pause.  Neither  he  nor  Wyatt,  indeed, 
has  arrived  at  the  final  secret,  the  license  of  trisyllabic  substitution ; 
the  most  they  can  do  in  this  way  is  a  clumsy  elision  of  the  vowel  in 
article  and  preposition.  But  it  was  just  as  well  that  too  many 
liberties  should  not  be  taken  at  once,  and  that  the  decasyllabic  as  such 
should  be  reformed  into  melody  before  it  was  expanded  by  license 
into  an  hendecasyllable,  a  dodecasyllable,  or  even  more.  For  the 
temptations  of  doggerel  were  still  about,  and  were  only  too  much  in- 
dulged in  the  eights  and  sixes  and  in  the  "  poulter's  measure,"  ^  the 
compound  of  Alexandrine  and  fourteener  just  noticed.  If  any  one 
had  at  this  time  indulged  himself  in  the  license  of  the  dramatic  or 
Tennysonian  tribrachs,  the  result  must  pretty  certainly  have  been 
chaos,  and  the  language  would  never  have  had  its  period  of  discipline  at 
all.  As  it  was,  there  is  reason  still  to  marvel  at  the  change  which  — 
no  doubt  half,  if  not  all,  unconsciously  —  these  two  "  persons  of  quality" 
—  one  a  busy  diplomatist,  the  other  a  careless  man,  or  rather  youth, 
of  pleasure  —  achieved.  It  maybe  that  neither  Wyatt  nor  Surrey  has 
left  any  perfect  poem,  that  nothing  of  either's  is  as  sheer  poetry 
equal  to  the  best  work  of  Sackville ;  but  their  gain  in  form  is  almost 
incalculable. 

The  circumstances  of  the  publication  of  the  poems  of  the  two 
were  peculiar.  It  had  become  the  habit  of  printers  and  working  men 
of  letters  to  make  and  issue,  with  or  without  permission,  '*  miscellanies" 

of  poetical  pieces,  sometimes  attributed  to  their  authors. 
Miscellany,    sometimes    not,    and    sometimes   again    (as   was    sure   to 

happen)  attributed  wrongly.  In  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century  especially  this  joint  custom  of  MS.  collection  and 
miscellany  publication  led  to  a  great  deal  of  confusion.  To  this  day 
some  of  the  most  famous  pieces  of  English  verse  —  Jonson's  "Sidney's 
Sister,"  Bishop  King's  "Like  to  the  Falling  of  a  Star,"  and  others  — 
are  in  a  state  of  contested,  if  not  exactly  dubious,  title  between  two  or 
more  claimants,  while  in  the  same  or  other  cases  the  genuine  text  is 
very  much  a  matter  of  guesswork.  The  publication  of  the  chief  works 
of  Surrey  and  Wyatt  with  pieces  by  other  persons  of  distinction  at 
Henry  VIII. 's  court  —  the  unlucky  Lord  Rochford,  Lord  Vaux, 
Wyatt's  friend  Sir  Francis  Bryan,  and  others  —  was  due  to  the 
printer  Richard  Tottel,  and  to  a  Huntingdonshire  scholar,  Nicholas 
Grimald,  who  has  been  thought  to  be  an  Italian  and  a  Grimaldi. 
This  is  by  no  means  necessary,  for  different  forms  of  the  name, 
ranging  from  Grimoald  to  Grimwald,  are  found  in  different  coun- 
tries  and   tongues   during  the   Middle  Ages.      Grimald,   who   was   a 

1  Said  to  be  (cf.  our  "baker's  dozen")  so  called  from  the  habit  of  poulterers 
giving  twelve  eggs  to  one  customer  and  fourteen  to  another,  according  to  fear  or 
favour  ;  see  Gascoigne  (p.  39,  ed.  Arber),  who  seems  to  have  invented  the  name. 


CHAP.  Ill  PRELIMINARIES  — VERSE  249 

member  of  both  Universities,  lecturer  at  Christ  Church,  chaplain  to 
Ridley,  etc.,  was  born  in  15 19,  and  was  therefore  very  little  younger 
than  Surrey,  whom,  as  well  as  other  authors  of  the  famous  TottePs 
Miscellatiy,  he  may  have  known.  But  the  book  itself  1  did  not 
appear  till  1557,  eleven  years  after  Surrey's  death  and  fifteen  after 
Wyatt's.  The  editor  contributed  (at  least  in  the  first  edition,  for  he 
left  most  of  them  out  in  the  second)  no  small  number  of  pieces  of  his 
own,  and  there  was  in  both  a  considerable  contingent  from  "  un- 
certain authors."  Few  of  the  uncertainties,  or  of  the  works  of  the 
minor  lights  mentioned  above,  are  of  great  value ;  and  Grimald 
himself  generally  writes  stuff  which  is  only  distinguished  from  the 
average  work  of  the  previous  generation  by  being  invariably  serious 
in  form,  and  by  showing  a  metrical  regularity  which,  if  only  sing- 
song and  uninspired,  is  at  any  rate  strictly  observed.  This  is  what 
is  meant  by  the  printer's  apology  for  "  the  stateliness  of  style  removed 
from  the  rude  skill  of  common  ears  "  —  for  ''  style  "  was  then  generally, 
and  here  clearly,  used  as  including  "  metre,"  and  the  context  plainly 
shows  that  the  contrast  Tottel  was  thinking  of  was  with  doggerel 
and  ballad  measures.  And  he  was  quite  right.  It  is  true  that  for  a 
very  long  time  Wyatt  and  Surrey  have  held  their  proper  place  in  general 
literary  history  and  criticism ;  but  there  have  been  occasional 
attempts,  if  not  exactly  to  degrade  them  from  it,  to  glance  at  them 
as  mere  reformers  of  form.  The  retort  is,  of  course,  quite  obvious, 
and  entirely  fatal  to  the  sneer.  It  was  reform  of  form  that  was 
wanted,  for  the  simple  reason  that  for  a  century  and  a  half  form  of 
any  meritorious  kind  had  practically  ceased  to  exist.  At  first  the 
"  stateliness  of  style  "  may  have  been  all  too  near  to  stiffness,  and  no 
one  with  absolute  inspiration  may  have  been  ready  to  take  the  pre- 
pared instrument.     But  the  instrument  was  at  last  prepared. 

The  poetical  work  of  the  period,  before  the  appearance  of  the 
Shepherds  Calendar  and  after  TotteVs  Miscellany,  divides  itself 
naturally  under  three  heads  :  i.  Subsequent  miscellanies  ;  2.  Individ- 
ual poets  or  translators  of  minor  rank;  3.  Sackville.  An  extreme 
purist  might  urge  that  the  three,  or  at  any  rate  the  first  and  the 
third,  are  one.  For  Sackville's  poetical  work,  which  stands  in  such 
startling  contrast  to  the  wooden  verse  of  Gorboduc,  appeared  in  what 
was  practically  a  miscellany,  the  Mirror  for  Ma^^istrates.  But  it 
will  be  better  and  clearer  to  divide  the  subject  in  the  order  above 
named,  and  not  to  mention  tlie  Mirror  till  we  come  to  Sackville 
himself.     The  two  first  heads  will  not  delay  us  long. 

It  is  somewhat  curious  that  TotteVs  Miscellany,  the  popularity  of 
which    we   know   from    the    rapidity   with    which    the    second  edition 

1  Ed,  Arber. 


250    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

followed  the  first  (itself  reprinted  in  six  weeks  or  so),  with  fresh  issues 
in  1559,  1565,  and  1574,  as  well  as  others  later,  and  from  the 
imitations  of  it,  waited  some  time  for  these  imitations.  Few  things 
indeed  are  more  significant  than  the  long  "  waits "  between  the 
writing  and  the  publication  of  the  poems  contained  in  it,  and  the  still 
longer  ones  before  any  dared  to  emulate  it,  when  we  contrast  them 
with  the  rush  and  huddle  of  new  and  ever  new  poetry  in  the  last 
half  of  the  Queen's  reign. 

The  first  actual  successor  ^  was  published  nearly  twenty  years 
after  Tottel,  in  1576,  and  its  name,  The  Paradise  of  Dainty  Devices, 
followed  as  it  was  by  others,  showed  the  influence  of  Euphuism,  the 
period  of  Lyly,  as  compared  with  the  sober  Songs  and 
^eifani^s!  Sontiets  of  the  earlier  book  when  Ascham  had  repre- 
sented English  prose.  It  was  the  work  of  a  man  then 
dead,  the  dramatist  and  musician  Richard  Edwards.  It  contains  a 
mixture  of  work  of  the  former  and  the  then  present  generation.  Lord 
Vaux  figuring  beside  Lord  Oxford,  the  courtier  of  the  old  King's  time 
by  the  courtier  of  the  still  fairly  young  Queen.  Kinwelmersh,  Hunnis, 
and  other  respectable  men  of  letters  of  Elizabeth's  day  also  make 
show,  and  there  is  one  piece  the  initials  of  which  (not  given  in  the 
first  edition)  may  be  Walter  Raleigh's.  The  book,  though  very 
popular  (it  was  reprinted  once  a  year  for  three  years,  and  repeatedly 
afterwards),  was  not  much  of  a  Paradise,  nor  its  devices  very  dainty. 
But  they  were  as  their  pretty  if  affected  title  might  seem  to  warrant, 
better  than  those  of  the  absurdly  named  and  dully  filled  Gorgeous 
Gallery  of  Gallant  Inventions  which  followed  two  years  later,  and 
seems  to  have  been  collected  and  partly  written  by  Owen  Roydon  and 
T.  P.  (Thomas  Proctor).  The  mania  for  alliteration  which  beset  the 
writers  of  this  time  so  strongly  was  particularly  .strong  in  T.  P.,  who, 
outdoing  even  Churchyard  (^vide  infra),  distinguished  himself  by  print- 
ing a  production  proclaimed  to  be  "  Pretty  Pamphlets  by  Proctor." 
The  willow  song-- 

Willow,  willow,  willow,  sing  all  of  green  willow  — 

appears  here.  The  later  Elizabethan  miscellanies  are  infinitely 
better,  but  they  come  after  Spenser. 

Next  to   the   miscellanies,   the  verse    translations    make  a  great 

1  All  the  more  important  of  these  miscellanies  up  to  the  Queen's  death  were 
reprinted  together  by  Collier  in  1867 ;  but  the  issue  was  private  and  very  small, 
and  the  book  hardly  ever  occurs  in  catalogues.  Mr.  Arber,  besides  Tottel,  has 
given  (in  his  "English  Scholar's  Library")  Robinson's  Hatidful  of  Delights; 
Mr.  Bullen  England's  Helicon,  and  Davison's  Poetical  Rhapsody.  Park's 
Heliconia  (3  vols.  18 15)  contains,  besides  the  Handful,  the  Gorgeous  Gallery,  the 
Phoenix  Nest,  and  the  large  and  interesting  anthology,  rather  than  miscellany,  of 
England's  Parnassus. 


CHAP.  Ill  PRELIMINARIES  — VERSE  251 

figure  in  the  poetical  production  of  this  time,  though  again  it  cannot 
be  said  that  they  attain  to  high  poetical  merit.  In  any  case,  no 
doubt,  the  popularity  of  the  classics  would  have  brought 
them  about ;  but  the  action  of  Surrey,  whose  authority  transtatkins. 
was  so  great  in  other  ways,  made  them  certain.  The 
translators,^  however,  were  by  no  means  bold  enough  to  follow  his 
example  of  blank  verse  as  a  matter  of  course.  They  preferred  as  a 
rule  the  too  often  clumsy  fourteener,  which,  just  as  it  was  much  later 
going  out  of  fashion,  gave  us  the  splendid  Homeric  paraphrase  of 
Chapman.  There  was  little  splendour  about  the  earlier  examples, 
but  the  first  of  them  had  great  influence  in  other  ways,  being  a 
version  of  Seneca's  Troades  by  Jasper  Heywood,  son  of  John,  Fellow 
first  of  Merton  and  then  of  All  Souls',  and  in  Elizabeth's  time  a 
Jesuit.  This  play  was  issued  as  early  as  1559,  two  3'ears  only  after 
TotteVs  Miscellany,  and  by  the  same  printer.  He  followed  it  up 
with  two  others,  the  Thyestes  and  Hercules  Furens^  and  the  example 
being  caught  at,  the  whole  ten  Senecan  plays  were  issued  together 
in  1 581.  Rhyme-royal,  the  quatrain,  and  other  stanzas  are  used  for 
the  chorus ;  but  the  ambling  fourteener  serves  as  the  staple. 

This  was  also  the  metre  of  Phaer's  Virgil,  which  appeared,  as  far 
as  the  first  seven  books  went,  the  year  after  Tottel,  and  was  finished 
partly  by  the  author,  partly  after  his  death  in  1560  by  another  hand. 
Phaer  was  a  Pembrokeshire  man,  a  member  of  the  University  of 
Oxford,  a  lawyer,  and  a  doctor.  There  is  merit  in  his  version  (which 
shows  a  consciousness  of  trisyllabic  substitution  and  its  advantages),  as 
there  is  also  in  the  companion  Ovid  of  Arthur  Golding,  a  man  of 
property  and  good  connections,  who  was  born  about  the  middle  of 
the  fifth  decade  of  the  century,  and  lived  till  its  close.  He  did  prose 
as  well  as  verse  translations ;  but  the  Metamorphoses  was  his  chief 
book,  and  this  appeared  in  1567,  again  in  fourteeners.  The  verse 
translators  cannot  indeed  boast,  as  the  prose  can,  that  they  had  a 
distinct  and  important  influence  on  the  development  of  style  in  their 
own  sphere,  but  the  two  helped  in  the  practice,  the  exercise,  which 
was  the  business  and  the  benefit  of  this  particular  time. 

The  individual  authors  of  the  period  other  tlian  Sackville  partake 
of  that  character  of  curiosity  which  distinguishes  the  whole  of  it,  and 
which  repels  some  tastes  as  much  as  it  conciliates  others.  The  chief 
names  are  Churchyard,  Whetstone,  Tusser,  Turbervillc,  Googe,  and, 
above  all,  George  Gascoigne,  the  type,  and  at  the  same  time  the  most 

iThey  have  not  li.id  quite  their  share  of  the  otherwise  indiscriminate  devotion 
of  reprinters,  Stanyhurst's  rather  later  and  extremely  mad  Acttcid  having  almost 
alone  the  honour  to  be  recently  given  (in  Mr.  Arber's  "  English  Scholar's 
Library").  The  translators  of  Seneca  besides  Heywood  were  Neville,  Studley, 
Nuce,  and  Newton. 


eminent,  of  the  whole.  It  is  almost  enough  to  say,  on  the  one  hand, 
that  to  no  single  one  of  the  six  is  ascribed  even  the  smallest  piece  of 
verse  which  has  made  its  way  into  the  memory  of  the  general. 
On  the  other  hand,  all  have  importance  to  the  historian,  and 
Gascoigne  is,  as  has  been  said,  very  decidedly  the  typical  man  of 
letters  of  the  first  half  of  the  great  Queen's  reign. 

Thomas    Churchyard,    first     born    and    last    to    die    of    all    the 

group,  was  a  Shropshire  man,  born  at  Shrewsbury  about   1520,  and 

so  not  much   younger  than  Surrey,  a  juxtaposition  which  makes  all 

the  more  striking  the  fact   that   he  did  not   die   till   the 

urc  >3r  .    ^^^^    ^^^^  ^^   James    I.     It   would   appear   that    he   took 

the  portion  of  goods  that  belonged  to  him  and  went  to  court  early 
enough  to  become  "  servant "  to  Surrey,  in  those  conditions  of 
honourable  and  gentle  service  and  education  which  flourished  for 
some  time  to  come.  The  connection  was  continued  long  after  his 
chief's  death  by  his  contributions  to  TottePs  Miscellany .  But  long 
before  the  appearance  of  that  book  Churchyard  had  seen  other  and 
hotter  service  in  the  Netherlands  (1542)  and  Scotland  (1545),  had 
been  taken  prisoner  in  a  second  Scotch  campaign  (1548),  had  travelled, 
had  served  in  Ireland  (1550),  in  Lorraine,  in  the  Netherlands  again, 
at  Calais,  or  at  least  Guines,  just  at  the  period  of  its  loss.  He  had 
begun  a  long  series  of  mostly  petty  individual  contributions  to 
literature  when  he  was  about  thirty ;  but  his  historical  importance 
begins  with  his  contribution  to  Tottel  in  1557,  and  to  the  Mirror  for 
Magistrates  (see  below)  in  1558-59.  After  several  more  years  of 
fighting  and  writing  he  collected  his  work,  or  some  of  it,  under  the 
alliterative  and  exact  title  of  Chitrc]iyard''s  Chips,  modestly  accounting 
in  prose  for  the  selection  of  the  same.  Fighting  he  continued  till 
the  siege  of  Zutphen  in  1572,  just  thirty  years  after  he  had  first  taken 
arms ;  writing  he  never  left  off  till  the  close  of  his  long  life,  the  later 
part  of  which  was  spent  in  court  service.  So  late  as  1604  his  Good 
Will,  a  poem  on  the  death  of  Archbishop  Whitgift,  preserved,  in  a 
manner  which  must  have  seemed  odd  enough  to  the  hearers  of 
Donne  and  the  survivors  of  Spenser,  the  lolloping  verse,  the  curious 
antithetic  alliteration,  the  wooden  scheme  of  the  poets  of  this  later 
transition.  Churchyard  has  been  affectionately  taken  up,  more  than 
once,  by  men  of  letters  as  a  curiosity ;  and  it  must  be  admitted  that 
worse  writers  than  he  have  had  the  honour  of  complete  editions, 
which  he  has  lacked.^ 

In  George  Whetstone,  whose  date  of  birth  and   death   are   both 
unknown,  we  have  another  example  of  the  type  so  common  at  this 

'^  Heliconia  contains  some  things  of  his — including  the  Whitgift  piece,  and 
there  are  a  few  other  poems  accessible  in  modern  books;  but  little  enough  for  a 
man  whose  bibliography  fills  nearly  10  columns  in  Hazlitt's  Hd?idbook. 


CHAP.  Ill  PRELIMINARIES  — VERSE  253 


time,  and  of  the  characteristics  of  alliteration,  of  a  sort  of  survival 
of  allegory,  and  of  a  kind  of  composition  which,  though  advanced 
beyond  the  mere  rudiments,  is  still  stiff  and  wooden.  The  .y^gj^^^jj^g 
earliest  dated  thing  that  we  have  of  his  is  the  Rock  of 
Regard^  1576,  a  miscellany  mostly  in  verse;  the  latest  is  supposed 
to  date  from  1587,  and  is  a  pamphlet  on  the  execution  of  Queen 
Mary  "  and  other  notable  traitors."  The  only  things  of  Whetstone's 
at  all  generally  known  are  his  play  of  Promos  and  Cassandra  (a  dull 
thing,  but  in  Dodsley)  and  his  Remembrance  of  George  Gascoigne, 
which  has  commonly,^  though  not  always,  accompanied  reprints  of  that 
poet.  He  was  rather  fond  of  these  poetical  obituaries  or  remem- 
brances,^  of  which  about  half  a  dozen  are  known ;  and  he  also  wrote 
prose  tales,  chiefly  collected  in  a  Heptameron  (the  title,  of  course, 
suggested  by  Margaret  of  Navarre)  of  Civill  Dyscoiirses.  These 
prose  tales,  indeed,  which  played  so  important  a  part  in  the  furnishing 
of  subjects  to  the  dramatists,  were  almost  as  much  a  feature  of  the 
time  as  the  poetical  miscellanies  and  verse  translations.  The  largest 
and  best  known  is  William  Painter's  Palace  of  Pleasure  (alliterative 
again),  which  appeared  in  1566-67.^ 

Of  the  two  T's,  Tusser  and  Turberville,  the  former  is  not  a  poet 
at  all,  but  a  verse-curiosity.  He  is  our  only,  or  almost  our  only, 
English  Georgic  poet,  and  his  poetry  frankly  acquiesces  in  doggerel. 
His  life,  which  seems  to  have  dated  from  about  15 15  to 
1580,  began  in  Essex,  was  passed  at  St.  Paul's  and 
Eton  (where  Udall,  as  previously  observed,  beat  him  much),  at  Cam- 
bridge, at  court,  and  lastly  on  a  farm  in  Sussex,  where  he  cultivated 
and  rhymed.  His  /^"ive  Hundred  Poinis  of  Good  Husbandry,'^  pub- 
lished in  1573,  contains  more  than  2000  quatrains  in  anapaestic 
tetrameters,  rolling,  but  with  a  regularity  testifying  to  Udall's 
care. 

George  Turberville,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a  poet  —  certainly  the 
best  poet  of  the  time  (always  excepting  Sackville)  next  to  Gascoigne, 
and  perhaps  Gascoigne's  equal.  He  was  a  Dorsetshire  man,  who 
must  have  been  born  about  1530,  and  was  not  dead  ten 
years  before  the  end  of  the  reign,  who  went  to  Winchester 
and  New  College,  did  some  diplomatic  work  in  Russia,  and  seems  to 
have  been  of  independent  fortune.     Like  most  of  his  contemporaries, 

1  As,  for  instance,  in  Chalmers's  Poets,  vol.  ii.,  and  in  Mr.  Arber's  Reprint  of 
the  Steel  Glass. 

2  Heliconia,    vol.    ii.,    contains    one   on    the    Earl    of  Bedford. 

3  This  huge  compilation  from  the  chief  French  and  Italian  novel  collections 
has  hud  the  honour  of  two  reprints,  one  in  1813  by  Haslcwood,  and  one  in  1890 
by  Mr.  Joseph  Jacobs. 

••  It  had  appeared  as  "One  Hundred"  only  in  the  year  of  Tottel.  HeinR  full 
of  folk-lore  and  other  extra-literary  interest,  it  has  been  several  times  reprinted. 


254    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

he  was  specially  addicted  to  translation  in  prose  and  verse  from 
ancients  and  moderns.  But  in  1570  he  produced  a  volume  of  Epitaphs^ 
Epigrams,  So  figs,  and  Sonnets.^  Turberville  has  not  much  power  of 
continued  poetical  flight,  but  there  is  in  some  of  his  lyrics  a  genuine 
and  unforced  sweetness  which  is  extremely  agreeable,  and  at  this 
time  very  rare. 

His  friend  Barnabe  Googe,-  who  is  thought  to  have  been  born 
about  1540,  and  who  died  in  1594,  cannot  be  complimented  on  much 
lyrical  gift ;  but  some  Eclogues  of  his  have  importance,  and  in  his 
Cupid  Conquered  he  has  some  of  the  appeal  of  a  pred- 
°^'  ecessor  —  though  afar  off — of  Spenser.  He  came  from 
Lincolnshire,  and  was  a  son  both  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  a 
client  of  Burleigh's,  and  a  particularly  active  and  miscellaneous  trans- 
lator, of  extreme  Protestant  tendencies  in  his  selection  of  books  to 
translate.  The  most  obvious  oddity  of  Googe's  original  poems,  the 
extraordinary  fashion  in  which  the  lines  are  divided  —  for  instance, 
decasyllabics  being  split  up  into  fours  and  sixes,  and  Alexandrines 
into  quarters  —  is  thought  to  have  been  due  to  the  mere  mechanical 
shiftlessness  of  the  printer,  who  had  a  small  ^age  and  large  type. 
Googe,  when  he  is  not  simply  flat,  often  sins  by  the  use  of  the 
bombastic  and  fustianish  style,  which  was  common,  and  at  which 
Shakespeare  laughs  with  such  merciless  good  nature. 

Among  these  shadows  and  others  more  shadowy  still,  —  the  very 
"Henry  Pimpernel  and  old  John  Naps  of  Greece"  in  English 
literature,  —  George  Gascoigne  gives  us  at  least  something  like  a  sub- 
.  stantive  figure. ^     His  life,  though  not  so  long  as  Church- 

°'^"  '  yard's,  was  nearl)*  as  typical,  and  his  work  was  much 
better.  Like  most  of  the  men  with  whom  he  is  here  associated,  but 
even  more  than  most  of  them,  Gascoigne  was  a  person  of  birth, 
breeding,  and  education.  He  was  the  son  of  a  Bedfordshire  knight, 
Sir  John  Gascoigne,  and  was  connected  on  his  mother's  side  with 
Frobisher  the  seaman.  He  was  a  Cambridge  man,  his  college  being 
Trinity,  and,  like  most  University  men  perhaps  for  some  three 
centuries,  finished  his  education  at  the  Inns  of  Court  —  in  his  case, 
Gray's  Inn  and  the  Temple.  He  was  born  about  1537,  and  can 
have   been   hardly   of  age    when    he   entered   Parliament,  sitting  for 

1  Reprinted  in  Chalmers,  vol.  ii. 

2  See  Mr.  Arber's  Reprints.  Of  Googe's  translations,  the  Popish  Kingdom 
(from  the  Regnum  Papisticum  of  Naogeorgus  or  Kirchmeyer)  had  the  honour  of 
an  extremely  handsome  black-letter  reprint  in  1880,  the  editor  being  Mr.  R.  C. 
Hope.  It  is  in  fluent  and  freely  alliterated  fourteeners,  but  its  literary  interest  is 
very  small. 

3  Poems  in  Chalmers,  vol.  ii.,  and  more  completely  by  W.  C.  Hazlitt;  the 
Steel  Glass,  the  Complaint  of  Philomene,  and  the  Azotes  in  Arber's  Reprints. 
There  is  a  good  study  of  Gascoigne  by  Dr.  Schelling  of  Philadelphia. 


CHAP,  in  PRELIMINARIES^ VERSE  255 

Bedford  in  1557.  He  must  have  begun  to  write  verse  very  early, 
but  printed  nothing  for  some  years.  His  translated  or  adapted 
tragedy  and  comedy  already  referred  to  (p.  231)  were  acted  in  Gray's 
Inn  Hall  in  1566.  He  married  in  1567,  served  in  the  Netherlands 
in  1573,  and  onwards  to  1574,  and  in  the  first  of  these  years  pub- 
lished, or  had  published  for  him  (there  was  often  a  little  innocent 
make-believe  about  these  things  in  those  days),  a  collection  of  poems 
styled  A  Hundred  Sundry  Flowers,  which  in  the  later  issue  of  1575 
was  divided  into  Flowers,  Herbs,  and  Weeds.  He  had  to  do  with 
the  Kenilworth  Revels  in  1575,  and  next  year  published  his  Steel 
Glass,  a  regular  satire  of  considerable  length  in  blank  verse.  He 
died  in  October  1577.  Besides  the  works  already  mentioned,  Gas- 
coio'ne  is  noted  for  the  first  translated  prose  tale  from  Bandello  (a 
stvle  so  much  followed  by  Painter  and  others),  and  for  his  very 
important  Certain  Notes  or  Instructions  concerning  the  Making  of 
Verse  or  Rhyme  in  English. 

These  Instructions,  being  criticism,  not  creation,  escape  the  draw- 
backs of  the  other  work  in  regard  to  intrinsic  merit,  and  hold  a 
secure  position,  comparable  in  English,  —  though,  of  course,  with  great 
abatement  of  scale  and  genius,  —  to  that  held  by  Dante's 
Dc  P'uli^ari  Eloquio  in  Italian.  They  are  very  short ;  ^^ tilns!"^' 
and  although  Gascoigne  had  a  long  past  of  English 
behind  him,  it  will  readily  be  apprehended  by  intelligent  readers  of 
the  foregoing  pages  that  his  actual  knowledge  of  English  poetry  was 
not  great.  The  study  of  Anglo-Saxon  was  indeed  reviving  in  his 
time,  but  it  did  not  affect  ordinary  men  of  letters  for  many  genera- 
tions to  come.  Nor  do  Gascoigne  or  his  contemporaries  and  followers 
seem  to  have  been  acquainted  with  any  Middle  English  writers 
before  Chaucer,  though  Piers  Plowman  was  not  an  unknown  book, 
(iascoigne  himself  only  glances  at  alliterative  metre  in  the  terms  of 
Chaucer's  own  scoff  at  it,  does  not  mention  a  single  poet  by  name 
except  Chaucer  himself,  and  as  his  followers,  the  later  Elizabethan 
critics  (see  chap,  vi.),  also  did,  though  still  more  decidedly,  confines 
himself  mainly  to  a  rhetorical  abstract  of  the  Art  of  Poetry,  dwelling 
successively  on  the  necessity  of  fresh  invention  and  the  avoidance  of 
commonplaces,  on  the  importance  of  '*  keeping  the  measure,"' and  not 
(for  instance)  slipping  from  poulter's  measure  —  Alexandrines  and 
fourteeners  —  to  fourteeners  by  themselves ;  on  quantity,  accent,  and 
metre  generally ;  on  the  disadvantage  of  polysyllables,  and  the 
impropriety  of  coining  words  for  rhyme's  sake ;  on  the  danger  (a 
caution  very  specially  needed,  as  we  have  seen)  of  excessive  allitera- 
tion and  of  inusitate  word-inversion  ;  on  the  pause  ;  on  rhyme-royal 
and  other  stanza  forms;  and  on  '*  riding  rhyme"  (the  heroic  couplet). 
The   most   really    noticeable    thing   about    the    whole    is    Gascoigne's 


0 


256    ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH    bk.  t 

assumption  (all  the  more  important  because  he  is  evidently  not  satis- 
fied with  itj  that  the  decasyllabic  must  be  confined  to  strict  iambics 
and  to  the  middle  pause.  We  have  seen  how  this  undue,  but  for  the 
time  salutary,  restraint  was  arrived  at ;  we  shall  see  how  it  was 
removed. 

Gascoigne's  practice,  as  compared  with  that  of  his  neighbours, 
certainly  does  not  discredit  the  maxim  that  "  every  poet  should  con- 
tain a  critic."  Except  Sackville,  he  is  the  best  poet  of  the  group, 
and  he  goes  far  beyond  Sackville  in  the  one  point  of 
variety.  The  blank  verse  of  the  Steel  Glass  is  indeed 
marred  by  the  at  this  time  universal  fault  of  staccato  movement  —  the 
lines  being  far  too  often  concluded  within  themselves  in  sense,  and 
the  monotony  being  increased  by  the  poet's  acceptance  of  the  middle 
pause,  and  by  his  abuse  of  the  practice  of  beginning  successive  lines 
with  the  same  word.^  Yet  though  not  vivid,  it  is  generally  vigorous, 
and  sometimes  even  incisive.  The  lyrics  and  stanza  poems  escape 
this  drawback,  and,  though  the  author  recks  his  own  rede  about 
excessive  alliteration  but  ill,  attain  very  commonly  to  prettiness  and 
not  seldom  to  pathos.  The  same  mark  of  a  certain  childishness  is 
still  on  the  verse ;  but  it  very  often  has  the  grace  as  well  as  the 
immaturity  of  childhood. 

There   is    nothing   childish   about   the   few   and    noble   verses    of 

Thomas  Sackville.^     They  were  published  in  a  curious  book  which, 

except  in  the  pages  contributed  by  Sackville  himself,  has  very  small 

The  Mirror  Ji^eraiy,   as   compared   with   its   historical,    interest.      The 

for  Magis-  Mirrov  for  Magistrates    was    jolanned    in    the    reign    of 

Queen    Mary    by   William    Baldwin,   an    Oxford    man,   a 

priest,  a  scholar,  a  schoolmaster,  and  a  printer,  who  seems  to  have 

been  born  not  long  after  the  beginning  of  the  century,  and  George 

Ferrers,  a  member  of  the  same  University,  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  .and  of 

Parliament,  a  writer  on   legal  and   historical  subjects,  as  well   as   of 

interludes,  who  died  in  1579.     The  book,  which  was  intended  to  be 

a  sort  of  supplement    to  Lydgate's  version   of  Boccaccio's  Falls  of 

Princes,  is  said  to  have  been  printed  in  part  as  early  as   1555,  but 

was  interfered  with  by  Gardiner  and  did  not  attain  license  for  publica- 

1  It  is  of  the  first  interest  to  notice  how  this  practice,  which  is  so  effective  for 
good  in  the  mobile-centred  and  complex-footed  verse  of  Tennyson,  aggravates  the 
monotony  of  strict  decasyllables  with  the  immovable  middle  pause. 

2  Sackville's  drama  has  been  already  dealt  with.  His  life  only  touched 
literature  in  those  two  early  passages  of  it.  He  was  born  (his  fathef,  Sir  Richard 
Sackville,  was  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer)  about  1536,  at  Buckhurst,  and  is 
supposed  to  have  been  a  member  of  Hart  Hall,  St.  John's  College,  Oxford, 
and  of  the  Inner  Temple.  He  was  made  Lord  Buckhurst  in  1567,  K.G.  in 
1589,  Lord  Treasurer  in  1599,  and  Earl  of  Dorset  in  1604.  He  died  at  the 
Council  table  four  years  later. 


CHAP,  Hi  PRELIMINARIES  — VERSE  257 

tion  till  1559.  It  contained  nineteen  "tragedies  "  by  Baldwin,  Ferrers, 
and  Phaer  (?),  Sackville  not  being  yet  a  contributor.  His  two  pieces, 
the  Induction  (not  to  the  general  work  but  to  such  ''  tragedies "  as 
he  might  write)  and  the  Complaint  of  Buckingham,  appeared  in  the 
second  and  enlarged  edition  of  1563,  to  which  Churchyard  also  con- 
tributed. To  complete  the  general  story  of  the  book,  in  1574  John 
Higgins  issued  a  fresh  batch,  taken  from  earlier  times  between 
Brutus  and  Caesar,  and  four  years  later  Thomas  Blennerhassett  added 
pieces  dealing  with  the  first  thousand  years  of  the  Christian  era. 
Baldwin's  and  Higgins's,  but  not  Blennerhassett's,  parts  were  united, 
(still  with  new  matter)  in  1587,  and  at  last,  in  1610,  the  wfiole,  again 
with  additions,  came  together.  Consisting,  as  the  book  does,  entirely 
of  tragical  stories  from  English  history,  and  covering,  as  its  various 
issues  do,  almost  the  whole  period  during  which,  as  we  shall  see, 
verse-history  was  a  specially  favourite  form,  it  cannot  lack  a  certain 
interest.  But  its  merit  as  poetry  is  almost  entirely  confined  to 
Sackville's  contributions.^ 

They  are  short  enough.  The  Induction  and  T/ie  Complaint  of 
Henry,  Duke  of  Btickinghain  (Richard  lll.'s  victim,  not  Wolsey's) 
occupy  between  them  less  than  200  stanzas  in  rhyme-royal,  or 
rather  more  than  1300  lines.  The  language,  as  comports 
with  the  metre  and  with  the  design  of  tlie  book  to  supply  pa'j.t^n  \u 
a  sort  of  sequel  to  Lydgate,  is  a  little  archaic.  There  is 
even  an  attempt,  doubtless  also  deliberate,  to  keep  up  fifteenth-century 
style  both  in  personifying  allegory  and  in  a  sort  of  modified  "  rhetoric." 
But  hardly  a  single  stanza,  certainly  no  single  page,  can  be  read 
by  a  poetically  minded  reader  without  his  being  well  aware  that  an 
entirely  new  music  is  sounding  in  his  ears,  a  music  of  which  per- 
haps a  faint,  far-off  anticii)ation  may  be  discovered  in  the  "  Cressid " 
stanzas  of  Henryson  already  so  highly  praised,  but  which  is  now  fully 
organised  in  diapason.  This  is  by  no  means  due  merely,  though  it 
is  in  part,  to  the  fact  that  the  writer  has  entirely  shaken  off  the 
metrical  palsy  of  the  fifteenth  century  itself,  and  has,  moreover, 
emerged  from  the  swaddling-clothes  of  the  transition  prosody. 
Even  his  archaism  does  not  make  Sackville  stiff;  even  such  un- 
comely survival-catchwords  of  poetic  diction  as  '"hugy"  do  not 
make  him  stale  or  flat.  He  has  thoroughly  saturated  and  in- 
formed his  old  stanza  with  the  vigour  and  variety  of  the  new  line 
which  the  poets  from  Wyatt  onwards  had  been  gingerly  and  tenta- 
tively fingering  at.  He  has  not  the  slightest  need  of  the  clumsy 
stop-at-the-end  with  wliich  they  are  wont  to  stay  themselves  like 
skaters  in  their  novitiate,  who  bring  themselves  up  by  digging  in  a 

1  Tlie  allilctic  Haslewood  grappli-d  witli  tlio  whok;  in  his  3  vol.  rejirint  (1815), 
but  the  adventure  lias  not  been  ro-attemptcd. 
S 


2s8     ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     BK.  v 

pointed  stick  for  fear  of  slipping,  and  never  dare  strike  out.  It  can- 
not be  expected  that  he  should  have  mastered  (as  indeed  nobody  did 
till  Shakespeare)  the  crowning  secret  of  English  verse,  the  glorious 
liberty  of  the  ubiquitous  pause.  But  he  already  knows  how  to  vary 
it,  is  under  no  such  superstition  as  Gascoigne's  about  the  neces- 
sarily "  middle "  place,  and  rings  the  changes  not  merely  upon  it, 
but  upon  stopped  and  unstopped  lines,  with  a  master's  audacity  and 
sureness. 

Nor  is  this  all.  His  merely  formal  improvements  no  doubt 
help  him  to  attain,  but  by  no  means  wholly  account  for,  the  new 
music  referred  to  above.  It  has  been  said  that  the  fifteenth  century 
itself  was  strongly  impressed,  more  strongly  than  the  Middle  Ages 
themselves,  with  the  terror  of  death  —  that 

Timor  mortis  conturbat  me 

was  more  than  a  mere  literary  catchword  with  it.  But  this  mere 
terror  is  here  changed,  in  English  verse  for  the  first  time,  to  that 
greater  and  nobler  Renaissance  melancholy,  the  sighs  of  which 
served  as  wind  to  blow  the  organ  music  that  distinguishes  the  best 
European  poetry  generally,  and  the  best  English  poetry  in  particular, 
from  about  1550  or  later  for  a  hundred  years  onwards,  and  the  last 
echoes  of  which  die  away  in  the  poetic  prose  of  Browne  and  the 
Pindaric  verse  of  the  better  part  of  Cowley.  The  Iiiduction,  where 
Sorrow  in  person  leads  the  poet  to  the  infernal  regions  and  shows 
him  the  doleful  places ;  the  Complaint,  with  its  story  of  civil  war 
and  public  treason  and  private  treachery  and  royal  ingratitude,  lend 
themselves,  of  course,  very  well  to  the  play  to  be  played  on  this  pipe, 
but  it  must  be  remembered  that  they  equally  well  invite  the  mere 
doleful  dulness  which  the  poets  of  the  fifteenth  century  too  often 
pei;mit  themselves.  Sackville  is  not  quite  so  far  from  this  in  the 
Complaint,  where  the  difficulty  of  telling  actual  historical  details  con- 
fronts him,  as  he  is  in  the  Induction,  where  poetry  has  free  play; 
but  he  is  far  from  it  in  both,  and  absolutely  at  the  other  pole  in  the 
first  piece.  Passages  in  it  have  been  made  familiar  by  many  histories 
and  anthologies,  but  the  whole  of  its  500  lines  or  so  ought  to  be 
known  by  every  one  who  desires  to  acquaint  himself  with  the  full 
range  of  the  powers  of  English  poetry.  Campbell,  whose  naturally 
excellent  taste  was  still  vitiated  by  eighteenth-century  fallacies,  could 
see  little  in  it  but  gloom,  though  he  admitted  its  poetry.  The  truth 
is  that  the  poetry  should  make  us  forget  the  gloom,  or  rather  remem- 
ber it  only  as  the  vehicle,  the  occasion  by  which  the  poetry  is  exhibited. 
Sackville  never  lets  mere  "dismals"  get  the  upper  hand;  it  is  always 
the  poetry  of  the  dismal  that  he  keeps  before  us.     And  this  is  the 


CHAP.  Ill  PRELIMINARIES  — VERSE  259 

gift  that  we  find  before  perhaps  only  in  Chaucer,  the  gift  of  making  the 
subject,  whatever  it  is,  quite  subsidiary  —  a  mere  cup  in  which  to  present 
to  us  the  wine  of  poetry,  a  mere  canvas  on  which  to  display  its  colours 
and  forms.  The  cup  and  the  canvas  are  indeed  necessary ;  we  could 
not  have  the  picture  or  the  draught  without  them.  But  they  are 
merely  inseparable  accidents ;  the  property  is  the  poetry. 


CHAPTER   IV 

SPENSER   AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES 

The  Leicester  House  circle  —  Sidney  —  His  life — The  sonnets — The  Defence  of 
Poesy  —  "YYie.  Arcadia  —  Spenser  —  The  "classical  metre"  craze  —  Other  poets 
of  Sidney's  circle  —  Watson  —  Greville  —  Warner  —  The  sonneteers  of  1592-96 
—  Constable  —  The  satirists 

The  gossiping  and  personal  side  of  literary  history  has  always 
attracted  rather  excessive  than  insufficient  attention.  And  it  has 
naturally  not  been  neglected  in  the  endeavours   to   account  for  the 

sudden  transformation,  about  the  year  1579-80,  of  English 
Ho^use^cird"  literature  from  a  rather  dreary  nursery  ground,  in  which 

not  very  numerous  and  extremely  unskilful  workers  were 
laboriously  carrying  out  horticultural  experiments,  to  a  very  garden  of 
the  Hesperides.  A  good  deal  will  be  found  in  some  books  about 
a  certain  "  Areopagus "  at  Leicester  House,  the  equivalent  of  the 
famous  French  cenacles  of  earlier  and  later  times.  We  must  not,  of 
course,  make  too  much  of  this.  Spenser  had  certainly  found  his  way, 
if  not  fully,  before  he  was  ever  introduced  to  Leicester,  and  there  is 
little  or  no  evidence  that  the  Leicester  House  influence  counted  for 
anything  at  all  in  the  great  dramatic  development. 

But  the  coterie  just  mentioned  did  play  a  part,  important,  though 
not  to  be  exaggerated,  in  the  new  development.  It  included  Sidney, 
Spenser,   the   future   Lord   Brooke,    Harvey,   Dyer,   and   others,   with 

the   occasional   accession   of  notable   foreigners,   such   as 

Giordano  Bruno,  and  the  participation  of  ladies,  of  whom 
Sidney's  sister,  the  Countess  of  Pembroke,  was  the  chief.  Nor  is 
there  any  reason  to  doubt  that  Sidney  was  in  reality,  as  well  as  in 
position  and  rank,  its  centre  and  head.  His  genius  was  indeed 
inferior  to  Spenser's  by  a  long  way.  But  it  exceeded  that  of  any 
other  of  the  members,  and  it  is  peculiarly  noticeable  that  it  looked  in 
more  directions  than  one.  For  a  young  man  —  he  was  but  just  over 
thirty  when  he  died  —  living  in  a  time  with,  so  to  speak,  no  literary 
background,  with  no  master  to  imitate,  no  blazing  popularity  to  envy 

260 


CHAP.  IV  SPENSER   AND    HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  261 

and  seek  to  share,  it  is  no  mean  thing  to  have  left  the  Arcadia^  the 
Defence  of  Poesy,  and  Astrophel,  with  minor  things  accomplished,  and 
with  a  sort  of  tradition  of  established  influence  which  is  inferior  to  that  of 
few  in  our  literature.  The  tradition  might  have  been  a  fond  imagina- 
tion or  the  work  of  flattering  parasites,  but  the  work  is  there  to 
support  and  justify  it.  The  work  may  be  flawed,  tentative,  unequal, 
but  the  tradition  is  justly  to  be  counted  in  as  no  mean  makeweight. 

Philip  Sidney  was  born  in  1554.  His  father  was  Sir  Henry 
Sidney,  afterwards  Depyty  of  Ireland ;  his  mother  Lady  Mary 
Dudley,  sister  of  Leicester  and  daughter  of  the  beheaded  queen- 
maker,  who  was  for  a  time  Duke  of  Northumberland. 
He  gave  an  early  example  of  those  public-school  friend- 
ships which  have  counted  for  so  much  in  English  history,  with 
Fulke  Greville  at  Shrewsbury ;  but  the  pair  were  not  undergraduates 
together,  for  Greville  went  to  Cambridge  and  Sidney  to  Christ 
Church.  But  it  was  probably  owing  to  Greville  tliat  Sidney,  when, 
after  much  foreign  travel,  he  settled  in  London,  came  in  contact, 
probably  about  1578,  with  Gabriel  Harvey,  and  through  Harvey  with 
Edmund  Spenser.  Sidney's  heroic  death  at  Zutphen  did  not  take 
place  till  October  1586,  and  though  his  attention  to  literature  must 
have  been  broken  by  more  than  one  employment,  he  had  the  best 
part  of  ten  years  (for  he  returned  from  his  travels  in  1575)  to 
work  in. 

The  actual  achievement  in  his  books  ^  is  high  —  much  higher  than 
has  sometimes  been  allowed ;  but  the  genius  of  Sidney  was  fine 
rather  than  vigorous.  What  is  most  eminently  remarkable  in  him, 
and  what  most  justifies  the  reputation  he  achieved  with  his  contem- 
poraries, is  the  extraordinary  way  in  which  his  performance,  under  all 
its  disadvantages,  covers  almost  the  whole  ground,  in  criticism  or  in 
creation,  of  Elizabethan  literature.  He  wrote  no  dramas  (unless  the 
juvenile  Lady  of  May  -  be  called  a  drama),  and  in  his  Defence  of 
Poesy  he  takes  what  we  now  see  (witli  the  easy  cleverness  of  pos- 
terity) to  be  the  wrong  side  about  the  kind  of  drama  to  be  cultivated. 
But  he  made  no  mistake  about  the  fatal  folly  of  Gosson's  objection  to 
drama  and  poetry  generally,  and  in  the  immortal  words  about 
"  Chevy  Chase "  he  gave,  all  unknowing  it,  the  motto  of  English 
poetry.  Nay,  he  did  more  than  this,  for  in  his  practice  of  verse, 
though  comparatively  scanty,  occasional,  and  utterly  unrevised,  he 
indicated  and  essayed  in  many  forms  the  lyric  which  was  to  be  one 

1  There  is  no  modern  edition,  I  think,  of  Sidney's  whole  Works.  Dr.  Grosart 
in  1873  collected  the  whole  Poems ;  Astrophcl  and  Stella  has  been  several  times 
separately  reprinted.  So  has  the  Defence.  Dr.  Sommer  in  1891  reprinted  hand- 
somely the  first  edition  of  the  Arcadia. 

2  A  sort  of  masque,  said  to  have  been  written  for  Elizabeth  at  Hampstead  in 
1573,  and  appended  to  some  editions  of  the  Arcadia. 


262    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S    DEATH     bk.  v 

of  the  coming  age's  chief  exploits,  and  he  struck  the  note  which  was 
to  be  the  note  of  the  poetry  of  that  age  generally.  So  too,  though 
his  prose  consists  only  of  the  tiny  critical  tractate  of  the  Defence 
and  the  large  but  rather  formless  romance  of  the  Arcadia,  he 
managed  here  also  to  exhibit  the  coming  events  with  a  wonderful 
precision  of  shadow.  In  form  this  prose  is  not  great ;  the  nearest 
approach  to  mere  flattery  in  regard  to  him  is  the  attempt,  counte- 
nanced by  no  less  a  man  than  Drayton,  to  represent  his  style  as  a 
deliberate  counterblast  to  the  extravagances  of  Lyly.  On  the  con- 
trary, there  is  nearly  as  much  "  Euphuism "  in  the  Arcadia  as  in 
Euphties^  though  it  is  Euphuism  with  a  more  definitely  Spanish 
difference.  But  it  is  true  that  the  Defetice  exhibits  a  much  more 
sober  scheme  of  prose ;  and  it  is  also  true  that  in  throwing  the 
Arcadia  into  the  form  of  the  prose  romance  Sidney  was  anticipating 
by  generations,  and  almost  by  centuries,  the  shape  into  which  certainly 
the  most  copious,  and  some  of  the  most  exquisite,  developments  of 
English  prose  were  to  be  cast. 

The  Apology  for  Poetry,  or  Defence  of  Poesy,  as  it  was  successively 

named,  must,  from  the  known  date  of  Gosson's  pamphlet,  have  been 

composed  about   1580  or   the  next  year.      The  same  period,  during 

which  Sidney  is  known  to  have  made  a  long  stay  at  Wilton  with  his 

^,  sister,  probably    saw    the    composition    of    most    of    the 

The  sonnets.        .,.,.,..  .  , 

Arcadia,  which  in  its  turn  contains  a  very  large  propor- 
tion of  the  Poems.  The  date  of  the  writing  of  the  Astrophel  and 
Stella  sonnets  is  uncertain.  Penelope  Devereux,  who  was  pretty 
certainly  Stella,  was  already  married  to  Lord  Rich  when  Sidney 
married  Frances  Walsingham  in  1583,  but  all  attempts  to  date  the 
sonnets  exactly  are  guesswork. 

Their  form  is  that  specially  English  scheme  in  which  the  triumphs 
of  Shakespeare  were  to  be  achieved,  and  which  is  arranged  in  three 
quatrains  and  a  couplet ;  while  the  rhyme  arrangement  vacillates. 
The  uncertainty,  however,  of  the  period  is  shown  in  the  occasional 
adoption  of  Alexandrines  instead  of  decasyllabics  as  the  base  verse  — 
an  undoubted  mistake,  as  the  Alexandrine  in  English  is  too  long  a 
line  to  adapt  itself  in  bulk  to  any  complicated  stave. 

Many  minor  details  show,  as  this  does,  the  immaturity  of  the 
writer,  and  the  fact  that  he  was  writing,  so  to  speak,  in  the  dark,  or 
only  with  the  dim  lights  of  Surrey.  Wyatt,  and  Sackville  to  help  him. 
But  the  stuff  is  of  the  best.     The  final  line  of  the  first  sonnet  — 

Fool !  said   my  muse  to  me,  look  in  thy  heart  and  write; 

the  splendid  soar  of  the  opening  of  the  seventh  — 

When  Nature  made  her  chief  work,  Stella's  eyes, 
In  colour  black  why  wrapped  she  beams  so  bright? 


CHAP.  IV  SPENSER   AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  263 

the  famous  "  Moon "  sonnet,  familiar  from  many  anthologies,  and 
exhibiting  in  the  most  interesting  fashion  the  superiority  of  the 
opening  couplet  —  of  the  first  jet — to  what  follows;  the  enigmatical 
"  I  might,"  on  which  many  hypotheses  have  been  built ;  the  various 
"  Sleep  "  sonnets,  exercises  in  a  most  favourite  tourney  of  the  age ; 
the  interesting 

I  never  drank  of  Aganippe's  well; 

the  brilliant  extravagance  of  the  "  Edward  the  Fourth  "  piece ;  and 
the  stately  music  of  the  hundred  and  seventh  and  hundred  and  tenth 
sonnets  — 

Stella,  since  thou  of  right  a  princess  art, 
and 

Leave  me,  oh  love,  which  reaches  but  to  dust,  — 

these  things,  with  many  others,  make  up  a  tale  which  in  the  circum- 
stances is  merely  astounding.  The  songs  included  in  Astrophel  and 
Stella,  with  one  exception,  are  a  little  inferior  to  the  sonnets,  but  they 
are  not  less  interesting,  inasmuch  as  the  effort  to  secure  a  lyric 
medium  is  obvious,  and  though  not  quite  successful,  is  not  wholly 
defeated.  The  heavy  thud  of  the  best  work  of  Googe  and  Church- 
yard, even  of  Turberville  and  Gascoigne,  is  gone.  We  do  not  yet 
quite  '*  sing,"  but  we  have  quite  got  rid  of  the  fatal  drop  into  unques- 
tioned "  saying."  And  in  all  Sidney's  verse  —  the  Arcadia  fragments, 
the  Psalm  versions,  etc.  —  this  sense  of  the  broken  ice,  of  the  fleeing 
winter,  of  "  Lent  coming  with  love  to  town  "  at  last,  is  the  pervading 
charm. 

The    virtues    of    his    prose   are  different,   and    have   been   partly 
anticipated.     The  Apology  ox  Defence  (first  printed  as  the  former  in 
1595)  has  so  far  an  interest  of  style  that  it  is  in  parts  straightforwardly 
and  vigorously  written.     But  its  interest  of  matter  far   outruns  this. 
Gosson    (see   note    ante)    had   exhibited   the   clash  of  the   two   cur- 
rents of  the  day  which  had   most  force  in   them  —  the  scholarly  and 
literary    impulse   on   the   one   hand,   and    the    Puritan  "  craving   for 
righteousness,"  as  some  call  it  (the  intense  desire  to  make  somebody 
else    uncomfortable    even   at   a   slight   sacrifice   to   yourself,   as   it   is 
phrased  by  others).     Sidney,  a  scholar,  a  poet  to  the  bone,  and  an 
experienced  politician,  young  as  he  was,   must  have  felt  the  danger, 
and  may  have  attempted  a  sort  of  fnodiis  vivendi ;  yet  much  of  the 
Apoloi^Vs   in    its   exaltation    of    the    classical    theories,   is 
merely   an   echo    of   what    had    been   said    twenty   years      o/Poesy." 
earlier   by  the  Pldiade  in  France,  if  not   of  the   common 
form  of  the   Renaissance  in  all  countries.     It    is  unlucky,    no   doubt, 
that  he  joins  the  heretics  who  say  that  verse  is  only  an  accident  of 
poetry,    and    that    he    condemns    that   very   mixture    of    tragedy  and 


264    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH    ek.  v 

comedy  which  at  the  moment  in  two  different  countries,  Spain  and 
England,  was  'raising  and  to  raise  the  drama  to  such  a  height  as  it 
had  nevet  previously  attained.  But  no  one  can  be  more  wise  than 
destiny. 

The  Arcadia  is,  except  in  scale,  less  interesting,  if  only  for  the 
tolerably  sutficient  reason  that  it  is  excessively  difficult  to  make  out 
exactly  how  much  of  it  is  Sidney's  at  all.  He  wished,  it  is  said,  on 
his  death-bed,  to  burn  it.  But  his  sister  would  not  consent,  and  as 
The  Countess  of  Pembroke'' s  Arcadia  it  was  published  in  1590.  It 
is  an  obvious  following  of  the  late  Greek  romances  and  the  Spanish 
Amadis  series,  in  the  spirit  which  was  at  the  same  time,  or  a  little 
later,  to  bring  forth  Honord  d'Urfd's  Astree  and  the  enormous  roll 
of  French  imitations.  It  is  thus  principally  noticeable  in  scheme  as 
an  instance  of  the  impulse  towards  prose  fiction  which  has  affected 
all  ages,  though  it  never  came  to  anything  till  long  after 
Sidney's  death.  The  high  heroic  spirit  it  displays  capti- 
vated all  good  wits  in  its  own  and  the  following  generation.  But  it  is 
a  "  TeHdenz-hooV  "  rather  than  a  book  in  itself,  and  it  illustrates  the 
eager  striving  which  animated  Sidney's  circle  with  less  success  than 
Astrophel  and  Stella.  The  mannerisms  of  its  style,  which  have 
puzzled  and  misled  commentators,  appear,  as  has  been  said,  to  be 
directly  imitated  from  the  Spanish.^ 

It  may  be  thought  that  too  much  space  is  given  to  Sidney. 
Yet  his  personality  does  seem  in  some  strange  way  to  have  rayed 
out  more  influence  than  that  of  any  man  of  his  generation.  And  his 
positive  achievement  has  been  more  often  belittled  than  exaggerated. 
Indeed,  if  Edmund  Spenser  himself  had  died  when  Sidney  did,  and  if 
nothing  of  his  survived  but  what  was  published  before  that  date,  there 
would  be  poetical  justification  for  calling  Sidney  the  greater,  though 
the  less  accomplished,  poet  of  the  two. 

Very  little  is  known,  though  a  good  deal  has  been  laboriously 
inferred  and  conjectured,  about  Spenser's  parentage  and  his  early  years 
generally.  There  is  no  reasonable  doubt  that  he  was  of  a  family  of 
Spensers  settled  near  Burnley  in  Lancashire ;  but  he  was 
.pens  r.  |^qj.^  Jj^  London  about  1552.  He  appears  to  have  been  a 
Merchant  Taylors'  boy,  and  certainly  matriculated  at  Pembroke  Hall, 
Cambridge,  in  1569.  He  seems  to  have  been  poor,  and  was  assisted 
from  charitable  funds.  But  if  (and  there  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt 
of  it)  the  translations  from  Petrarch  and  Du  Bellay  into  Enghsh  blank 
verse,  which  appeared  in  the  same  year  in  Van  der  Noodt's  Theatre  of 
Voluptjtous  Worldlings,  and  which  in  1591  were,  with  alterations  from 
blank  verse  to  rhyme,  reprinted  as  his,  be  genuine,  they  are  evidence 

1  See  p.  271  sq.  of  Mr.  David  Hannay's  The  Later  Renaissance  (Edinburgh, 
1898). 


CHAP.  IV  SPENSER   AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  265 

that  he  was  a  very  promising  scholar.  He  remained  at  College  for 
the  then  usual  seven  years,  taking  his  Bachelor's  degree  in  1573,  and 
his  Master's  in  1576.  He  was  not  fortunate  enough  to  change  his 
sizarship  for  a  fellowship,  and  seems  to  have  left  Cambridge  for  the 
North  with  very  dubious  prospects.  He  had,  however,  made  friends 
with  a  man  somewhat  older  than  himself,  Gabriel  Harvey,  a  Fellow  of 
Trinity  Hall.  By  1578  Harvey  had,  in  some  way  or  other,  secured 
the  patronage  of  the  powerful  favourite  Leicester,  and  he  wrote  to 
Spenser  to  come  and  share  his  good  luck.  Whether,  as  is  at  least  ■ 
probable,  this  was  the  origin  of  Spenser's  introduction  to  Sidney, 
Leicester's  nephew,  or  whether,  as  suggested  above,  Fulke  Greville 
had  made  the  Cambridge  literary  group  known  to  his  school-fellow,  is 
impossible  to  say,  and  does  not  matter ;  indeed,  the  two  things  are 
quite  compatible.  But  Spenser  was  unquestionably  from  this 
time  enlisted  in  the  Leicester  House  set,  and  he  seems  to  have 
been  sent  by  Leicester  to  France  in  the  autumn  of  1579.  Next 
year  he  was  made  secretary  to  Lord  Grey  of  Wilton,  Deputy  of 
Ireland,  and  with  him  was  present  at  the  famous  Smerwick  business, 
where  a  crew  of  Spanish  and  Papal  filibusters  were  put  to  the  sword, 
on  the  loth  of  November.  He  did  not  leave  Ireland  with  Grey,  but 
received  various  offices  there,  and  in  1588  obtained,  or  rather  bought, 
an  allotment  of  some  three  thousand  acres  of  the  forfeited  Desmond 
lands  in  County  Cork  at  Kiicolman,  w^here  he  proceeded  to  reside, 
buying  also  the  office  of  Clerk  of  the  Council  of  Munster.  In  1589 
he  went  back  to  England,  being  now  under  the  protection  of  another 
favourite,  Raleigh.  He  spent  at  least  part  of  two  years  in  London, 
frequenting  the  Court  and  playing  the  part  of  suitor,  not  without 
some  grumbling.  But  he  obtained  a  pension  of  ^50  a  year, 
a  considerable  sum  for  the  time  and  sovereign,  against,  as  tradition 
has  it,  the  influence  of  Burleigh.  Three  years  later,  at  the  mature 
age  of  forty-two,  but  with  poetical  results  worthy  of  twenty,  he 
married  a  certain  Elizabeth,  probably  Elizabeth  Boyle.  He  went 
back  again  to  London  in  1595  ;  but  the  end  of  his  days  was  not  far 
off.  In  1597  he  returned  to  Kiicolman  with  his  wife  and  three,  soon 
to  be  four,  cliildren.  He  became  Sheriff  of  Cork  in  September  1598, 
and  immediately  afterwards  Tyrone's  rebellion  broke  out,  Kiicolman 
was  burnt,  and  Spenser  fled,  first  to  Cork  and  then  to  London,  where, 
in  January  1599,  he  died,  there  is  no  trustworthy  evidence  from  what 
cause. 

Spenser's  life,  though  the  facts  are  scanty,  is  not  uninteresting,  and 
it  is  not  quite  unimportant  to  know  that  he  shared  the  strenuous 
and  varied  living  of  his  great  time;  but  he  might  not  have  done  this 
and  yet  be  one  of  the  foremost  figures  of  English  literature.  His 
plans    and    projects   were    numerous   and    early ;  not  a   few   of  them 


266    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  V 

seem  to  have  been  actually  carried  out,  though  no  remains 
exist.  But  his  exile  in  the  hills  of  the  North,  though  it  seems  to  have 
witnessed  an  unhappy  love-affair  with  the  "  Rosalind"  of  the  Calendar, 
gave  him  time  to  exercise  poetical  genius.  Nearly  ten  years  had 
passed  since  he  showed  what  he  could  do  as  a  mere  boy  in  Van  der 
Noodt's  book,  when  this  his  first  real  work  appeared,  ushered  and 
commented  on  by  one  "E.  K.,"  "from  my  lodging  at  London  this 
loth  of  April  1579,"  dedicated  to  Sidney  and  addressed  by  the  editor 
to  Gabriel  Harvey. 

About  this  "E.  K."  disputes  have  arisen.  One  monstrous  theory 
has  been  started  to  the  effect  that  it  was  Spenser  in  mask  —  a  theory 
of  which  all  that  can  be  said  is  that,  if  it  be  true,  Spenser,  instead 
of  being,  as  he  is  generally  taken  to  have  been,  one  of  the  noblest 
and  most  high-minded  of  English  men  of  letters,  was  a  shameless 
self-puffer.  Further,  the  style  and  general  tone  are  unlike  Spenser's, 
and  argue  very  little  original  genius  or  even  talent  in  the  writer. 
That  Spenser  may  have  supplied  some  of  the  information  is  very 
probable,  and  would  not  be  in  the  least  discreditable.  Meanwhile 
"E.  K."  is  identified,  in  fair  likelihood,  with  a  certain  Edward  Kirke, 
a  contemporary  and  friend  of  Harvey  and  Spenser.  He  supplies  a 
good  deal  of  elaborate  ushering,  some  not  useless  glossarial  and  other 
exposition,  a  few  comments,  harmless  if  nothing  more.  If  he  is  to  be 
believed,  he  wrote  other  commentaries  on  works  of  Spenser's  which 
have  not  come  down  to  us. 

As  for  the  Calendar  itself,  it  is  a  collection  of  twelve  eclogues, 
one  for  each  month  of  the  year,  and  mostly,  though  not  always,  in 
dialogue.  There  is  no  prevailing  metre,  the  first  eclogue  being  in 
the  six-line  stanza ;  the  second  in  the  famous  metre  which,  as  we 
have  seen,  is  found  as  far  back  as  the  Genesis  and  Exodus  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  but  which  Coleridge  thought  himself  to  have 
invented,  and  certainly  re-invented,  in  Christabel ;  the  third  in  another 
six-line  stanza  of  shorter  lines ;  the  fourth  divided  between  elegiac 
quatrains  and  a  lyric  stave  ;  the  fifth  in  Chaucerian  riding  rhyme  ;  the 
sixth  in  octaves ;  the  seventh  in  the  rather  lolloping  eights  and  sixes 
which  the  earliest  Elizabethan  poets  had  loved ;  the  eighth  partly  in 
sixains,  partly  in  eights  and  sixes,  treated  with  more  freedom  than 
before ;  the  ninth  again  in  the  Christabel  form ;  the  tenth  in  a 
different  sixain;  the  eleventh  again  in  quatrains  and  a  sort  of  Pindaric  ; 
and  the  twelfth  in  the  sixains  of  the  first.  Each  has  at  the  end  one 
or  more  "  emblems  "  —  a  variety  of  the  "posies"  so  much  affected  by 
the  Elizabethans. 

The  general  scheme  of  the  poem  or  poems  was  taken  naturally 
from  preceding  eclogue-writers  —  Theocritus,  Virgil,  and  the  moderns, 
Mantuan,    Marot,    and   so   forth.     The   language    (as   ought  to  have 


CHAP.  IV  SPENSER   AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  267 

been  seen  from  the  first,  and  indeed  was  partly)  is  not  a  natural 
dialect  of  any  kind  or  district,  but  partly  imitated  from  Chaucer, 
partly  seasoned  with  Northern  words.  It  is  much  cruder  and  more 
unskilfully  archaic  than  the  exquisite  vocabulary  which  Spenser  was 
soon  to  work  out  for  the  Faerie  Qtieene,  and  is  chiefly  responsible 
for  Ben  Jonson's  too  cavalier  sentence  that  Spenser  "  in  imitating  the 
ancients  writ  no  language." 

The  Shepherd's  Calendar''-  does  not  contain  any  of  the  finest 
passages  of  its  author's  poetry,  but  it  at  least  shows  the  existence  of 
an  instrument  on  which  the  finest  passages  of  poetry  could  be  played. 
For  the  next  ten  years  Spenser  was  busy  on  other  things  as  well 
as  on  poetry,  and  it  was  not  till  the  ist  of  December  1589  that  the 
first  three  books  of  the  Faerie  Queene  were  entered  at  Stationers 
Hall.  They  appeared  in  the  following  spring.  In  1591  a  volume 
containing  The  Ruins  of  Time,  The  Tears  of  the  Muses,  Virgits  Gnat, 
Mother  Hubbard's  Tale,  The  Ruins  of  Rome,  Muiopottnos,  and  the 
Visions,  and  including,  as  has  been  said,  a  revision  of  the  twenty 
years  earlier  juvenilia,  was  published.  It  is  worth  noticing  that 
Spenser  here  for  himself,  as  Kirke  had  earlier  done  for  him,  gives  a 
list  of  promised  books  which  never  appeared.  This  phenomenon 
is  by  no  means  uncommon  in  literature,  and  it  may  be  set  down 
with  equal  probability  to  an  active  imagination  outrunning  possibility, 
and  to  a  ruthless  critical  temper  which  would  not  allow  anything 
that  it  did  not  think  perfect  to  appear.  This  volume  was  generally 
entitled  Complaints,  Spenser  at  this  time  being  in  melancholy  mood, 
and  Daphnaida,  which  followed,  exhibits  the  same  drift.  His  marriage 
changed  his  tone  remarkably,  and  1595  saw  the  Anioretti  sonnets, 
the  Epiihalamiufn,  and  Colin  Clout's  Come  Home  Again;  while  at  the 
very  earliest  of  1596,  the  completion  of  the  Faerie  Queene,  except 
the  odd  cantos,  was  published,  with  the  glorious  Four  Hymns,  and 
the  Frothalamium,  not  like  the  Epithalamium  on  himself,  followed. 
He  published  nothing  more,  his  prose  State  of  Ireland  not  appearing 
till  long  afterwards.  There  are  no  Spenserian  Apocrypha  worth 
mentioning,  save  Britain's  Ida,  a  pretty  poem,  but  quite  obviously 
of  a  later  cast,  in  the  key  of  the  imitations  of  Shakespeare's  two 
earlier   poems  and   Marlowe's   Hero  and  Leander. 

Almost  jthe  whole  of  this  later  work  (with,  in  the  case  of  the 
1 591  volume,  exceptions  for  some  evidently  early  things  not  quite 
perfectly  revised)  stands  on  the  same  level  and  deserves  the  same 
praise.     The  towering  bulk  and  the  substantive  interest  of  the  Faerie 

1  The  title  was  undoubtedly  taken  from  a  book  extremely  popular  in  divers 
languages  with  the  generation  before  —  a  work  of  astrological,  medical,  moral,  and 
miscellaneous  information,  the  early  English  form  of  which  has  been  reprinted  by 
Dr.  Sommcr,  London,  1892. 


268    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH    BK.  v 

Queeiie  give  it  the  necessary  supremacy  among  its  smaller  peers. 
But  if  they  stood  alone  without  the  epic  and  without  the  Calendar,  we 
should  undoubtedly  be  deploring  the  unkind  fate  which  had  prevented 
the  poet  who  gave  us  these  from  giving  us  anything  greater.  The 
1 59 1  volume  and  Daphnaida  rank  much  nearer  to  the  Calendar  than 
the  rest  of  the  minor  works ;  their  positive  beauty  is  not  of  the 
absolutely  commanding  order.  Yet  there  is  a  certain  advance  in  the 
mastery  of  mere  verse,  in  the  faculty  of  communicating  "  cry  "  and 
echo.  And  in  Mother  Hubbard^s  Tale  there  has  been  generally  and 
rightly  noticed  the  exhibition  of  a  satirical  faculty  which  is  not 
subsidiary,  which  is  complementary,  to  the  faculties  displayed  in  the 
Faerie  Queene. 

But  the  others  are  of  far  higher  quality.  The  Prothala7nmm  for 
Lady  Elizabeth  and  Lady  Katherine  Somerset  is  a  delightful  poem ; 
but  it  naturally  lacks  the  personal  passion  of  the  Atnoretti  and  the 
Epithalamiiitn^  the  former  the  best  early  sonnets  in  final  couplet  form 
next  to  Shakespeare,  the  latter  by  common  consent  unsurpassed  in 
its  own  kind,  as  are  the  Four  Hymns  in  theirs.  These  poems, 
which  it  is  very  desirable  to  take  together,  express  a  peculiar 
Renaissance  note,  the  union  of  intellectual  and  sensual  rapture, 
as  no  others  do.  And  their  form  corresponds  to  their  matter.  The 
poet  can  by  this  time  do  anything  he  likes  with  rhyme  and  rhythm, 
with  language  and  metrical  scheme.  No  bead-roll  of  the  greatest 
poems  in  English,  which  disregards  conditions  of  mere  bulk,  can  omit 
the  Epithalaniirun  and  the  Fotir  Hymns. 

Nevertheless  the  Faerie  Queene,  the  best  known,  is  also  the  best 
of  Spenser's  work.  In  this  great  poem,  which  some  have  put  first 
for  actual  greatness,  and  which  can  hardly  in  any  competent  estimate 
yield  the  place  for  charm,  if  not  for  majesty,  among  long  poems  in 
English,  Spenser  displays  at  the  very  full  all  the  gifts  and  graces 
which  he  showed  in  his  minor  work,  and  more.  The  Calettdar  and 
the  Sonnets,  the  Epit/ialamium  and  the  Hymns,  are  but  the  chapels 
and  chantries  of  the  cathedral  of  the  Faerie  Qjiee?ie.  Rather  strange 
attempts  have  sometimes  been  made  to  belittle  the  achievement, 
which  is  the  most  striking  and  the  most  pervading  in  the  book, 
the  invention  of  the  Spenserian  stanza.  Some  have  even  said  that 
he  "took  it  from  the  Italians,"  which  in  any  sense  which,  is  not  next 
to  nonsense  is  simply  false.  Others  have  dismissed  it  as  a  simple 
putting  of  an  Alexandrine  on  to  the  eight-line  stanza.  The  fact  is 
that  it  is  one  of  the  crowning  achievements  of  poetical  inspiration  in 
form.  It  stands  alone  in  the  combination  of  individual  beauty  and 
faculty,  with  suitableness  to  a  long  connected  poem.  Naturally,  and 
it  might  seem  inevitably,  the  latter  quality  is  found  in  nearly  all 
verse  forms  to  exist  in  inverse  ratio  to  the  former.     The  Spenserian 


CHAP.  IV  SPENSER   AND    HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  269 

almost  alone  combines  the  two ;  and  while  the  single  stanza  is  often 
as  complete  and  as  beautiful  as  a  sonnet,  the  whole  flows  with  an 
evenness  and  absence  of  break  which  not  the  most  ingeniously 
arranged  "sonnet-sequence  "  has  ever  attained. 

The  poet's  success  in  language  is  certainly  more  contestable ; 
but  not  much  diminution  can  be  allowed  in  the  credit  due  for  it. 
The  extreme  and  sometimes  rather  rugged  archaism  of  the  Calendar 
has  been  smoothed  away,  and  Spenser's  immense  advance  in  melody 
at  once  makes  it  easy  for  him  to  select  only  beautiful  words,  and  un- 
necessary for  him  to  carry  archaism  beyond  a  slight  degree.  It  is 
but  now  and  then  that  there  would  be  any  difficulty  in  printing  a 
stanza  of  the  Faerie  Queene  in  modern  spelling  without  a  single  strange 
word,  though  no  doubt  the  poet  sometimes  sees  his  account  in  using 
licenses  both  in  vocabulary  and  spelling. 

With  such  a  metre  and  such  a  lexicon  marvels  in  verbal  music 
become  almost  easy.  Hardly  any  two  stanzas  of  this  enormous  work 
will  be  found  exactly  to  repeat  each  other  in  cadence.  The  secrets 
of  varying  the  caesura  of  the  line  and  of  using  or  abstaining  from 
enjafiibemeiit  or  overlapping,  which  have  been  by  turns  ignored,  re- 
covered, and  abused,  and  on  which  rests  practically  the  whole  art 
of  rescuing  any  metre  from  monotony,  were  perfectly  well  known  to 
Spenser,  and  as  cunningly  used  by  him  as  by  any  of  his  followers. 
Nor  can  he  be  said  to  be  ignorant,  though  he  employs  them  rather 
less,  of  the  other  two  great  metrical  secrets,  the  use  of  trisyllabic 
feet  and  the  distribution  of  words  of  varying  weight  and  length  over 
the  line. 

As  for  subject,  Spenser's  was  a  great  one ;  and  it  was  capable, 
even  in  his  own  time,  of  being  regarded  from  curiously  diverse  points 
of  view.  Half  told  as  the  tale  is,  it  is  impossible  to  be  certain  how 
far  Spenser  had  a  fixed  plan  of  adjusting  the  whole  to  that  slightly 
concealed  allegory  of  the  state  of  England  which,  though  too  much 
attention  may  be  paid  to  it,  the  poem  does  contain.  There  was  more 
than  the  mere  court iership  of  the  time  in  the  obvious  glances  at 
Queen  Elizabeth,  not  merely  in  Gloriana,  but  in  Belphcebe,  and 
perhaps  to  some  extent  in  Britomart.  We  may  wish  that  there  were 
less  colour  for  the  hint  of  Leicester  in  Prince  Arthur,  and  of  Queen 
Mary  in  Duessa,  and  it  may  seem  rather  idle  curiosity  to  inquire 
whether  Artegall  really  has  anything  to  do  with  Lord  Grey  of  Wilton, 
where  Raleigh  comes  in,  and  so  forth.  There  can,  however,  be  no 
doubt  that  there  is  a  certain  amount  of  double  meaning  of  the  kind, 
that  it  interested  contemporaries,  and  that  it  was  intended  to  lead  up 
to  some  sort  of  end.  Indeed,  the  general  story  of  the  chief  characters, 
though  very  slowly  and  with  vast  overlayings,  does  make  some  prog- 
ress even  as  it  is  amid   tlic   completer  historiettcs  of  the  adventures 


270    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

of  the  several  Knights  of  the  Virtues,  and  the  almost  bewildering 
panorama  of  beautiful  pictures  which  the  poet  calls  up  at  every  step, 
and  which  no  doubt  constitute  the  main  interest  and  delight  of  the 
poem  to  modern  readers. 

To  Spenser,  moreover,  as  to  all  the  great  men  of  his  great  genera- 
tion, virtue  and  vice  were  not  commonplaces  in  any  sense  that  ad- 
mitted of  their  being  despicable  or  negligible.  By  a  redoublement 
of  his  allegory  —  not  so  much  the  allegory,  which  had  not  yet  entirely 
relaxed  its  very  tyrannous  hold  on  the  later  Middle  Ages,  as  that 
which  must  always  maintain  its  grasp  on  poetry  —  the  Faerie 
Qiieene  was  also  intended  to  be  a  picture  of  Life,  of  Conduct,  worked 
out  by  the  treatment  of  certain  great  Virtues  or  excellences.  Holiness, 
Temperance,  and  Chastity,  Friendship,  Justice,  and  Courtesy  are 
celebrated  in  the  books  actually  existing.  Magnificence,  in  the  full 
Aristotelian  sense  (though  he  must  rather  have  meant  Magnanimity), 
was  intended,  we  learn,  at  once  to  provide  the  special  subject  of 
another,  and,  as  exemplified  by  Prince  Arthur,  to  appear  in  and 
dominate  them  all.  But  of  the  actual  distribution  of  the  last  six 
books  no  trustworthy  testimony  remains,  and  only  tradition  vouches 
for  the  fact  that  they,  or  some  of  them,  perished  in  the  sack  of 
Kilcolman.  Only  the  odd  "  cantos  of  Mutability,"  intended  to  be  at- 
tached to  a  book  of  Constancy,  survive ;  and  as  they  are  not 
inferior  (they  contain  the  gorgeous  procession  of  the  Months  and 
Seasons)  to  the  very  best  of  the  earlier  work,  it  is  pretty  certain  that 
what  we  have  lost  would  be  no  disappointment  if  it  were  found. 
Indeed  it  is,  for  many  sound  reasons  of  poetical  criticism,  extremely 
probable  that  Spenser  proceeded  on  the  plan  of  indulging  his  genius 
by  the  composition  of  great  fragments  such  as  this,  and,  instead  of 
hastily  cobbling  up  a  context,  left  them  till  he  could  worthily  work 
them  into  the  larger  whole. 

It  is  not  true  that  such  passages,  though  they  are  not  perhaps 
very  difficult  to  identify  and  separate  nowadays,  form  the  sole  or 
even  the  chief  attraction  of  the  poem.  On  the  contrary,  they  are 
never  so  beautiful  as  in  their  proper  places ;  and  the  Faerie  Qjieene, 
more  than  almost  any  other  poem,  demands  and  deserves  to  be  read  as 
a  whole  if  its  full  charm  is  to  be  comprehended  and  enjoyed.  But 
there  is  no  reasonable  doubt  that  the  accessories  of  Spenser's  scheme 
have  become  of  more  importance  in  poetical  appeal  than  those  things 
which  to  him  were  perhaps  the  chief.  We  shall  never,  if  we  are  wise, 
forget  that  he  is,  as  Milton  called  him,  "  our  sage  and  serious  Spenser," 
but  wisdom  will  still  insist  that  we  regard  him  first  of  all  as  the  poet 
and  prophet  of  Beauty  —  the  beauty  of  heaven  and  of  earth  alike. 

This  is  perhaps  the  best  place  to  notice  a  strange  craze  already 
referred   to,  which  seems   at   one   time   to   have   been   in   danger  of 


CHAP.  IV  SPENSER   AND    HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  271 

seriously  infecting  Spenser —  the  projected  "reform"  of  English  verse 
by  the  production  of  actual  classical  metres,  especially  hexameters. 

This  was  a  general  and,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  a  not  quite  unin- 
telligible mania  of  the  Renaissance  generally,  and  had  been  tried  in 
other  countries  besides  England.  The  reason  of  it  is  perfectly  plain. 
The  eager  spirits  of  the  day  in  both  France  and  England 
had  outgrown  the  good  old  verse  of  their  respective  meue"craz^c^ 
nations ;  they  thought  (and  rightly)  that  the  recent 
verse  was  not  very  good,  and  being  as  yet  novices  in  comparative 
criticism,  they  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  what  they  justly 
admired  in  Greek  and  Latin  poetry  might  be  reproduced,  or  at  least 
rivalled,  by  the  use  of  an  identical  prosody.  It  was  certain  that  such 
a  learned  body  as  the  Sidneian  clique  would  at  least  not  reject  this 
notion  ab  initio,  and  for  a  time  it  seems  to  have  received  a  favourable 
hearing  there.  Ascham,  a  delightful  prose  writer  but  of  a  most  un- 
poetical  turn,  had  advocated  the  thing  long  before,  and  a  certain 
Thomas  Drant,  a  contemporary  of  Ascham's,  had  left  certain  post- 
humous ''rules  "'  on  the  subject. 

This  mania  was  taken  up,  either  from  crotchet  or  sincerely,  by 
many  inside  and  out  Sidney's  circle,  including  the  meritorious  critic 
Webbe  (vide  infra),  and  by  none  more  than  by  Gabriel  Harvey, 
who  had  become  Fellow  of  Trinity  Hall.  Harvey  is  one  of  those 
intrinsically  unimportant  persons  who  by  accident  have  acquired  a 
very  considerable  place  in  literary  history ;  and  there  have  even  been 
fierce  battles  over  the  question  whether  he  was  a  pedant  or  not.  If 
not  it  is  very  difficult  to  know  to  whom  the  adjective  can  apply. 
He  was  a  genuine  scholar  in  his  own  way  —  pedants  very  often, 
though  not  invariably,  are.  He  deserves  much  thanks  for  the  way 
in  which  he  put  Spenser  in  the  way  of  a  preferment  which  enabled 
him  to  follow  his  genius  instead  of  languishing  as  a  poor  scholar  or 
hiding  himself  away  as  a  country  curate.  It  is  not  so  certain  that 
Harvey  was  wholly  to  blame  for  the  distaste  which  he  shov/ed  to  the 
London  Bohemian  school,  which  will  be  shortly  noticed ;  the  great 
Marprelate  dispute  in  which  he  was  mixed  up  is  still  so  mysterious  in 
parts  that  it  is  very  difficult  to  form  any  but  the  most  guarded  judg- 
ment on  any  matter  connected  with  it ;  and  it  is  certain  that  his 
principal  literary  antagonist  and  reviler,  Thomas  Nash,  was  at  least 
as  unscru]nilf)us  as  he  was  clever. 

But  Harvey  is  condemned  out  of  his  own  mouth.  It  is  not  Nash 
but  himself  who  informs  us  that  he  thought  the  Faerie  Queene—the 
greatest  poem  that  English  literature  had  yet  seen  but  one,  if  with 
that  exception,  and  the  greatest  poem  save  three  or  four,  if  with 
these  exceptions,  that  Englisli  literature  was  to  see  —  a  fantastic  trifle, 
much   inferior   to  nine  pseudo-classical    "comedies,"    probably  some- 


272    ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.v 

thing  like  Daniel's  later  ones,  which  Spenser  had  also  written,  and 
which  he  had  the  good  sense  never  to  print.  And  again  it  is  not 
Nash,  nor  any  one  who  trusts  to  Nash,  but  Harvey  who  tells  us  that 
he  believed  in  the  hexameter  craze,  that  he  exemplified  it  in  many 
preposterous  examples,  and  that  he  tried  to  force  it  on  his  contem- 
poraries. 

It  is  not  certain  how  far  Spenser  himself  was  seriously  carried 
away  by  this  lunacy.  Some  have  seen  nothing  but  irony  in  the 
somewhat  guarded  and  fair-spoken  replies  which  he  makes  to  Harvey 
on  the  subject,  and  it  is  certain  that  his  own  attempts  in  the  style 
are  few  and  rather  laboriously  ineffective,  with  a  touch  of  genius  in 
them,  than  hopelessly  mad  and  bad.  But  we  may  perhaps  see  in  his 
attitude  rather  that  of  an  honest  perplexity  striving  to  adjust  itself  to 
what  his  elders  and  betters  seemed  to  like,  but  convinced  of  their 
error  by  native  genius,  than  any  deliberate  persiflage. 

At  any  rate,  he  did  little  in  the  kind.  Others  were  less  wary, 
and  Richard  Stanyhurst,  an  Irish  gentleman,  achieved  one  of  the 
most  preposterous  books  of  English  literature  in  his  version  of  Virgil. 
Nor  did  the  craze  die  soon.  It  was  formally  revived  after  some  years, 
and  with  some  differences,  by  an  exquisite  poet  in  true  English  verse, 
Thomas  Campion,  and  formally  denounced  by  a  true  though  less 
exquisite  poet,  Samuel  Daniel.  It  animated,  as  we  shall  see,  the 
interesting  if  limited  body  of  Elizabethan  critics.  And  the  echo  of  it 
may  be  found  long  afterwards  in  Milton's  curious  heresies  about 
rhyme  —  heresies  which  may  be  set  down  in  part  to  an  innate  genius 
for  blank  verse  striving  to  assert  itself,  but  which,  seeing  that  Milton 
could  write  as  beautifully  in  rhyme  as  without  it,  may  be  more  safely 
imputed  to  the  singular  cross-grained ness,  the  innate  nonconformity, 
which  mark  the  author  of  Paradise  Lost  in  almost  every  relation  of 
life  and  literature. 

Besides  Sidney,  Spenser,  and  their  gracioso  Harvey,  the  Leicester 
House  circle  included  divers  other  men  of  letters.  Sir  Edward  Dyer, 
a  very  great  friend  of  Sidney's  and  one  of  the  pall-bearers  at  his 
funeral,  but  an  older  man,  has  the  accidental  interest  of 
S^dney'sclrcle!^  having  been  born  at  Sharpham  Park  in  Somersetshire, 
the  birthplace  nearly  two  centuries  later  of  Fielding. 
He  was  an  Oxford  man,  a  traveller,  a  diplomatist  and  courtier,  and 
he  outlived  Elizabeth,  dying  in  1607.  He  had  a  very  great  reputa- 
tion in  his  time  as  a  poet,  but  his  remains  are  small,  and  only  one  of 
them,  the  famous  and  excellent,  but  not  superexcellent, 

My  mind  to  me  a  kingdom  is, 

has  obtained  much  place  in  the  general  memory.  Abraham  Fraunce, 
a  protegi  of  Sidney's,  was  a  Shrewsbury  boy  and  a  Fellow  of  St. 


CHAP.  IV  SPENSER   AND   HIS    CONTEMPORARIES  273 

John's  College,  Cambridge.  His  name  occurs  with  fair  frequency  in 
the  literature  of  the  time,  and  he  appears  to  have  been  a  good 
scholar,  but  the  most  interesting  thing  about  him  is  that  he  quoted 
the  Faerie  Queeiie  two  years  before  it  was  published. 

More  important  than  Dyer,  and  much  more  important  than 
Fraunce,  was  Thomas  Watson,  a  rather  short-lived  bard  who  died  in 
1592  at  the  age  of  thirty-five,  but  who,  save  for  a  certain  frigidity, 
would  take  a  high  place,  and  who  perhaps,  considering 
his  earliness,  deserves  no  low  one  as  it  is.  Watson,^ 
who  was  a  Londoner  by  birth  and  an  Oxford  man  by  education, 
translated  the  Antigone  into  Latin  in  1581  ;  but  the  next  year  he  pro- 
duced an  English  verse  book  of  great  mark,  the  Hecatompathia  or  Pas- 
sionaie  Century  of  Sonnets.  This,  it  is  important  to  observe,  was  the 
very  first  of  the  great  Elizabethan  sonnet-collections,  for  Sidney's,  though 
written,  did  not  appear  till  years  afterwards,  and  it  was  the  tenth,  not 
the  ninth,  decade  of  the  century  which  saw  the  regular  sonnet  out- 
burst. Watson  was  dead  before  this,  but  after  his  death  another 
sequence,  the  Tears  of  Fancy.,  made  its  appearance,  and  he  did 
other  work. 

It  is  just  possible  that  if  Watson  had  lived  a  little  longer  (though 
he  was  outgrowing  the  ripest  poetical  age  when  he  died),  or  if  he  had 
been  born  a  little  later,  the  frigidity  above  referred  to  would  have 
been  melted.  It  appears  to  be  the  result,  not  so  much  of  any  want  of 
natural  heat  in  the  poet,  as  of  his  mind  being  somewhat  sicklied  o'er 
with  learning.  As  was  the  case  with  all  these  early  Elizabethan  poets 
of  the  great  age,  except  Spenser,  he  could  not  wear  this  learning  lightly, 
and  he  hardly  dared  use  a  phrase  or  form  a  wish  if  somebody  Greek 
or  Roman,  somebody  French  or  Italian,  had  not  authorised  the  pro- 
ceeding. That  the  sonnets  of  the  Hecatompathia  are  not  quatorzains, 
but  a  long  eighteen-line  form,  of  a  class  which  the  Italians  had 
wisely  rejected,  does  not  matter  much.  The  form  is  not  so  successful 
as  the  quatorzain,  but  neither  Watson  nor  anybody  else  could  tell  that 
till  he  had  tried  it.  It  is  more  fatal  that  each  piece  has  a  prose 
commentary  and  discussion  of  itself,  pointing  out  its  originals  and  its 
special  features,  with  parallel  passages  and  all  the  most  approved 
apparatus  of  classical  editing.  The  Tears  of  Fancy  are  couplet- 
tipped  quatorzains,  after  what  is  the  specially  English  model ;  but 
they  do  not  gain  much  in  freedom.  Perhaps  nowhere  do  we  feel, 
so  much  as  in  reading  Watson,  the  enormous  benefit  which  was 
conferred  upon  English  literature  by  the  lawless  excesses  of  the 
playwriglits  —  some  of  them,  Shakespeare  at  their  head,  men  of  no 
University  culture  at  all. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  the  last  (and  except  Spenser  and    Sidney 

1  Ed.  Arber. 

T 


274    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

by  far  the  greatest)  of  this  set  who  remains  to  be  noticed  offers  any 
exception  to  this  caution.  Fulke  Greville,^  who  was  exactly  Sidney's 
contemporary,  was  born  at  Beauchamp  Court,  Warwick- 
shire, in  which  county  his  father  represented  a  good 
family,  while  his  mother  was  of  the  illustrious  house  of  the  Nevilles. 
He  and  "  Astrophel "  entered  Shrewsbury  together,  and  though  they 
were  parted  during  their  University  sojourn,  the  friendship  continued, 
and  the  two  served  together,  when  they  were  twenty-three,  on  an 
embassy  to  the  Palatinate.  Greville  was  heir  to  great  wealth,  and 
increased  it  by  buying  lucrative  offices.  He  was  a  favourite  of  the 
Queen  —  who,  no  doubt,  did  not  like  him  less  because  he  seemed  to 
have  no  fancy  for  marriage.     He  was  knighted  in  1597. 

At  the  opening  of  the  new  reign,  Greville,  who  had  already 
received  many  gifts  from  Elizabeth,  had  Warwick  Castle,  which  has 
remained  with  his  descendants,  bestowed  on  him.  In  1614  he  be- 
came Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer;  and  in  1620  was  ennobled  as 
Lord  Brooke  of  Beauchamp.  Eight  years  later  he  was,  it  is  said, 
stabbed  by  a  servant  in  his  house,  the  name  and  site  of  which  are 
perpetuated  by  Brook  Street,  Holborn.  In  his  youth  he  seems  to 
have  been  the  friend  of  most  of  the  best  men  of  his  time  from  Sidney 
to  Bacon ;  in  his  age  he  appears,  though  not  certainly,  to  have  acquired 
a  character  for  avarice  and  moroseness.  Almost  nothing  of  his 
considerable  work  was  published  during  his  lifetime,  the  chief 
exceptions  being  the  play  of  Alustapha,  1601.  Some  of  his  poems 
appeared  in  1633,  his  Life  of  Sidney  in  1652,  and  more  poems  in 
1670.  He  was  thus  a  practitioner  in  all  three  kinds,  poetry,  prose, 
and  drama,  and  it  is  probable,  though  not  certain,  that  his  best  work 
was  early. 

The  plays  Musiap/ia  and  Alahajn,  which  could  not  possibly  be 
acted,  show  the  influence  of  the  coterie  in  their  form,  which  is  that 
of  the  Senecan  drama  chiefly,  and  have  a  double  portion  of  that 
special  characteristic  of  Greville  which  will  be  noticed  presently,  as 
have  his  longer  poems  or  poetical  tractates  on  Monarchy  and  other 
things.  But  Coelica  is  one  of  the  earliest,  and  certainly  one  of  the 
most  remarkable,  of  the  fashionable  sonnet  and  song  collections  to  a 
real  or  imaginary  mistress.  Some  of  the  things  in  it  are  purely 
delightful,  the  best  of  all  being  that  beginning 

I,  with  whose  colours  Myra  dressed  her  head. 

But  as  a  rule  delight,  except  of  a  very  peculiar  kind,  is  not  the 
sensation  which  Greville  is  apt  to  excite.  Like  Donne,  his  junior  by 
some  years,  though  with  less  exquisite  exceptions  to  the  rule  of  his 

1  Works,  ed.  Grosart,  4  vols,  privately  printed,  1870. 


CHAP.  IV  SPENSER   AND    HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  275 

incompleteness,  he  is  an  example  at  once  of  the  immense  capability 
and  of  the  desperate  dangers  of  the  Elizabethan  cast  of  thought,  and 
(till  the  dramatists  had  broken  down  many  of  its  trammels)  of  the 
Elizabethan  conception  of  literature.  Greville  would  not  write  for  the 
vulgar,  and,  as  has  been  seen,  he  scarcely  condescended  to  give  it 
any  opportunities  of  judging  his  work.  From  first  to  last  there  seems 
to  have  been  on  him  a  sense  that  literature  ought  above  all  things 
to  be  scholarly  in  form  and  elegant  in  substance,  that  it  ought  not  to 
deal  with  trivial  things,  that  "words  to  the  wise,"  cryptic  raptures, 
enigmatical  sentences,  were  the  things  to  attempt.  Not  merely  the 
"  abstruser  cogitations "  in  verse,  in  which  Lamb  had  perhaps  a 
slightly  paradoxical  though  no  doubt  also  a  genuine  delight,  but  his 
simplest  prose  works,  exhibit  this  characteristic  of  laboured  remoteness 
as  do  hardly  any  other  things  in  English.  In  verse  he  is  eccentric, 
unpopular,  impossible,  but  not  uncharming. 

A  few  individual  poets  and  two  interesting  groups  of  poems  have 
still  to  be  noticed  as  properly  contemporary  with  Spenser,  Shake- 
speare and  Drayton  and  Daniel  being  kept  for  later  treatment.  The 
chief  of  the  former  was  William  Warner,  a  poet  who 
had  his  resurrection  rather  too  early,  and  who  perhaps 
on  that  account  (he  figures  in  Chalmers's  Poets  ^)  has  had  rather  less 
attention  than  he  deser\-es.  Warner,  who  was  probably  born  in 
1558,  and  certainly  died  in  1609,  was  born  in  Oxfordshire  and 
educated  at  Oxford,  became  an  attorney,  attached  himself  in  some 
way  to  Lord  Hunsdon,  perhaps  translated  the  Menachfui,  and 
certainly  wrote  Albion's  England,  1586,  and  Syritix,  1597.  The 
latter,  a  collection  of  prose  stories,  is  not  of  much  importance ; 
Albion's  England  has  a  good  deal.  At  first  sight  it  falls  distinctly 
into  the  earlier  and  ruder  class,  being  written  in  fourteeners,  which, 
however,  the  poet  did  not  divide,  as  his  only  modern  editor  has  for 
convenience'  sake  ruthlessly  divided  them  into  eights  and  sixes.  It 
anticipates  Drayton  and  Daniel ;  and  it  shows  some  similarity  to 
Spenser,  not  in  its  verse,  but  in  its  attention  to  the  history  of  England  ; 
while  it  has  a  further  likeness  to  Drayton  in  trying  to  do  for  the 
history  very  much  what  the  Polyolbion  does  for  the  topography  of 
the  island.  There  is  little  of  the  new  learned  grace  or  of  the  new 
passion  about  the  thing;  but  it  has  many  vivid  touches,  some  pas- 
sages of  rhetorical  force,  and  a  general  sense  of  power. 

The  poets  other  than  Warner,  with  two  exceptions,  were  not  better 
executants  tlian  himself,  and  were  much  smaller  men.  Thomas  Howell, 
an  outsider  of  the  Sidneian  group,  who  wrote  from  156S  to  1581  things 
almost  sufficiently  designated  by  their  titles,  —  T/te  Arbor  of  Amiiie, 

1  Vol.  iv. 


276    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

his  Devices^  etc.,  —  belongs  to  a  lower  division  of  the  same  class  with 
Turberville  and  Googe.  Humplirey  Gifford,  whose  Posie  of  Gilly- 
flowers appeared  in  1580,  has  much  more  original  force,  could  do  the 
ballad  measure  well,  has  a  spirited  war-song,  and  some  skipping 
anticipation  of  the  Nyvtphidia  measure.  Much  below  either  is 
Matthew  Grove,  whose  poems  were  pubhshed  in  1587,  but  must 
have  been  written  somewhat  earlier.  Yet  the  care  which  has  been 
expended  in  reprinting  these  ^  is  not  lost,  because  nothing  can  be  more 
valuable  than  to  have,  at  such  periods  as  these,  specimens  of  the 
ordinary  run  of  verse.  When  such  verse  comes  to  be  written,  as  in 
our  own  time  and  in  others,  by  hundreds  of  volumes  every  year,  it 
ceases  to  possess  this  interest  altogether,  and,  except  in  the  case  of 
some  singular  cataclysm,  is  not  likely  to  recover  it.  But  some  would 
except  from  these  remarks  the  pair  above  referred  to  —  Richard 
Barnfield  (1574-1626)  and  Robert  Southwell  (i56o?-i595).  The 
former,-  a  Staffordshire  squire,  wrote  not  a  little,  but  his  memory  is 
chiefly  attached  to  The  Affectionate  Shepherd  (1594),  an  amatory 
poem  of  classical  or  Italian  rather  than  English  inspiration,  some 
others  of  no  very  dissimilar  character,  and  one  exquisite  thing,  the 
famous 

As  it  fell  upon  a  day, 

which  used  to  be  ascribed  to  Shakespeare.  Southwell,^  a  Jesuit  priest, 
who  was  imprisoned  and  executed  as  a  traitor,  has  also,  but  more 
certainly,  left  one  splendid  poem,  The  Bitrning  Babe,  and  other  re- 
ligious pieces,  which,  in  spirit  if  not  in  form,  are  much  above  the 
average. 

The  two  groups  which  have  been  referred  to  above  as  necessary 
to  complete  the  survey  of  poets  strictly  contemporary  with  Spenser 
are  the  sonneteers  and  satirists.  Both,  in  their  close  connection  with 
each  other,  and  in  their  apparent  adoption  of  fashionable  styles,  show 
that  immaturity  which  is  still  characteristic  of  the  time ;  each  in 
different  ways  shows  that  time's  abounding  faculty. 

It  is  not  possible  to  decide  with  absolute  certainty  what  induced 

the   sonnet  outburst  of  the  last   decade  of  the  sixteenth  century  in 

England,  and  especially  of  its  middle  years.     The  form  —  "  non  moins 

^1^^         docte    que   plaisante    invention    italienne,"  as  Du   Bellay 

sonneteers     calls  it  —  was  no  novelty  in  the  colder  climes  of  England 

o  1592-96.     ^^^  France ;    it  had   taken   both    by   assault    nearly  two 

generations  earlier  with    Wyatt  and    Mellin  de   Saint-Gelais.     But  it 

is  perhaps  the  best  testimony  to  Sidney's  real  importance  in  English 

literature,  that  it  was    not   till   after   his    death,    and   till   his   sonnets 

lAlI  three  appear  in  Dr.  Grosart's  Occasional  Issues. 
2  Ed.  Arber.  3  Ed.  Grosart. 


CHAP.  IV  SPENSER   AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  277 

were  gradually  divulged,  that  the  sonnet  outburst  came.  There  was 
no  mfstake  about  it  when  it  did  come.  Sidney's  poems  became 
known  to  the  general  in  1591,  and  the  earliest  form  of  Constable's 
(see  below)  next  year.  In  1593  appeared  three  remarkable  collec- 
tions, wholly  or  mainly  in  sonnet  form,  the  Parthenophil  and 
Parthenophe  of  Barnabe  Barnes,  the  Licia  of  Giles  Fletcher,  and 
the  Phillis  of  Thomas  Lodge. ^  Lodge  will  reappear  as  a  satirist, 
as  a  dramatist,  and  also  as  a  pamphleteer.  The  chief  achievement 
of  Fletcher  is  to  have  been  the  father  of  two  poets  better  than 
himself;  and  the  sonnets  of  neither  are  very  remarkable,  though 
they  testify  to  the  powerful  influence  in  the  air.  Barnes,  though  he 
did  other  work  in  prose  and  verse  (a  Treatise  of  Offices,  a  Divine 
Century  of  Spiritual  Soiinets,  a  play  called  the  DeviVs  Charter) 
must  stand  or  fall  by  Parthenophil.  It  has  been  variously  judged, 
and  can  never  by  a  sane  judgment  be  set  extremely  high,  seeing 
that  the  author  has  no  measure  and  would  sometimes  be  much 
the  better  for  having  some.  But  it  is  a  good  specimen  of  the 
poetical  intoxication  of  the  time,  which  contrasts  so  curiously  with  the 
unintentional  sobriety  of  the  Googes  and  even  the  Gascoignes.''^ 

These  pioneers  of  the  sonnet  seem  to  have  encouraged  followers, 
for  the  next  year,  1594,  was  very  fertile  in  similar  books.  William 
Percy,  a  cadet  of  the  house  of  Northumberland,  and  an  Oxford 
man,  published  Ccelia  (the  trick  of  framing  the  set  of  sonnets  as  an 
address  to  a  real  or  feigned  mistress  established  itself  at  once). 
Two  major  poets,  Drayton  and  Daniel,  who  will  have  separate  notice 
later,  issued,  the  first  Idea,  the  second  Delia.  An  anonymous 
collection,  Zepheria,  has  not  only  intrinsic  merit,  but  is  one  of  the 
few  Elizabethan  books  which  represent  very  strongly  and  directly 
the  French  Pleiade  influence.  Willoughby's  Avisa  (nothing  is 
known  of  Willoughby  or  of  Avisa,  but  the  book  has  been  drawn 
into  the  Shakespearian  comment-vortex),  though  not  formally  consist- 
ing of  sonnets,  belongs  to  the  group  in  other  ways.  But  this  group's 
most  characteristic  constituent  was  the  fuller  form  of  Constable's 
Diana. 

We  know  a  very  little  more  about  Henry  Constable  ^  than  about 
most  of  the  interesting  and  obscure  personages  of  the  time ;  but  we 
do   not   know   very   much.     He    was   probably   of  the    distinguished 

1  All  these,  with  most  of  those  to  be  mentioned  presently,  except  Zepheria, 
are  in  Dr.  Grosart's  Occasional  Issues.  Several,  including  Zepheria,  are  in  Mr. 
Arber's  Eus^lish  Garner. 

2  Barnes's  birth-  and  death-dates  are  unknown.  He  was  a  friend  of  Gabriel 
Harvey's,  and,  as  Harvey's  friends  were  wont  to  be,  much  mixed  up  in  the  literary 
asperities  of  the  time,  being  for  instance  bitterly  lampooned  by  Thomas  Campion. 
But  we  have  no  real  knowledge  about  him. 

8  Poems,  ed.  Hazlitt,  London,  1859. 


278    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE   TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH    bk.  V 

family  of  his  name,  which  is  still  seated  in  the  Holderness  district 
of  Yorkshire;  he  may  have  been  born  about  1554;  he  seems  to 
have  taken  his  degree  at  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge, 
in  1579;  and  he  was  a  friend  of  the  Bacons;  but  he 
was  a  Roman  Catholic,  and  as  such,  inevitably  a  member  of  an 
Opposition,  which  in  those  days  was  exposed  to  things  more 
unpleasant  than  mere  exclusion  from  office.  How  he  can,  as  some 
say,  have  formed  part  of  Queen  Mary's  household  in  Scotland  is 
not  clear,  seeing  that  he  cannot  have  been  more  than  fourteen  at  the 
date  of  the  battle  of  Langside ;  but  he  certainly  spent  much  of  his 
middle  life  in  exile  abroad ;  and  when  he  revisited  England  towards 
the  end  of  the  Queen's  reign,  he  was  thrown  into  the  Tower,  whence 
he  only  emerged  after  James's  accession,  and  then  not  at  once.  He 
is  supposed  to  have  died  before  161 6.  His  verse  was  very  highly 
esteemed  by  his  contemporaries.  It  consists  of  the  twenty-eight 
sonnets  (twenty-two  only  had  been  printed  in  1592)  of  Diana, 
the  title  of  which,  if  it  be  necessary  to  seek  any  special  origin  for  a 
thing  which  might  have  had  so  many,  was  probably  suggested  by 
the  famous  Diana  of  Montemayor  ;  of  another  thirty  or  more,  obtained 
from  MS.  on  profane,  and  some  seventeen  on  spiritual  subjects;  of 
four  prefixed  to  Sidney's  Apology  when  it  was  printed,  and  of  four 
contributions,  not  sonnets,  to  EnglancVs  Helicon.  The  note  of  the 
whole  of  this  work  is  a  remarkable  elegance  and  scholarly  perfection, 
less  "  translunary "  perhaps  than  the  brightest  comet  or  rocket 
effects  of  Elizabethan  poetry,  but  steadier,  more  sustained,  and  in 
correcter  taste. 

Alcilia,  by  "J.  C."  in  1595,  contained  sonnets  by  name  which 
are  as  far  from  the  sonnet  nature  as  those  of  Avisa,  but  which  are, 
as  verses,  sometimes  pretty,  though  usually  slim.  And  1596  made 
up  for  the  comparative  sterility  of  its  predecessor  by  giving  not 
merely  Spenser's  admirable  Atnoreiti,  but  three  cycles  by  persons 
of  whom  next  to  nothing  is  known,  Fidessa  by  Bartholomew  Griffin, 
Diella  by  Richard  Lynch,  and  Chloris  by  William  Smith.  Fidessa 
is  the  best  of  the  three.  Robert  Tofte  added  Laura  in  1597,  and 
Alba  in  1598.  The  general  characteristics  of  these  sonnets  wUl  be 
best  given  in  the  Interchapter  summarising  this  Book.  But  the 
poetic  impulse  which  they  show  was  diffused  over  all  the  later  years 
of  the  reign,  and  it  is  not  least  well  shown  in  the  last  and  best  of  the 
Elizabethan  Miscellanies,  England'' s  Helicon  (1600)  and  Davison's 
Poetical  Rhapsody  ( 1 602 ) . 

The  tendency  of  the  Elizabethans  to  write  in  schools,  and  after 
for  some  time  neglecting  a  model  that  lay  before  them,  to  copy  it  in 
flocks,  is  only  less  exhibited  in  the  curious  group  of  .satires  which 
coincided  with   the   sonnet   outbreak.     Wyatt,   if  he   had  not  quite 


CHAP.  IV  SPENSER   AND   HIS   CONTEMPORARIES  279 

hit,  had  gone  very  near  to,  the  regular  satire  form,  and  Gascoigne 
had  actually  achieved  it ;  but  their  examples  for  a  time  produced  no 
effect.  It  is  still  very  uncertain  what  credence  is  to 
be  attached  to  a  MS.  ascription  of  Donne's  Satires  to  satirists. 
a  date  as  early  as  1593;  and  Donne's  work  will  be  best 
treated  together  and  in  the  next  Book.  But  Lodge,  so  often 
mentioned,  and  to  be  mentioned,  most  certainly  issued  A  Fig  for 
Momus,  satirical  in  substance  and  in  form  couplets,  as  early  as  1595  ; 
which  makes  the  challenge  of  Joseph  Hall,  afterwards  Bishop,  to 
"  follow  him  who  list,  And  be  the  second  English  satirist,"  a  piece  of 
rather  ill-tasted  jactation.  Hall  published  his  Virgideiniaruvi  in 
1597,  and  was  followed  by  Marston  the  dramatist  with  Satires 
accompanying  his  Pygmalion^ s  Image  in  1598,  and  The  Scourge  of 
Villainy  in  1599.  Guilpin's  Skialet/ieia,  Tourneur's  Transformed 
Metamorphosis^  and  a  few  other  things  belong  to  the  same  school 
and  nearly  the  same  date.^ 

It  is  a  school  not  to  be  contemned  if  we  look  at  its  members;  less 
estimable,  perhaps,  if  we  look  at  this  particular  division  of  their 
works.  Almost  all  are  tainted  with  a  very  great  coarseness,  and 
injured  by  a  singular  and  still  not  quite  intelligible  harshness  of 
verse,  which  is  most  plausibly  explained  as  coming  from  a  corrupt 
imitation  of  Persius.  The  satire,  like  satire  generally,  has  some 
value  for  its  picture  of  manners,  especially  in  Hall  and  Donne ;  but 
even  this  is  vitiated  by  an  obvious  and  rather  tedious  exaggeration 
both  of  tone  and  detail,  which  reaches  its  acme  in  iMarston,  as 
obscurity  of  thought  and  phrase  does  in  Tourneur  and  roughness  of 
versification  in  Donne. 

1  Donne's  and  Marslon's  satires  are  in  all  the  editions  of  their  work;  Hall's 
are  in  Dr.  Grosart's  Occasiorial  Issues,  as  is  Skialet/ieia  ;  the  Transformed  Meta- 
morphosis is  in  Mr.  Churton  CoUins's  edition  of  Tourneur. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   UNIVERSITY  WITS 

The  general  drama  of  1570-90  —  The  University  Wits  ~  Lyly  —  His  plays  —  Peele 
—  Greene — Marlowe — Kyd  —  Lodge — Nash — Their  work — Its  kind  in 
drama  —  Its  vehicle  in  blank  verse  —  Peele's  plays  —  Those  of  Greene,  Lodge, 
Nash,  and  Kyd  —  The  lyrics  of  the  group  —  Marlowe's  plays 

The   history  of  the    English    drama   during   the   particular   stage   of 

evolution  which  preceded   its   fullest   development   is,  except   in  one 

well-defined   and  interestingly  peopled  section,  not  so  much  difficult 

T,,  ,    as  impossible  to  trace.     We  have  seen  how  the  dramatic 

1  he  general  ^ 

drama  of  work  even  of  a  person  who  stands  out  from  the  common 
1570-90-  j^gj.(^  gQ  much  as  Stephen  Gosson  is  (though  it  would 
have  been  to  the  interest  of  the  actors  and  poets  whom  he  deserted 
to  publish  it)  entirely  lost.  We  know  that  the  "  Marprelate "  con- 
troversy {zn'de  next  chapter)  was  actually  brought  on  the  stage  in  the 
Armada  year  or  thereabouts,  and  the  fact  that,  as  we  should  expect, 
the  play  was  instantly  stopped,  does  not  entirely  account  for,  still 
less  reconcile  us  to,  the  loss  of  the  piece.  Above  all,  it  must  have 
been  at  this  time,  that  is  to  say  in  the  years  between  1570  and  1590, 
that  the  early  chronicle-plays  and  others  which  Shakespeare  honoured 
by  selecting  them  as  the  canvases  or  palimpsest  parchments  for  his 
own  work  first  saw  the  light  and  the  boards.  But  such  remnants  as 
we  have  of  these  plays  are  almost  invariably  of  later  date  in  their 
existing  forms. 

For  the  disappearance  of  this  transition  work  more  than  one 
cause,  probable  a  priori  if  not  certain  historically,  is  usually  and 
reasonably  assigned.  Not  only  were  the  plays  wanted  for  acting,  not 
reading ;  but  it  was  in  the  first  place  the  clear  interest  of  the  rival 
companies,  strolling  or  fixed,  to  keep  their  repertoires  as  much  as 
possible  to  themselves.  Further,  the  constant  demand  for  novelty 
by  audiences,  and  perhaps  also  the  operation,  in  a  different  form,  of 
the  just-mentioned  wish  to  keep  a  monopoly,  seem  to  have  led  to 
the  working  up  from  time  to  time  of  old  favourite  pieces  with  new 

280 


CHAP.  V  THE   UNIVERSITY   WITS  28T 

material,  either  by  members  of  the  company  or  poets  specially 
retained.  The  variations  which  (to  take  examples  both  from  the 
beginning  and  end  of  the  seventeenth  century)  we  find  between  the 
quarto  and  folio  editions  of  Shakespeare's  Hamlet,  between  the  quarto 
and  the  folio  of  Dryden's  and  Davenant's  adaptation  of  the  Tempest, 
show  in  the  case  of  known  men,  who  had  an  interest  in  keeping 
their  work  in  some  form,  what  must  have  happened  in  the  case  of 
unknown  men,  who  were  usually  botching  up,  for  a  few  shillings,  matter 
which  had  not  come  to  be  regarded  with  even  the  smallest  literary 
interest. 

Towards  the  close  of  this  twilight  period,  however,  we  come  to 
a  group  of  dramatic  work  produced  by  known  or  at  least  named 
persons  (for  our  positive  knowledge  of  most  of  them  is  extremely 
small),  distinguished  from  the  doggerel  of  the  inter- 
ludes and  the  starched  sterility  of  the  early  blank  verse  jj^y  wh"' 
plays  by  the  presence  in  almost  all  cases  of  considerable, 
and  in  one  or  two  of  all  but  the  highest,  gifts,  and  exhibiting  a  very 
interesting  community  of  circumstance,  equipment,  and  even  definite 
literary  aim.  All  these  men  were  probably,  and  all  but  one  or  two 
were  certainly,  of  University  training,  an  advantage  less  uniformly 
possessed  by  their  immediate  successors.  For  once  the  centre  and 
source  of  a  great  literary  movement  in  England  was  what  it  ought  to 
have  been  —  the  two  Universities.  Not  indeed  that  in  all  cases  the 
\'arious  sets  which  fostered,  and  the  various  schemes  which  carried 
out,  the  literary  developments  of  the  time  were  actually  formed  at 
Oxford  or  at  Cambridge,  though  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  in 
most  cases  they  were.  But  the  va.st  majority  of  the  distinguished 
writers  of  the  time  (Shakespeare,  it  may  be  remembered,  is  not  early) 
were  University  men ;  tlieir  friendships,  which  in  the  eager  discussion 
of  literary  novelties  always  play  so  great  a  part,  were  in  many  cases 
University  friendships  ;  and  it  is  notorious  that  the  mighty  group  of 
playwrights  who  founded  the  English  drama  were  called,  not  quite 
amiably,  by  the  players  who  employed  and  rivalled  them,  "  University 
Wits."i 

In  this  honourable  function  Cambridge  had  a  little  (though  not 
so  much  as  very  pardonable  partisanship  has  sometimes  endeavoured 
to  make  out)  the  priority  and  the  predominance.  Thus  Harvey,  the 
"regent"  (in  scholastic  and  French  sense  at  least)  of  the  Areopagus 
or  Sidneian  coterie,  was  a  Cambridge  man,  and  so  was  Spenser;  but 
Sidney  himself  was  of  Oxford.  Of  the  great  early  dramatic  group 
Marlowe,  Greene,  and    Nash  were  Cambridge  men,  but  Lyly,  Peele, 

1  The  locus  chissicus  for  all  this  is  The  Return  from  Parnassus,  an  extremely 
interesting  set  of  three  plays,  first  completely  printed  by  W.  D.  Macray  (Oxford, 
1886). 


282    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

and  Lodge  were  Oxonians,  as  Greene  himself  subsequently  became 
by  incorporation.  But  there  is  no  need  to  urge  this  controversy. 
The  important  point  is  that  both  the  Universities  did  now  begin  to 
play,  and  played  as  they  never  quite  have  done  since,  their  proper 
part  in  the  national  literary  life.  The  reasons  for  this  are  not  diffi- 
cult to  find,  but  they  are  interesting.  The  conversion  of  monastic 
property,  and  the  shutting  up  of  chantries,  monasteries,  etc.,  as 
outlets  for  private  benevolence  and  piety,  had  made  the  founding  of 
colleges,  and  of  grammar-schools,  the  feeders  of  colleges,  more  than 
ever  popular.  The  climbing  of  the  secular  clergy  on  the  ruins  of  the 
regular,  the  permission  of  marriage  to  them,  and  their  close  con- 
nection with  the  collegiate  system,  established  perhaps  the  happiest 
combined  scheme  of  education  and  professional  subsistence  that  any 
country  has  ever  had  —  a  scheme  existing  nearly  untouched  till  our 
own  day,  when  it  was  rashly  upset.  The  various  forms  of  new  learn- 
ing made  the  Universities  interesting,  not  least  owing  to  their  con- 
tests with  the  old ;  the  gradual  opening  of  professional  careers  to 
laymen  gave  outlet  and  promotion  from  them ;  and  if  the  demand  in 
this  way  for  clever  graduates  was  not  so  great  as  now,  it  was  in- 
creased in  a  way  not  now  open  by  the  institution,  bad  or  good,  of 
great  men's  households,  about  which  young  men  of  education  and 
promise  were  wont  to  hang  in  a  fashion,  vague  and  now  not  quite 
intelligible,  but  certain  as  a  matter  of  historic  fact. 

The  oldest  of  the  University  Wits,  though  an  outsider  of  the  prin- 
cipal group,  was  probably  John  Lyly,  and  he  deserves  first  mention 
not  merely  for  this  double  fact,  but  because  his  chief  literary  perform- 
ance (to  be  mentioned  in  the  next  chapter)  was,  though 
^  ■  not  in  drama,  considerably  anterior  to  most  of  their 
work.  Although  we  do  not  know  very  much  about  him  even  in  his  earlier 
dates,  while  his  later  are  quite  obscure,  our  knowledge  is  full  and 
clear  when  compared  to  the  "  blanket  of  the  dark "  which  surrounds 
such  names  as  those  of  Kyd  and,  later,  Dekker.  Lyly  was  a  man  of 
Kent,  and  must  have  been  born  somewhere  about  1553.  He  went 
to  Oxford,  his  college  being  Magdalen  (where  he  was  probably  a 
demy),  took  his  degree  in  1573,  and  tried  a  year  later  to  obtain  a 
fellowship  through  Cecil's  interest.  In  the  spring  of  1579  he  took 
his  place  once  for  all,  though  with  an  interval  of  obscuration,  in 
English  literature  by  EupJuies  (jjide  infra),  and  in  the  same  year 
was  incorporated  at  Cambridge.  He  furnished  Thomas  Watson 
(vide  supra)  with  a  letter  commendatory  in  1582,  and  between  1584 
and  1594  (in  the  first  year  at  least  he  was  still  battelling  at  Mag- 
dalen) furnished  the  Revels  with  nine  plays,  acted  by  the  choristers 
either  of  the  Chapel  Royal  or  St.  Paul's.  These  are  Campaspe, 
Sappho  and  Phao,  Endymion,  Galatea,   Midas,  Mother  Bombie,  the 


CHAP.  V  THE   UNIVERSITY   WITS  283 

Woman  in  the  Moon,  the  Maid''s  Metamorphosis  ( ?) ,  and  Love'^s  Meta- 
morphosis. A  dismal  petition  to  the  Queen  in  1593  sums  itself  up 
in  one  of  its  clauses:  ''Thirteen  years  your  Highness's  servant  and 
yet  nothing."  After  this  we  know  nothing  of  him  positively,  and 
even  the  entry  which  is  supposed  to  be  that  of  his  death  in  1606  is 
only  connected  with  him  by  guesswork,  for  "  Lyly "  (Lilly,  Lillie, 
etc.)  has  always  been  a  common  enough  name,  and  there  is  little 
identification  in  *'John." 

Lyly's  plays,^  like  his  person,  stand  quite  apart  from  those  of  the 
rest  of  the  group,  with  which  they  have  nothing  in  common  except 
the  strong  classicism,  the  presence  of  "  University  wit,"  the  striking 
breach  with  the  old  tradition  of  horseplay  interlude  or 
wooden  tragedy,  tlie  exquisite  lyric  which  sometimes 
diversifies  them,  and  their  influence  on  the  greatest  dramatist  of  the 
next  or  any  age.  Written  not  for  the  public  stage  but  as  court 
amusements  (or  '-abridgments,"  as  Theseus  would  say),  they  have 
a  good  deal  in  common  with  the  Masque.  The  very  marked,  not  to 
say  conceited,  style  and  the  strong,  almost  bitter,  satirical  spirit 
which  appear  in  Euphnes  are  also  visible.  But  their  most  interest- 
ing historical  characteristic  is  the  way  in  which,  uncertainly  and 
tentatively,  they  strike  out  the  way  of  Romantic  Comedy,  the  most 
arduous  and  least  frequently  trodden  of  all  dramatic  ways,  but  when 
trodden  successfully  the  way  to  the  rarest  and  choicest  of  dramatic 
paradises.  We  must  not  say  that  if  there  had  been  no  Endymion 
and  Woman  in  the  Moon  there  would  have  been  no  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream  and  no  As  Yok  Like  It.  But  we  may  say  boldly 
that  before  As  Yon  Like  It  and  A  Midsummer  NighVs  Dream  it  is 
vain  to  look  for  anything  of  their  special  quality  elsewhere  than  in 
Lyly. 

At  all  events  the  difference  between  these  plays  and  those  of  the 
other  members  of  the  group  is  most  remarkable,  and  lies  not  merely 
in  individual  genius  but  in  kind.  The  whole  scheme  and  texture  con- 
trast with  the  vast  majority  of  the  work  from  Peele  to  Shirley.  They 
come  nearer  to  the  antique  form  of  the  Interlude,  though  with  little 
or  none  of  the  crudity  of  this.  Endyuiiou  is  a  euphuistic  allegory, 
where  the  loves  of  the  hero,  of  Cynthia,  and  of  Tellus,  themselves  but 
a  shadowy  centre  or  canvas,  are  fringed  with  humours  more  shadowy 
still.  The  accepted  story  of  Campaspe  and  Apelles  is  treated  in  the 
.same  manner;  while  those  of  Sappho  and  Galatea  form  mere  start- 
ing-points, from  wliicli  the  author  diverges  in  directions  not  at  all 
warranted  by  what  may  be  called  his  authorities.  It  is  much  the 
same  with  Midas,  while  in  the  three  last  certain  plays  (the  Maid's 

1  Ed.  Fairholt,  2  vols.  London,  1858. 


284     ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  V 

MetajHorphosis  ^  is  not  at  all  like  Lyly)  the  writer  trusts  his  fancy 
almost  entirely,  weaving,  for  instance,  in  the  Woman  in  the  Moon, 
out  of  the  myth  of  Pandora  a  satire  on  woman,  only  suggested,  and 
that  in  a  most  modern  fashion,  by  the  original.  In  short,  the 
dramatic  element  in  these  plays  is  more  than  shadowy,  it  is  phantas- 
magoric ;  and  the  form  does  hardly  more  than  serve  as  vehicle  for 
the  author's  glittering,  if  somewhat  cold,  fancy,  his  melancholy  satire, 
and  the  point-de-vice  spruceness  of  his  tyrannically  mannered  style. 
He  "sits  a  little  apart,"  like  Claverhouse  in  Wandering  Willie's  Tale, 
and  there  is  nothing  in  him  of  the  "  dancing  and  deray  "  of  the  rest. 

Of  these  George  Peele  ^  was  slightly  the  eldest.  He  seems  to  have 
been  of  a  Devonshire  family,  but  may  have  been  born  in  London 
about  1558.  He  was  at  any  rate  a  Blue  Coat  boy  and  a  member  ol 
Broadgates  Hall  (later  Pembroke  College)  at  Oxford, 
where  he  took  his  degrees  —  B.A.  in  1577,  M.A.  two  years 
later.  Peele  remained  even  longer  than  the  customary  seven  years 
at  Oxford,  and  seems  to  have  only  left  it  on  his  marriage,  when  he 
went  to  London  and  at  once  fell  among  the  literary  set.  But  he 
did  not  break  his  connection  with  his  University,  and  in  1583,  having 
already  distinguished  himself  as  a  playwright,  superintended  the 
production  of  Gager's  Latin  plays  at  Christ  Church  before  Prince 
Casimir.  In  the  same  year  he  contributed  commendatory  verse  to 
Watson's  Hecatonipathia.  Next  year  appeared  his  Arraignment  of 
Paris,  a  sort  of  masque  which  had  been  written  for  the  children  of 
the  Chapel  Royal  to  play  before  the  Queen.  In  yet  another  year, 
1585,  he  was  charged  by  the  City  with  the  disposing  of  the  Lord 
Mayor's  pageant,  then  no  vulgar  thing. 

These  details  are  not  otiose,  because,  though  they  cannot  be 
said  positively  to  disprove,  they  do  not  by  any  means  fit  in  with,  the 
tradition  which  makes  of  Peele  a  Bohemian  reprobate,  who  died  of 
debauchery  and  lived  as  a  sort  of  the  vulgar  Villon  in  London  taverns. 
The  former  scandal  is  due  to  a  gibe  of  Francis  Meres,  the  egregious 
person  who  spoke  of  Anthony  Munday  ^  as  our  best  plotter  (though 
there  was  possibly  a  gibe  in  this  too)  ;    the  second  depends  almost 

1  This  piece  (which  is  not  in  Fairholt's  edition,  but  will  be  found  in  the  first 
volume  of  Mr.  Bullen's  Old  Plays,  London,  1882)  is  in  couplets  chiefly,  whereas 
Lyly  mostly  affects  blank  verse  or  prose,  and  has  been  thought,  with  some  prob- 
ability, to  be  an  early  work  of  John  Day. 

2  Ed.  Dyce,  in  i  vol.  with  Greene  (London,  1885)  ;  ed.  Bullen,  2  vols. 
(London,  1888). 

3  Munday  (1553-1633)  was  one  of  the  busiest  literary  hacks  of  the  time,  a 
playwright,  a  constant  botcher-up  of  pamphlets  about  crimes  and  executions  (he 
had  brought  about  some  of  the  latter  as  an  ex-Jesuit  seminarist  and  informer 
against  Jesuits),  and  a  voluminous,  but  according  to  Southey  unfaithful,  trans- 
lator of  the  Spanish  Romances  of  chivalry. 


CHAP.  V  THE   UNIVERSITY   WITS  285 

wholly  on  an  apocn-phal  farrago  of  stories,  most  of  them  centuries 
older  than  PeeleVs  time,  called  the  Jests  of  George  Peele  or  George 
"Pyeboard"  (a  play  on  the  name).  There  is  absolutely  no  known 
fact  in  the  case  except  a  letter  of  Peele's  to  Burleigh  in  1596  (two 
years  before,  according  to  Meres,  he  died),  which  letter  pleads 
poverty  and  sickness.  It  is  possible  for  a  man  to  be  poor  and  ill 
without  debauchery  being  the  cause  of  either  inconvenience. 

Indeed,  much  of  the  stuff  which  has  been  talked  about  the  loose 
lives  of  this  group  of  men  of  letters  may  be  brushed  away  here  in 
liDiinc.  It  has  been  most  insufficiently  remembered  —  first,  that  the 
Puritan  party,  then  growing  always  stronger  and  more  unscnipulous, 
stuck  at  no  libels  against  everybody  and  everything  connected  with 
the  stage ;  secondly,  that  quarrels  and  jealousies  between  men  of 
letters,  unfortunately,  have  not  been  unknown  to  any  age ;  thirdly, 
that  the  appetite  for  scandal  in  readers  and  the  quest  for  "  copy " 
in  writers  were  not  checked  or  corrected  by  any  exact  and  regular 
attestation  of  fact.  "Crowner's  quests"  were  known,  but  it  may  be 
suspected  that  they  were  very  irregularly  held ;  there  was  no  regular 
system  of  police,  still  less  any  of  medical  inspection,  registration  of 
deaths,  and  the  like.  In  short,  though  there  is  no  evidence  justify- 
ing us  in  regarding  the  life  of  the  University  Wits  in  town  as  a 
pattern  of  morality  and  self-restraint,  the  evidence  to  the  contrary  is 
of  the  flimsiest  and  most  suspicious  description.  In  any  case,  Peele 
suffered  less  from  it  than  either  Marlowe  or  Greene. 

Of  this  famous  pair  Greene,  the  less  gifted,  was  the  older.  His 
birth-year  is  not  known,  but  he  may  have  been  as  old  as  Peele  and 
can  hardly  have  been  born  later  than  1560.  At  any  rate,  he  was 
admitted  at  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  in  1575,  and 
took  his  degree  four  years  later.  He  subsequently  not 
only  proceeded  M.A.  in  his  own  University  but  was  incorporated  as 
such  at  Oxford.  Meanwhile  he  had  travelled  in  Italy  and  Spain, 
and  on  his  return  to  England  in  1580  had  launched  one  of  the 
so-called  "  Pamphlets,"  which  will  be  dealt  with  in  our  next  chapter, 
or  rather  he  had  obtained  a  license  for  it.  For  almost  exactly  a 
decade,  from  1582  to  1592,  he  seems  to  have  lived  in  London  (for  the 
attempts  to  identify  him  with  a  Robert  Greene  who  during  part  of 
the  time  was  in  orders  and  held  a  living  are  quite  gratuitous),  and  he 
certainly  died  in  the  year  last  named.  For  some  time  before  his 
death  he  had  been  engaged  in  writing  a  series  of  pamphlets,  some 
of  which  ajipearcd  posthumously,  and  one  of  which,  the  GroaVs-worth 
of  Wit,  contains  a  famous  passage  about  his  friends  and  Shakespeare, 
or  at  least  "  Shakescene."  These  purport  to  be  dying  speeches  of  re- 
pentance from  a  man  who  was  conscious  of  an  evil  life  and  wished  to 
warn  his  friends.     They  were  taken  at  more  than  the  letter  by  others, 


286     ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

and  a  legend,  due  mostly  to  Gabriel  Harvey,  grew  up  of  Greene's 
having  died  of  a  surfeit  of  "pickled  herrings  and  Rhenish,"  and  of 
his  having  lived  in  disreputable  associations  for  some  time  previously. 
The  Greene  legend  is  still  less  lurid  than  that  of  Greene's  greatest 
companion.  Christopher  Marlowe  was  of  rather  lower  social  status 
than  Peele  and  Greene,  both  of  whom  seem  to  have  been  sons  of  per- 
sons of  some  position.  His  father  was  a  shoemaker  at 
Canterbury,  a  clerk  of  St.  Mary's  church  there,  and  a  free- 
man of  the  city.  The  poet  was  born  in  1564,  and  at  the  age  of  seven- 
teen, after  earlier  education  at  the  King's  School  of  his  native  place, 
entered  Benet  (Corpus  Christi)  College,  Cambridge.  Perhaps  he  was 
^protege  of  the  Chief  Baron  Manwood,  a  Sandwich  and  Canterbury 
magnate,  on  whom  Marlowe  perhaps  wrote  a  Latin  epitaph.  But  all 
these  things  are  uncertain,  and  some  of  them  share  the  uncomfortable 
doubts  thrown  on  the  trustworthiness  of  John  Payne  Collier.  At 
any  rate  Marlowe  (whose  name  occurs  in  the  original  documents  in 
varieties  —  Marly,  Marlen,  Marlyn,  and  so  forth  —  unusual  even  for 
that  age  of  orthographic  license)  took  his  B.A.  rather  soon,  in  1583, 
and  his  M.A.  about  the  usual  time  from  matriculation,  in  1587.  He 
must  have  gone  immediately  to  London,  for  Ta//ibiirlaine  was  produced 
in  the  same  year,  or  even  in  1586,  though  it  was  not  produced  or 
published  under  his  name.  His  career  was  extraordinarily  short,  and 
except  from  the  legend  we  know  nothing  of  it,  while  even  the  closing 
fact  that  he  was  stabbed  in  the  eye  by  a  certain  Francis  Archer  in  a 
tavern  at  Deptford  on  i6th  June  1593,  the  blow  being  given  by 
Archer  in  self-defence,  is  partly  legendary,  and  the  slayer's  name  is 
sometimes  given  as  Ingram.  Further,  the  occasion  of  the  quarrel, 
if  it  has  any  evidence  at  all,  rests  on  an  allusion  in  a  satire  of 
Marston's,  which  has  absolutely  no  verification.  Further  yet,  some 
of  the  unlucky  persons  who  have  grubbed  up  every  wretched  docu- 
ment about  our  great  men  of  letters  of  this  time  have  unearthed  an 
information  by  a  person  named  Bame,  who  was  afterwards  hanged 
at  Tyburn,  charging  Marlowe  with  disgusting  vices,  with  loathsome 
blasphemy,  and  with  the  most  offensive  brag  and  chatter  about  both. 
It  is  not  sentiment  but  a  sound  feeling  which  has  led  all  true  scholars 
to  take  refuge  in  the  magnificent  eulogy  of  Drayton,  who  must  have 
had  abundant  knowledge,  and  who  was  no  milksop,  though  we  know 
that  he  held  aloof  from  the  Bohemianism  of  the  gutter. 

This  nauseous  form    of  gossip   fortunately  gathers  less  about  the 

rest  of  our  group.     Of  the  birth,  fortunes,  and  death  of  Kyd  next   to 

nothing  is  known,  though  he  may  have  been  the  Thomas  Kyd  who 

was  at  school  at    Merchant  Taylors'   after  October  1565, 

^  '        and  so  perhaps  a   school-fellow  of  Spenser's.     Of  Lodge 

and  Nash  we   know   a  little   more,   but  of  the  first   even  legend   has 


CHAP.  V  THE   UNIVERSITY    WITS  287 

nothing  grimy  to  say,  and  of  the  latter  not  much.  Both  were  named 
Thomas.  Lodge  was  the  son  of  a  Lord  Mayor  and  went  to  Trinity 
College,  Oxford ;  while  that  he  took  to  literature  early  ^  ^ 
is  shown  by  his  answering  Gosson,  viWe  supra,  1579.  It 
is  thought  that  he  was  probably  then  about  man's  estate.  He  for  some 
years  pursued  the  way  of  play,  poem,  and  pamphlet.  But  by  a  fortu- 
nate chance,  which  may  partly  account  for  his  escaping  the  snares  of 
London,  he  went  to  sea  with  Cavendish  in  1591,  and  on  his  return, 
though  he  at  first  settled  down  to  the  old  literary  round,  he  seems  to 
have  soon  had  enough  of  it.  He  turned  to  medicine,  took  degrees 
at  Avignon  and  Oxford,  became  a  Roman  Catholic,  and  died  in  1625. 

Nash,  the  last  of  the  group,  was  also  the  youngest.  He  was  born 
in  1567,  the  son  of  a  minister  at  Lowestoft,  and  entered  St.  John's 
College,  Cambridge,  as  a  sizar  in  1582,  when  Greene  had  already 
made,  and  Marlowe  was  just  about  to  make,  a  reputa- 
tion.  He  died  in  the  year  of  the  century,  at  the  age 
of  only  thirty-three,  having  lived  apparently  rather  a  struggling  than 
a  jovial  life,  having  stoutly  defended  his  friends  (he  left  Cambridge 
in  1589,  and  therefore  had  time  to  know  Greene  and  Marlowe),  having 
done  much  rather  ephemeral  but  vigorous  and  interesting  work,  in 
prose  chiefly,  and  having  repented  with  a  repentance  not  open  to  the 
suspicion  which  besets  that  of  his  master  and  model  Greene.  He 
had  perhaps  the  least  genius  of  all  the  set,  but  he  had  abundant 
talent,  and  was  even  more  than  any  of  them  a  type. 

But  it  is  time  to  pass  from  the  lives  of  these  men,  so  little  known, 
so  idly  chattered  over,  so  unimportant  except  to  themselves,  to  their 
perennially  important  and  interesting  work.  The  constituents  of  this 
have    been    summed    up    above  —  play,   poem,    pamphlet.  . 

From  Marlowe  and  Kyd  we  have  no  pamphlets ;  from 
Lodge  very  little  play  ;  from  Nash  not  very  much  more,  and  hardly 
any  non-dramatic  verse  worth  speaking  of.  But  the  three  classes 
were  in  this  or  that  way  the  work  of  all.  The  prose  will  be  dealt 
with  in  the  next  chapter;  the  non-dramatic  verse  —  save  in  the  case 
of  Marlowe's  Hero  and  Leander,  and  the  exf|uisite  lyrics  which  most 
of  the  group  with  unpremeditated,  certainly  with  unimitated,  art 
could  pour  forth  — is  not  of  much  importance.  "The  play's  the 
thing"  with  the  group  as  such. 

The  devotees  of  explanation  have  wearied  themselves  over  attempts 
to  get  at  the  origin  of  this  play.     Perhaps  it  cannot  be  got  at.     Dickens, 
with  all  his  genius,  was  not  a  very  literary  person,  and  yet  he  settled 
the  riddle  of  literary  history  once  for  all  in  his  account  of 
the   origin   of  Pickwick.     "I    thought   of  Mr.    Pickwick,"       drama.'" 
he  says;    but  how  he    thought    of   Mr.  Pickwick    he  does 
not  tell  us ;  probably   he   could  not   have   told.     It   will   be  enough 


288     ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH    bk.  v 

for  the  wise  that  to  some  man  or  some  group  of  men  in  England 
somewhere  about  1580  the  kind,  blended  as  usual,  of  English 
play  suggested  itself.  It  is  related  to  the  older  developments  of  the 
interlude;  it  is  related  to  the  classical  play;  it  is  still  more  closely 
related  to  the  curious  subvariety  of  that  play  which  was  achieved  in 
Nero's  time  by  Seneca  the  tragedian,  which  affected  all  Renaissance 
Europe  with  so  strange  an  influence,  and  which,  as  has  been  told 
above,  had  been  already  introduced  into  English.  Kyd,  one  of  the 
group,  translated  Cornelie,  the  most  Senecan  of  the  great  Pleiade 
dramatist  Garnier's  imitations  of  Seneca.  All  his  companions,  it  is 
clear,  were  students  of  Seneca.  Fortunately,  however,  what  ultimately 
attracted  them  most  in  this  enigmatical  writer  was  not  the  regular 
but  the  irregular  side  of  him  —  not  the  stately  iambic  and  the  correct 
construction,  but  the  lyric  excursions  of  the  chorus,  the  frequent 
tendency  to  the  introduction  of  ghosts  and  supernatural  agencies, 
the  "blood  and  thunder,"  the  bombast  and  the  rant.  It  may  seem 
a  singular  thing  to  give  critical  thanks  for  these  last.  Yet,  so  far  as 
it  is  possible  to  decide  upon  such  matters,  it  is  practically  certain 
that  the  period  of  violent  fermentation  for  which  these  things  served 
as  yeast  did  actually  give  us,  and  to  all  appearance  was  needed  to 
give  us,  the  strong  wine  of  the  completed  and  perfected  drama  for 
some  thirty  or  forty  years  after  Marlowe's  death.  The  earliest 
Elizabethan  theatre  had  many  faults,  but  the  worst  of  them  is  its 
terrible  flatness  and  woodenness.  The  drama  of  the  Marlowe  school 
may  be  called,  if  any  one  pleases,  "  a  barbaric  yawp  " ;  but  it  is,  at 
any  rate  when  it  is  characteristic,  never  wooden  and  never  flat. 

Nobody  ever  innovates  all  at  once  and  all  of  a  piece ;  and  it 
would  have  been  something  like  a  miracle  if  all  of  this  drama  had 
been  characteristic.  On  the  contrary,  a  good  deal  of  it  approaches 
the  older  stamp,  and  this  may  be  particularly  said  to  be 
biank^'ve'rte."  ^he  casc  with  the  work  of  the  two  eldest  of  the  group, 
Lyly  and  Peele,  though  both  informed  it  with  far 
greater  literary  gifts  and  accomplishments  than  any  earlier  dramatist 
except  Sackville  had  had  it  in  him  to  show.  This  may  be  due,  not 
merely  to  their  age,  but  to  the  fact  that,  as  has  been  said,  both 
catered  rather  for  court  and  other  similar  pageants  than  for  the 
rough  appetite  of  the  popular  theatre.  But  both  did  work  strikingly 
good,  and  Peele  much  more  than  Lyly  exhibits  proficiency  in  that 
strange  new  vehicle  of  dramatic  blank  verse  which  is  the  triumph 
and  glory  of  the  school,  which  practically  gave  us  Shakespeare,  and 
which  in  isolated  examples  was  fashioned  —  by  Marlowe  especially,  but 
also  by  more  than  one  other  member  of  the  school  —  with  a  majesty 
and  music  never  since  surpassed. 

This   is   one  of  the  points   in  which  Lyly  stands  apart.      He  has 


CHAP.  V  THE   UNIVERSITY   WITS  289 

blank  verse,  but  it  is  of  a  different  quality,  and  by  far  the  greater  part 
of  his  plays  is  in  prose,  —  the  natural  instrument,  though  he  could 
disport  himself  charmingly  in  lyric,  of  the  author  of 
Euphues.  Where  blank  verse  appears,  as  in  The  Woman 
in  the  Moon^  it  is  noticeable  that  the  play  is  late,  and  that  the  fashion 
of  the  verse  has  nothing  in  it  very  individual.  Peele,  if  Sir  Clyomoii  and 
Sir  Clamydes  be  really  his,  wrote  at  least  one  play  in  the  old  fourteener 
which  had  been  so  popular,  and  which,  as  Shakespeare's  Love''s 
Labour's  Lost,  to  take  no  other  example,  shows,  retained  its  hold  upon 
writers  and  hearers  pretty  late.  This  play,  which  may  be  called  a 
romantic  interlude,  —  it  has  a  "  vice "  and  two  or  three  allegorical 
characters  besides  Alexander  the  Great,  the  two  knights,  queens, 
princesses,  etc.,  —  is  of  great  interest,  marking  as  it  does  an  experi- 
ment in  transition.  The  very  early  Arraignment  of  Paris  is  part 
in  fourteeners  and  in  heroics,  part  in  blank  verse.  Edward  /.  —  a 
play  which  has  been  rather  unnecessarily  reviled,  because  it  adopts  a 
popular  ballad-scandal  against  Eleanor  of  Castile  —  has  prose,  blank 
verse,  and  doggerel.  The  Old  IVives'  Tale,  which,  in  more  ways  than 
one,  comes  close  to  Lyly,  is  in  prose  with  blank-verse  passages.  The 
Battle  of  Alcazar  and  David  and  Bethsabe  are  in  blank  verse  only. 
Taking  these  facts  together,  combining  with  them  that  of  Peele's 
seniority  to  Marlowe,  and  then  examining  the  texture  and  quality  of  his 
blank  verse  itself,  we  may  probably  assign  to  this  writer  the  chief 
originating  impulse  in  the  great  change  which  the  group  impressed 
upon  the  poem.  His  own,  though  it  never  attains  to  Marlowe's 
"might."  is  much  sweeter  than  Marlowe's  usual  strain,  and  perhaps 
more  equably  good.  He  has  not  discarded  all  the  tricks  which  we 
noticed  in  Gascoigne,  being  still  fond  (though  not  to  the  extent  of  the 
Steel  Glass)  of  beginning  batches  or  arrangements  in  verse  with  the 
same  or  nearly  the  same  phrase.  He  has  not  quite  emerged  from 
the  tyranny  of  the  stopped  line,  though  he  seldom  or  never  allows 
his  feet  to  stump  with  the  wooden  tramp  of  Gorbodiic.  But  he  has 
learnt  modulation,  variety,  cadence,  and  occasionally  he  can  even 
soar  —  the  best  gift  that  this  group  discovered  in  the  unrhymed  deca- 
syllabic. It  would  be  hard  to  find,  in  any  author  born  earlier,  such 
a  "tower"  of  verse  as  in  this  speech  of  Tamar,  which  yet  is  not  one 
of  Peele's  stock  beauties  — 

Cast,  as  was  Eva,  from  that  glorious  soil, 

Where  all  delights  sat  bating,  winged  with  thoughts 

Ready  to  nestle  in  her  naked  breasts, 

To  bare  and  barren  vales  with  floods  made  waste  — 

To  desert  woods  and  hills  with  lightning  scorched, 

Where  ^  death,  where'  shame,  where'  hell,  where'  horror  sit. 

1  The  original  has  "with,"  but  "  where  "  is  clearly  needed. 
U 


290  ELIZABETHAN  LITERATURE  TO  SPENSER'S  DEATH  BK.  v 

And  he  is  sometimes  almost  Miltonic  (Milton  was  a  student  of  Peele) 
in  such  ''  carryings  over ''  as  — 

My  sister  Thamar,  when  he  feigned 
Sickness. 

In  fact,  the  blank  verse  of  Peele  v^^ould  repay  a  far  fuller  study  than  it 
is  possible  to  give  it  here. 

The  minor  members  of  the  group  are  less  remarkable  in  this 
respect.  Greene,'  especially  in  his  best  play,  Friar  Bacon  and  Friar 
Bungay,  succeeds  occasionally  in  imitating  both  the  soaring  and  the 

fluency  of  Peele ;  but,  as  a  rule,  he  is  still  somewhat  too 

Greene,       much  addicted  to  the  stopped  line.     Lodge,  an  agreeable 

^and^K^d^^'  P''°^^   writer    and   a   charming    lyrist,   suffers    still    more 

from  this  old  fault  in  his  only  known  unassisted  play,  the 
IVounds  of  Civil  War.  Nash,  a  great  pamphleteer,  has  but  two  plays 
to  his  credit,  of  which  Dido  is  knovyn  to  be  partly  the  work  of  Marlowe, 
while  great  part  of  Will  Sumjner''s  Testament  is  in  prose,  and  the 
blank  verse  not  merely  shows  a  constant  tendency  to  drop  into 
couplet,  but  has  no  very  distinct  quality  even  when  it  is  pure.  Kyd, 
the  last  of  the  group,  is  much  more  important  than  any  of  these  as  a 
playwright.  But  Jeronimo,  if  it  be  his,  constantly  lapses  into 
couplets ;  the  Spanish  Tragedy  shows  something  of  the  same 
tendency  as  well  as  much  of  the  stopped  line ;  while  the  enormous 
speeches  of  Cornelia,  overmastered  by  the  monotony  of  their  French 
original,  succumb  with  too  much  regularity  to  the  same  malign 
influence. 

But  side  by  side  with  the  faculty  for  blank  verse,  all  the  poets 
hitherto  mentioned  have  a  lyric  gift  which  certainly  ought  to  have 
suppled   and   inspirited   their   "blanks,"   and   perhaps,  did   so.      The 

universally   known    "  Cupid   and   Campaspe "   of    Lyly   is 
of  the  group.    ^"^7    ^^^    ^^    ^^^^    most    regular,    by    no    means    of    the 

most  charming,  of  the  songs  scattered  about  his  plays ; 
and  here  as  in  other  respects  Peele  is  even  more  than  his  compeer. 
Greene's  lyrical  work,  which  is  fortunately  obtainable'^  separately 
from  his  very  inaccessible  prose  and  not  too  common  theatre,  contains 

1  His  dramatic  works,  A  Looking'- Glass  for  London  (the  history  of  Nineveh 
written  with  Lodge),  jfames  the  Fourth  of  Scotland  (quite  unhistorical),  Alphonsus 
of  Arragon,  etc.,  will  be  found  with  Peele  as  cited  above.  His  complete  works  in 
prose  are  only  accessible  in  Dr.  Grosart's  "  Huth  Library."  The  plays  of  Lodge 
and  Kyd  are  in  Hazlitt's  Dodsley. 

2  Dyce  has  included  the  poems  in  his  edition  of  the  plays,  and  there  is  a 
volume  of  Bell's  Poets  which  gives  Greene's  poems  with  Marlowe's.  Bell's  Songs 
from  the  Dramatists,  as  well  as,  above  all,  Mr.  Bullen's  Lyrics  from  Elizabethan 
Romances  and  Lyrics  from  Elizabethan  Dramatists,  will  also  supply  the  texts  for 
this  paragraph. 


CHAP.  V  THE   UNIVERSITY   WITS  291 

nothing  so  exquisite  as  the  best  of  these  two  men's  work  or  of 
Lodge's ;  but  is  more  abundant,  has  a  little  less  the  character  of  the 
mere  snatch,  and  seldom  or  never  sinks  below  a  level  more  than 
respectable.  As  for  Lodge  himself,  it  is  in  pure  poetry,  not  in  drama 
or  in  prose,  that  he  can  make  his  safest  claim  to  a  high  position  in 
English  literature.  His  famous  madrigal,  "  Love  in  my  bosom  like  a 
bee,"  nearly  the  most  charming  specimen  of  a  charming  kind,  then 
popular,  is  very  closely  approached  by  others  of  his  achievements. 
Kyd  and  Nash  seem  to  have  had  their  lips  less  touched  to  song ; 
and  Marlowe's  taste  does  not  seem  very  frequently  to  have  inclined 
him  to  the  lyric,  though  another  world-renowned  example,  ''The 
Passionate  Shepherd,"  shows  what  he  could  do  when  he  chose.  But 
his  great  contribution  to  poetry  other  than  dramatic  was  the  still 
more  "  passionate  "  narrative  of  Hero  and  Leattder,  which  ranks  with 
Shakespeare's  Juvenilia,  and  if  it  lacks  the  range  and  amplitude 
which,  even  at  this  early  time,  distinguishes  the  work  of  Shakespeare, 
exceeds  them  in  intensity  and  flame. 

In  Marlowe  ^  himself  the  mighty  line  is  so  closely  associated  with 
the  whole  .spirit  and  tendency  of  his  drama  that  we  cannot  but  take 
them  together.  We  have  from  him,  besides  the  work  just  mentioned, 
and  some  translations  of  Ovid  and  Lucan,  seven  plays 
- — fhe  two  parts  of  Tar/iburlaine,  Doctor  Faust  us,  The  piay^f* 
Jew  of  Malta,  Edward  the  Second,  the  Massacre  at  Paris 
and  Dido.  The  two  last  are  the  weakest,  and  contain  little  which 
we  can  feel  sure  that  others  may  not  have  written.  Of  the  remain- 
ing five  Edward  the  Second  is  a  regular  clironicle-play,  aiming  at 
some  unity  of  construction ;  the  other  four  romantic  tragedies  of  the 
wildest  kind.  In  the  two  parts  of  Taniburlaine  the  conqueror,  in- 
vincible in  fight,  insatiable  of  bloodshed,  and  hardly  human  except 
by  his  love  for  his  wife,  "  divine  Zenocrate,"  sweeps  slowly  past, 
regardle-ss  of  all  power  and  life  and  majesty  but  his  own,  trampling 
on  Bajazet,  putting  man,  woman,  and  child  to  the  sword,  ''show- 
ing" the  virgins  of  Antioch  "death"  at  the  point  of  his  lances,  and 
only  worsted  by  Death  himself,  who  carries  off  first  Zenocrate  and 
then  the  tyrant.  There  is  here  no  central  action,  only  a  dissolving 
series  of  scenes  of  terror  and  blood ;  no  character  except  the  dim  and 
gigantic  one  of  Tamburlaine.  If  the  poet's  imagination  were  of  a 
less  grandiose  magnificence,  or  if  he  were  not  able  to  interpret  it  to 
us  by  the  unsurpassed  splendour  and  majesty  of  his  versification  and 
phraseology,  the  thing  would  be  simply  dull.  The  scale  is  too  vast, 
the  personalities  too  vague,  even  to  excite  lively  and  poignant  terror. 
It  has  not  even  "  the  fierce  vexation  of  a  dream,"  only  the  chaos 
of  one. 

1  Ed.  Dyce  in  one  volume ;  ed.  Dullcn  in  three. 


292    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH    bk.  v 

This  cannot  quite  be  said  of  the  Jew  of  Malta.  Barabas,  the  hero, 
is  very  much  more  of  a  person  than  the  huge  and  shadowy  figure  of 
Tamburlaine,  and  the  action  is  concentrated,  or  at  any  rate  confined, 
within  a  much  more  manageable  area.  But  the  illimitable,  the  apeiron, 
of  Marlowe's  imagination,  intimates  itself,  for  good  and  for  evil,  here 
also.  Although  the  procession  of  the  Jew's  crimes  is  almost  as  little 
artistic  as  that  of  Tamburlaine's  triumphs  and  butcheries,  the 
intensity  of  the  poef  s  personification  of  hatred  and  avarice  and  quasi- 
religious  jealousy  makes  it  far  more  alive.  Yet  perhaps  no  play 
makes  us  feel  so  acutely  and  distinctly  the  difference  between  Marlowe 
and  Shakespeare,  even  if  we  take  for  comparison  such  possibly 
doubtful  and  certainly  early  and  immature  work  as  Tiins  Andronicus. 
Aaron  has  not  received  the  touches  which  make  lago  and  Richard, 
Shylock  and  Macbeth,  what  they  are.  He  has  still  much,  and  too 
much,  about  him  of  the  mere  horror-mongering  which  is  characteristic 
of  this  middle  stage  of  our  drama,  and  he  is,  of  course,  much  less 
magnificent  than  Barabas.  But  he  is  also  much  more  of  a  human 
being. 

Although  it  is  among  the  most  chaotic,  there  can  be  little  doubt 
that  Doctor  Faustus  is  the  best  of  Marlowe's  plays.  For  the  chaos 
here  is  not  quite  out  of  keeping  with  the  wild  theme ;  and  that  theme 
itself,  in  every  other  respect,  is  absolutely  suited  to  Marlowe's  genius. 
The  whole  spirit  of  the  Faust  story  comports  with  —  nay,  positively 
requires  —  not  so  much  a  regular  dramatic  action  as  a  phantasmagoria ; 
and  its  separate  scenes  are,  most  of  them,  well  suited  to  stimulate  the 
towering  imagination,  the  passionate  fancy,  the  tameless  and  restless 
energy  of  this  wonderfully  though  partially  endowed  poet.  That  the 
Helen  passage  and  the  death  scene  contain,  with  the  single  exception 
—  if  with  that  — of  the  great  purple  patch  of  Tai/ibi/rlaine,  as  to  "the 
pens  that  poets  held,"  the  most  exquisite  outbursts  of  sheer  poetry  in 
Marlowe  is  no  more  than  we  should  expect  from  the  coincidence 
of  inspiring  quality  in  the  subject  and  formal  competence  in  the 
worker. 

Edward  the  Second  falls  short,  for  the  complement  of  the  reason 
which  makes  Faustus  so  eminent  a  success.  The  history-play  is  not 
extremely  exigent  of  order  or  of  unity ;  but  to  be  good  it  must  have 
something  of  both.  Now  order  and  unity  were  what  Marlowe  could 
never  give.  Nothing  is  more  natural  than  that  the  foully-wronged 
Queen  Isabel  should  transfer  her  affections  to  Mortimer.  But 
Marlowe  either  cannot  or  will  not  take  the  little  trouble  necessary  to 
bridge  the  interval  which  separates  the  loving  and  even  forgiving 
wife  from  the  rancorous  adulteress.  It  might  have  been  a  little  more 
difficult,  but  it  was  certainly  feasible,  to  project  the  character  of 
Edward  himself  so  as  to  render  the  awkward  facts  credible  and  not 


CHAP.  V  THE   UNIVERSITY   WITS  293 


disgusting.  But  here  again  Marlowe  does  not  so  much  as  attempt 
it.  The  petulant  and  unmanly  fribble  of  the  first  acts  might  have 
passed  into  the  tyrannical  and  arbitrary  prince,  the  not  unwarlike  lord, 
of  the  middle,  and  he  in  turn  into  the  almost  majestic  victim  of  the 
end.     But  "the  flats  are  not  joined,"  and  the  magnificent  speech  — 

Leicester,  if  gentle  words  might  comfort  me, 

sounds  utterly  out  of  place  in  the  mouth  of  the  abject  to  whom  we 
have  been  earlier  introduced. 

Yet  in  Marlowe  two  things  never  fail  for  long  —  the  strange,  not 
by  any  means  impotent,  reach  after  the  infinite,  and  the  command  of 
magnificent  verse.  He  may,  as  I  have  said,  have  learnt  something 
of  this  latter  from  Peele,  and  he  seldom  approaches  his  master  in 
sweetness,  while  he  has  some  of  the  tricks  of  the  whole  school  —  the 
constant  and  sometimes  very  irritating  habit  of  making  the  characters 
speak  of  themselves  in  the  third  person,  the  still  too  great  tendency 
to  stopped  lines,  and  the  like.  But  the  weight  and  splendour  which 
he  impresses  on  his  best  passages  made  them  famous  at  once,  and 
have  kept  them  so,  except  during  the  period  when  all  these  good 
things  were  forgot. 

And  what  is  true  of  Marlowe  eminently,  of  Peele  in  a  not  much 
lower  degree,  is  true  of  the  whole  group,  save  perhaps  Nash,  who  is 
only  a  poet  and  dramatist  by  accident.  They  all  intend  greatly; 
choose  great  subjects ;  handle  them,  if  sometimes  with  an  almost 
childish  want  of  common  sense,  yet  with  poetic  imagination  and 
creative  force ;  make  them  the  occasion  of  passages  distinguished  by 
verse  of  a  splendour  and  momentum,  if  less  often  of  a  lightness  and 
easy  movement,  never  previously  known  in  English.  For  anything 
that  resembles  the  echoing  thunder  of  the  best  decasyllabics  of  these 
poets  (not  by  any  means  of  Marlowe  only)  we  must  go  back  to  the 
hendecasyllable  of  Dante,  to  the  hexameter  of  Lucretius,  to  the  choric 
phrase  of  ^schylus,  and  there  is  no  fourth  parallel  in  any  language 
before  them.  Their  contemporaries  might  sometimes  gird  at  the 
"  drumming  decasyllabon."  But  the  rub-a-dub  of  a  drum  is  a 
curiously  weak  and  inai)preciative  simile  for  the  sound  of  the  line  of 
Marlowe,  even  for  that  of  Peele  and  Kyd,  of  Greene  and  Lodge.  It 
much  better  deserves  one  suggested  by  the  words  of  that  poet  and 
critic  of  our  own  who  has  best  appreciated  it  — 

The  thunder  of  the  trumpets  of  the  night. 


CHAPTER  VI 

LYLY  AND   HOOKER  —  THE   TRANSLATORS,   PAMPHLETEERS, 

AND   CRITICS 

Ascham's  prose  —Defects  of  the  type — The  ebb  and  flow  of  style  —  Euphuism  — 
Euphues  —  Euphues,  the  Anatomy  of  Wit — Eupkues  and  his  England  —  Their 
style^Its  ancient  instances — Its  vernacularity — Its  unnatural  history  — 
Hooker  —  Contemporaries  of  Lyly  and  Hoolcer  —  The  translators  —  Their 
characteristics  —  The  pamphleteers — Martin  Marprelate  —  The  critics 

The  prose  of  the  great  period  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  reign  is  one  of 
the   most   interesting   divisions,    historically  speaking,  of  all  English 
prose.      We    left   that   medium   of  expression   some   years   after   the 
Queen's  accession  in  a  state  which  was  best  indicated  by 
prose!  *      the  work  of  Ascham,  the  principal  prose-writer  by  far  of 
the   time,  and   one  who   embodied   its   dominant  charac- 
teristics.    The  period  of  mere  tentative,  of  experiments  in  stocking 
the  vocabulary  and  arranging  the  syntax,  had  ceased,  experiments  in 
all  directions   had  been  made  in  point  of  subject,   and  at   length   a 
fairly   normal  style    had   been  attained,  suitable,  as  Ascham    himself 
showed,  for  a  good  variety  of  literary  purposes,  if  not  for  all. 

"  Fairly,"  it  has  been  said,  but  by  no  means  finally.     The   style 
of  Ascham    was   a   pretty   good   style   of  all   work ;    but   it   was   not 
capable  of  distinction  in  more  than  one  or  two  kinds.     It  was  per- 
fectly clear,  very  fairly  advanced  in  balance  and  cadence, 
theType!      ^"^^    possessing   yet   further   capacities    in   that   direction, 
well-proportioned,  logical,  and   sane.     But   like   the   later 
plain  prose  style  of  the  eighteenth  century,  it   had  two  drawbacks. 
It  was  very  ill  fitted  for  fanciful,  gorgeous,  or  passionate  expression, 
and   it  was    constantly  liable,  when    not  used  with   something   more 
than   ordinary   scholarship   and    taste,   to    degenerate    into    tameness, 
commonness,  insipidity.     In  its  horror  of  "inkhorn"  terms,  it  was  in 
danger  of  becoming  dull ;  in  its  adherence  to  Latin  arrangement  and 
to  certain  stereotyped,  or  likely  to  be  stereotyped,^  tricks  of  parallelism 
and   antithesis,  it  was  in  danger  of  losing  raciness   and   vernacular 
variety. 

294 


CHAP.  VI     LYLY   AND    HOOKER  — THE  TRANSLATORS,   ETC.     295 

Attempts  to  variegate  it  were  certain,  and  they  have  been  traced 
with  more  or  less  probability,  or  fancitulness,  in  the  transition  writers 
between  1560  and  1580.  But  these  tendencies  were  carried  so  much 
farther,  and  the  ideas  which  lay  behind  them  were  so  much  more 
brilliantly  and  importantly  expressed  in  the  famous  book  called 
Eiiphues^  that  it  is  really  unnecessary  to  look  behind  that,  except  in 
making  a  special  study  of  the  particular  subject.  And  even  such  a 
study  might  perhaps  wisely  avoid  cumbering  itself  too  much  on  the 
question  whether  Lyiy's  original  is  to  be  found  through  Berners  in 
Guevara,  or  elsewhere,  or  in  many  elsewheres,  or  nowhere.  The  law 
of  maxima  and  minima  is  more  certain  and  constant  in  prose  style 
than  almost  anywhere  else.  When  the  elements  of  such  a  style 
have  been  once  got  together,  florid  or  plain  style  (it  does  not  much, 
or  at  all,  matter  which)  appears,  and  is  in  its  measure  and  degree 
perfected.  As  it  approaches  perfection,  men  get  tired  of  it  and  try 
something  new,  plain  or  florid,  as  the  case  may  be,  which  ^j^^  ^^^ 
in  its  turn  rises,  flourishes,  decays,  and  is  superseded.  and  flow 
At  hardly  any  time  (though  there  are  a  few  apparent  °  ^  y  e. 
exceptions)  does  either  flourish  quite  alone  ;  in  hardly  any  case  can 
the  innovation,  whatever  it  is,  be  directly  traced  back  to  any  single 
case  or  beginner.  Flux  rules  all,  and  we  can  only  note  with  any  pre- 
cision the  greater  turns  of  the  tide. 

Euphuism  was  certainly  one  of  these.  Like  most  things,  it  has 
been  exaggerated  as  well  as  depreciated  in  importance,  and  objections 
have  been  taken  to  this  or  that  use  of  the  word  —  especially  to  the 
habit  of  employin":  the  term  generally,  as  well  as  specifi-     „    ,    . 

^     -'      "  "  -' '  1         r  Euphuism. 

cally.  This  seems  hypercritical.  Euphues  was  the  first 
conspicuous  example  in  English  of  the  determination  to  achieve  an 
ornate,  variegated,  and  rather  fantastic  style ;  and  it  is  quite  reason- 
able to  allow  the  employment  of  the  abstract  terms  formed  from  it  as 
denoting,  first,  the  specific  characteristics  of  the  book  itself,  and, 
secondly,  in  the  usual  transferred  fashion,  those  of  the  genus  to  which 
it  belongs,  and  which  renews  itself  so  constantly  in  species,  with  only 
minor  differences. 

The  life  of  Lyly  has  been  already  (p.  282)  dealt  with,  but  this 
book  1  preceded  his  plays.  He  was  probably  about  six-and-twenty 
when  its  first  part,  Etiphues  the  Anatomy  of  Wit,  appeared  in  the 
spring  of  1579.  He  was  certainly  still  resident  at  Ox-  EuPhues 
ford,  and  an  address  to  the  "  Gentlemen  Scholars  "  of 
that  University  appeared  in  the  second  edition,  which  followed 
within  the  year.  The  second  part,  Euphues  and  his  England,  ap- 
peared   next   year    (1580),    and    Ijoth    were    rapidly    and   frequently 

1  Ed.  Arber,  London,  1868. 


296    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

, ^ , 

reprinted.  The  influence  of  the  book  has  been  sometimes  a  little 
exaggerated,  and  sometimes  more  than  a  little  pooh-poohed,  while 
from  a  period  tolerably  early  in  the  seventeenth  century  to  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  it  was  forgotten,  and  from  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
to  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  misrepresented.  But  there  is  no 
doubt  at  all  that  for  at  least  twenty  years  after  its  first  appearance,  if 
not  for  thirty  or  forty,  Euphuism  was  a  living,  an  active,  and  in  the 
usual  way  and  with  the  usual  limitations,  a  triumphant  force.  Almost 
the  whole  of  the  more  literary  art  of  the  curious  pamphlet  literature 
of  the  time  followed  it ;  it  coloured,  at  least  as  much  by  direct  imita- 
tion as  by  indirect  revolt,  Sidney's  equally  influential  A)xadia ;  it  had 
a  very  great  influence  on  the  dramatists,  especially  Shakespeare  him- 
self in  his  youth.  This  history  guards  most  carefully  against  the 
undue  interchange  of  posi  and  propter ;  and  we  might  have  had,  we 
should  doubtless  have  had,  Donne  first  and  Browne  later,  with  all 
the  gorgeous  language  and  quaint  thought  of  which  the  two  are  the 
chief  representatives  in  verse  and  prose,  without  Lyly.  But  in  that 
case  Donne  and  Browne,  and  all  those  about  them,  would  have  had  to 
do  for  themselves  something  that,  as  it  was,  they  found  done  to  their 
hand. 

It  is  necessary  (and  it  has  not  always  been'  done)  to  keep  the 
matter  and  intention  of  Lyly's  work  separate  from  his  manner.  In 
the  first  point  he  was  no  innovator,  and  though  it  would  not  be 
correct  to  say  that  he  was  behind  his  time,  he  was  not  more  than  on 
a  level  with  it,  and  was  nearer  obsolescence  than  innovation.  His 
book  is,  in  drift  and  thought,  exclusively  a  Renaissance  one ;  it  is 
concentrated  upon  Education,  and  takes  that  view  of  Education 
itself  which  the  Renaissance  derived  from  Plato,  and  conditioned  with 
its  own  thoughts  in  politics,  religion,  art,  and  what  not.  Nominally 
Euphiies  is  a  romance.  Its  first  part,  EupJuies.  or  the  Anatomy  of 
Euihues  ^'^^'  ^P^^^  at  Naples,  and  treats  of  the  courtship  of 
the  Anatomy  the  heroine  Lucilla  by  the  two  friends,  Euphues  and 
^  '■  Philautus — the  Amadis  and  Galaor^  mutatis  mutandis 
of  the  story  —  and  by  a  third  suitor,  vastly  inferior  to  either,  named 
Curio.  In  all  Lyly's  work  (whether  for  reason  or  not,  we  havd  no 
evidence)  there  is  a  deep  and  heartfelt  satire  on  woman,  which  quite 
transcends  the  mere  stock  railing  of  the  Middle  Ages ;  and  Lucilla, 
of  course,  chooses  the  unfittest.  But  the  bulk  of  the  book  is  not 
story  at  all,  and  is  made  up  of  various  letters  of  Euphues.  the  longest 
being  one  to  Philautus  after  he    has    quarrelled   with    his  friend   for 

1  These  contrasted  (serious  and  light-o'-love)  wooers  of  the  great  Portuguese 
of  Spanish  romance,  themselves  slightly  altered  copies  of  Lancelot  and  Gawain, 
produced  an  immense  effect  on  the  Renaissance,  and  were  reproduced  by  hun- 
dreds of  authors  in  different  forms  of  poem,  romance,  and  play. 


CHAP.  VI     LYLY   AND   HOOKER  — THE  TRANSLATORS,   ETC.     297 

Lucilla,  and  she  has  jilted  them  both ;  an  orthodox  dialogue 
between  Euphues  and  '"Atheos,"  the  latter  a  person  rather  rife  at 
this  time ;  and,  above  all,  a  very  important  tractate  entitled  "  Euphues 
and  his  Ephebus,"  which  is  based  on  Plutarch's  treatise  of  education, 
and  contains  a  great  part  of  the  real  gist  of  the  book.  This  includes  a 
rather  sharp  criticism  of  the  condition  of  things  at  Oxford,  to  which 
Lyly  plays  "  Terrae  Filius  "  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  before  Nicholas 
Amhurst,  though  not  from  the  political  point  of  view. 

Euphues  and  his  England  lands  the  hero  and   Philautus    in  the 
author's  own  country,  and  after  a  short  time  at  court.     In  this  part 
Philautus   is   the   chief  actor.     He   pays   his   addresses   to   a  certain 
Lady  Camilla,  a  court  beauty,  who  is  unkind,  and  is,  by      Euphues 
the  favour  of  another,  Lady  Flavia,  permitted  a  platonic      and  his 
friendship  with  her  niece  Frances  as  "his  violet,"  which        "Sa^t 
at  the  close  of  the  book  seems  to  give  promise  of  being  turned  into 
something  warmer.     Meanwhile  Euphues,  after  another  quarrel  with 
Philautus,  withdraws  himself  first  to  study  generally,  and  then,  after 
eulogies  on   the   ladies   of  England,  Cecil   (Lyly's   patron),  and   the 
Queen,   to    the    mountain    Silexedra   (''  Flint-seat,"   in  party   Greek- 
Latin),  whence  the  subsequent  pamphleteers  occasionally  evoked  his 
forlorn  and  somewhat  priggish  eidolon. 

The  really  noble  aims  and  the  somewhat  romantic,  but  by  no 
means  unsound,  views  of  love  and  life  and  learning  which  the  age  of 
Elizabeth  held  would  hardly  have  saved  this  curious  book  from  the 
fate  of  manv  others  not  far  its  inferiors  in  such  respects,  . 

Their  style. 

if  Lyly  had  not  been  a  great  mannerist  in  style,  as  well 
as  an  active  practitioner  in  thought,  and  if  his  style  had  not  looked 
forward  instead  of  backward,  or  at  least  merely  at  the  present.  It 
is  evident  that  he  was  utterly  discontented  with  the  plain  classicalised 
style  of  the  Cambridge  school.  He  was  as  classical  as  any  of  them, 
and  he  borrowed  from  them  (or  more  probably  from  their  originals) 
the  practice  of  balanced  sentences,  in  which  some  critics  have 
erroneously  seen  his  chief  title  to  mention  in  the  history  of  English 
prose.  Here  he  was  simply  in  the  direct  succession :  he  started 
nothing  new  as  compared  with  Ascham  or  even  Fisher.  The  point 
in  which  he  was  a  pioneer,  by  which  he  caught  the  ear  of  the  rising 
generation,  and  by  which  he  has  earned  his  real  place  in  the  story,  is 
quite  different.  It  is  his  revolt  against  the  plain  style,  and  the 
special  means  which  he  took  for  arming;  and  enforcing  that  revolt. 

These  were  two,  or  it  may  be  three,  which  shall  be  mentioned  in 
the  order  of  their  departure  from  the  practices  common  before  him. 

The  first  and  by  far  the  least  original  was  a  peculiar  fashion 
of  bringing  in  classical  examples  as  similes  or  illustrations.  Such 
examples  in  themselves  had  been  commonplaces  of  the  whole  Middle 


298    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE   TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

Ages,  and  had  come  thicker  and  faster  in  the  fifteenth  century  and 
the    early    Renaissance.       But    Lyly   used    them   with    a    diiference. 

"  Bucephalus   lieth    down  when    he   is   curried,"  says   he, 
insrances.'     passiug  over  as  known  already  the  ancestry  and  birth  of 

Alexander,  his  campaigns,  his  death,  and  a  few  particulars 
about  his  successors,  which  the  genuine  mediaeval  taste  would  have 
thought  Excusable,  nay,  desirable,  at  this  juncture,  while  even  writers 
like  Brandt  and  his  translator  Barclay  would  have  thought  it  sinful 
to  dismiss  Bucephalus  in  less  than  a  paragraph  or  stanza. 

The  second,  in  which  he  innovated  a  little  more,  though 
still  he  had  numerous  forerunners,  was  the  introduction  —  byway  of 
contrast,  to  enforce  his  meaning,  or  for  other  reasons  —  of  distinctly 

vernacular  phrases,  "  I  am  of  the  shoemaker's  mind  who 
vernacularity.  caretli    not   SO   the   shoe    hold   the   plucking   on."      Such 

phrases,  as  we  noted,  are  not  uncommon  in  Ascham  him- 
self; but  they  are  much  more  frequent  in  Lyly,  who  in  this  respect 
is  as  Ascham  and  Latimer  rolled  into  one.  To  which  head  may  be 
added  his  practice  in  alliteration  —  a  common  one,  as  again  we  have 
seen,  at  the  time  — •  but  in  him  far  commoner,  and  far  more  of  a 
deliberate  artifice  of  style  than  with  most. 

Yet  here  again  we  may  say  that  had  there  been  nothing  else  than 
this  in  Euphues,  it  had  never  attained  the  position  it  held  and,  after 
a  long  period  of  eclipse,  now  again   holds.     Its  real   differentia,  its 

real    quality,   lies    elsewhere,   and    under    a    third    head, 
^^story"*^^    that  of  the  extraordinary  similes  drawn  from  all  heaven 

and  earth,  but  especially  from  the  fanciful  zoology  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  which  it  is  hardly  possible  to  open  two  pages  of 
Euphiies  without  discovering  in  greater  or  less  abundance. 

The  usual  efforts  have  been  made  to  show  that  this  curious  and 
salient  feature  is  not  entirely  original,  and  may  be  found  before  Lyly. 
No  doubt  it  may ;  no  doubt  any  feature  of  any  writer,  except  the  last 
and  highest  strokes  of  the  individual  genius,  may  so  be  found,  while 
even  these  strokes  are  sometimes  only  the  result  of  slight  changes 
on  precedent  matter.  It  is  quite  legitimate,  if  not  supremely  im- 
portant, to  indicate,  in  this  writer  and  in  that  of  the  third  quarter  of 
the  century,  the  symptoms  which  are  premonitory  of  every  literary 
change,  and  therefore  of  this.  But  what  entitles  writers  to  a  con- 
spicuous place  in  the  story  of  literature  is  their  use  for  the  first  time 
on  a  large  scale,  and  with  striking  effect,  of  certain  means  to  attain 
certain  ends.  Lyly  was  undoubtedly  the  first  to  lavish  this  peculiar 
kind  of  simile  and  illustration,  especially  with  the  definite  end  of 
heightening  and  variegating  his  style,  so  as  to  produce  on  the  reader 
a  distinct  rhetorical  effect,  to  make  the  common  uncommon,  to  pro- 
duce style  in  and  for  itself,  manner  independent  of  matter.     Before 


CHAP.  VI      LYLY  AND   HOOKER  — THE  TRANSLATORS,   ETC.     299 

Lyly,  as  we  have  seen,  there  had  hardly  been  any  one  of  whom  this 
could  be  said,  except  Fisher,  and  Fisher's  means  were  as  different 
from  Lyly's  as  was  his  aim. 

We  do  not  know  that  Lyly  deliberately  and  consciously  set 
himself  against  the  principles  which  Ascham  and  his  set  had 
enunciated  thirty  years  earlier,  and  which  they  or  others  had  faith- 
fully carried  out ;  but  that  the  opposition  was  in  effect  diametrical  is 
certain.  '•  Inkhorn  terms"  were  no  longer  tabooed;  the  ambition  to 
say  things  in  a  manner  different  from  that  of  other  people  was  not 
only  not  discouraged,  but  was  distinctly  and  definitely  encouraged ; 
conceit,  quaintness,  individuality,  were  reintroduced  into  literature. 
The  whole  bulk  of  the  pamphlet  prose,  to  which  we  shall  come 
presently,  expressed  the  understanding  of  this,  which  Lyly's  juniors 
at  once  manifested. 

Meanwhile  a  contemporary  of  Lyly's  was  bringing  the  plainer 
style  itself  to  a  perfection  which  in  this  particular  stage  was  the 
highest  it  ever  reached,  and  which  showed  that  in  competent  hands 
it  need  not  lack  a  sober  grace,  almost  beyond  that  which 
ornater  orderings  could  attain.  Richard  Hooker  was  a 
native  of  Heavitree,  a  suburb  of  Exeter,  and  had  been  born  in  1554 
in  poor  conditions.  He  had,  however,  forebears  and  living  relations 
better  off,  and  his  uncle,  John  Hooker,  was  an  Oxford  man,  a 
continuator  of  Holinshed,  and  a  person  of  consequence  under 
the  Elizabethan  reconquest  of  Ireland.  He  is  said  to  have  recom- 
mended his  nephew  to  Bishop  Jewel,  and  Jewel  assisted  Hooker  to 
go  to  Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford,  procured  him  private  pupils, 
and  though  he  himself  died  when  Hooker  had  not  nearly  completed 
his  Oxford  course,  was  the  cause  of  his  becoming  first  scholar  and 
then  fellow  of  his  college,  and  reader  in  Hebrew  in  the  University. 
He  married  very  foolishly,  and  was  henpecked ;  but  his  friends  were 
stanch  to  him,  and  he  obtained  first  the  living  of  Drayton  Beauchamp 
in  Buckinghamshire,  then  the  mastership  of  the  Temple  in  1584, 
then  the  living  of  Boscombe  in  1591,  and  lastly  that  of  Bishopsbourne 
in  Kent,  where  he  died  in  1600.  At  the  Temple  he  had  become 
involved  in  an  equally  unsought  and  unseemly  controversy  with  his 
subordinate,  the  lecturer  Travers,  a  bitter  Puritan.  Hooker's  views, 
when  he  was  transferred  once  more  to  the  quiet  of  the  country,  took 
form  in  the  great  treatise  called  the  Laws  of  Ecclesiastical  Polity^ 
of  which  the  first  five  books,  as  it  now  stands,  are  certainly  genuine, 
while  as  to  the  last  three  it  is  as  certain  that  they  do  not  appear  as 
he  wrote  them,  Init  not  quite  certain  how  far  there  was  intentional 
garbling  in  the  arrangement  of  their  present  form. 

1  Ed.  Keble. 


;oo  ELIZABETHAN  LITERATURE  TO  SPENSER'S  DEATH  bk.  v 


We  are  here  concerned  with  only  one  side  of  this  great  Apologia 
for  the  Anglican  Church,  which,  written  while  the  spirit  and  intentions 
of  those  who  presided  over  its  transformation  were  well  known,  has 
an  authority  that  no  later  work  could  claim,  and  which  in  the  most 
charitable  spirit,  and  with  absolutely  no  bitterness  of  feeling,  utterly 
ruined,  from  the  logical  and  historical  side,  the  position  of  the  English 
Puritans.  Long  after  Hooker's  death  they  achieved  a  brief  victory 
bv  calling  in  the  secular  arm,  but  Hooker's  argument,  and  his  history, 
remained  unanswered  and  triumphant.  We  are  not  here  further  con- 
cerned with  it  than  as  a  masterly  piece  of  English  prose,  and  in  this 
capacity  it  can  hardly  be  too  highly  praised.  No  one,  speaking 
otherwise  than  at  random,  would  give  this  praise  unmixed.  Hooker's 
style  has  the  faults  of  its  class  —  a  classicism  now  timid,  now  unduly 
audacious ;  an  unnecessary  fear  of  vivid  and  vernacular  expressions. 
But  its  author  handles  the  methods  and  means  which  he  has  received 
with  original  genius,  attaining  to  a  really  exquisite  balance  of 
sentence,  to  a  harmony  sometimes  quite  ineffable,  adjusting  his 
longer  and  shorter  constructions  with  almost  infallible  art,  and 
affording  a  specimen  never  surpassed,  and  hardly  ever  equalled  since, 
of  argument  maintained  on  abstract  and  scholastic  points  without  the 
slightest  dulness,  of  ornament  which  is  never  daubed  or  stuck  on, 
but  arises  from  the  proportion  of  the  phrase,  and  the  careful  selection 
of  the  vocabulary.  Had  it  been  possible  to  have  all  prose  written  by 
Hookers,  nobody  need  have  wished  to  seek  much  further  experiment. 
Put  this  w^as  clearly  inipossible,  and  the  constantly  broadening  and 
varying  demands  of  the  different  subjects  to  which  prose  was  applied 
helped  the  tendency  in  the  air,  the  mere  wish  for  change,  to  bring 
that  change  about.  The  Ecclesiastical  Polity  is  at  least  ten  years  the 
junior  of  Eitphiies,  but  it  is  its  elder  by  as  much  or  more  in  the  order 
of  style. 

Accordingly,  in  the  general  work  of  the  time,  it  is  the  influence  of 

Lyly.  not  the  influence  of  Hooker,  that  we  find  prevailing.     The  idea 

that  Sidney  intended  the  Arcadia  as  a  protest  against  Euphuism  has 

Contempora-  ^^^^    dealt    with    above,   and    is    almost    beyond   doubt 

riesofLyiy    erroneous.     Sir  Philip  is  as  great  a  Euphuist  as  Euphues 

himself.     So,  though   his    taste  was  much   purer  and   he 

came  nearer  to  the  stately  mannerisms  of  the  Jacoljean  and  Caroline 

time  than  to  the  fantastic  coxcombry  of  purely  Elizabethan  prose  of 

the  ornate  kind,  was  Raleigh ;    so  was  the  difficult  and  sententious, 

but    often    striking,    Fulke    Greville.      All   these   were   almost   exact 

contemporaries  of  Hooker  and  Lyly  (Raleigh  was  born  in  1552),  and 

they  present,  as  no   others   could  do,  the  union  of  courtly  practice, 

gentle  blood,  great  talents,  and  a  competent  education.     If  Spenser, 

another  contempo.-ary,  shows  a  plainer  style,  we  must  remember  first 


CHAP.  VI     LYLY  AND    HOOKER  — THE  TRANSLATORS,   ETC.     301 

that  Spenser  was  a  poet,  and  had  the  fuller  harmony  in  which  to 
express  himself  when  he  listed ;  secondly,  that  we  have  but  one 
piece  of  prose  of  his  of  any  length ;  and  thirdly,  that  this  piece  is  a 
sober  State  paper,  tliough  a  very  admirably  written  one.  Historians 
like  Camden  (who,  indeed,  wrote  chiefly  in  Latin)  and  Knolles  and 
Daniel  had  also  little  temptation  to  indulge  in  ornateness,  not  to 
mention  that  Daniel,  even  in  verse,  prefers  neutral  tints  to  brilliant 
ones,  and  that  Knolles  (c.  1 544-1 610)  belongs  to  a  somewhat  elder 
generation  than  that  which  we  are  now  discussing,  and,  though 
he  has  a  stately  enough  style  of  his  own  when  he  pleases,  follows 
chiefly  classical  models.  We  should  not  expect  much  Euphuism, 
though  there  is  some,  in  Philip  Stubbes,  the  Puritan  whose  Anatomy 
of  Abuses^  a  characteristic  but  childish  work,  appeared  in  1583;  or 
in  an  enthusiast  for  practical  education  like  Richard  Mulcaster.  Yet 
this  latter's  Treatise  of  Right  Writing  of  the  English  Tongue,  1582, 
is  quite  to  our  purpose  in  subject  if  not  in  style.  Mulcaster, 
an  Eton  boy,  a  member  both  of  King's  College,  Cambridge,  and  of 
Christ  Church  at  Oxford,  Master  of  Merchant  Taylors'  School  in 
1561,  High  Master  of  St.  PauPs  from  1596  to  within  three  years  of 
his  death  in  161 1,  and  prebendary  of  Salisbury,  is  an  interesting 
person,  and  was  an  admirable  schoolmaster  for  the  time,  holding  as 
he  did  a  firm  belief  in  the  virtues  of  the  classics  for  study,  and  in 
those  of  English  for  practice.  But  he  was  not  himself  a  great  man 
of  letters,  and  he  had  not  reached  the  promised  land  of  English 
prose  style  to  which  he  cheered  others  on.^ 

Still,  it  is  not  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  when  a  man  of  this 
period  and  generation  does  endeavour  at  style,  it  is  much  more  prob- 
able that  his  attempt  will  take  the  form  of  ornateness,  whether  in  the 
smaller  or  in  the  larger  sense  of  Euphuism,  than  that  it  will  aim  at 
the  simpler  graces  of  strict  proportion  and  cadence.  And  this  is 
specially  to  be  observed  in  some  groups  of  prose  writers,  who  may  be 
best  noticed  here,  postponing  to  the  next  Book  some  further  com- 
ment on  some  of  the  works  glanced  at  in  the  last  paragraph,  wliich 
belong  to  the  very  latest  years  of  the  Queen,  or  to  years  later  still. 
These  are  the  translators  and  the  pamphleteers,  to  whom  the  critics, 
as  closely  connected  with  both,  may  be  usefully  appended. 

The   importance   of   the    Elizabethan  translators   had    never  been 

1  Raleigh  and  others  will  have  further  notice.  The  chief  pieces  of  Greville's 
prose  (see  Grosart's  edition  of  his  works,  4  vols.  1870)  are  his  Lt/e  (which  is  not 
a  life)  0/  Sidney,  for  matter,  and  his  Letter  to  a  Lady,  for  thought  and  style.  The 
late  Mr.  R.  H.  Quick,  an  enthusiast  for  education,  printed  (London,  1888) 
Mulcaster's  Positions,  dealing  with  that  subject,  but  not  tlie  other  treatise,  entitled 
also  with  a  pleasant  quaintness.  The  First  Part  of  the  Elementary.  Richard 
Knolles's  History  of  the  Turks  appeared  in  1603,  with  subsequent  editions  in  1610 
and  1621,  which  are  not  difficult  to  obtain. 


302     ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 


wholly  neglected,  owing  to  their  connection  with  Shakespeare ;  but  it 
is  only  recently  tliat  it  has  been  fully  recognised  and  the  texts  them- 
selves brought  anew  to  general  knowledge.^  We  have 
translators,  ^een  that  from  almost  the  earliest  mediaeval  times  to 
some  extent,  and  more  fully  as  the  centuries  passed  by, 
each  generation  endeavoured  to  familiarise  itself  with  at  least  some 
of  the  great  writers  of  antiquity,  as  well  as  with  those  modern  books, 
chiefly  in  French  but  latterly  in  ather  tongues  also,  which  supplied 
important  literature.  During  the  time,  however,  while  English  was 
simply  in  the  making,  it  had  more  to  receive  than  to  give,  and 
Caxton's  naive  and  delightful  admiration  of  the  "  fair  language  of 
French"  is  only  an  instance  of  what  was  going  on.  But  now  an 
original  sap  was  mounting  through  the  trunk  of  English  prose,  and 
the  results  were  nowhere  more  apparent,  were  perhaps  nowhere  more 
influential,  than  here.  For  a  century  to  come  North's '-^  Plutarch  and 
Florio's  ^  Montaigne  at  least  were  read  and  re-read  with  an  attention 
which  few  other  English  books  (except  the  translation  of  the  Bible) 
could  command.  The  former,  as  all  know,  furnished  Shakespeare 
witli  no  small  proportion  of  his  subjects,  and  Shakespeare's  genera- 
tion, as  well  as  at  least  that  which  followed  it  and  another  still,  with 
their  most  familiar  topics  and  instances  of  human  conversation  and 
political  ethics.  The  latter  helped  to  create  the  English  Essay,  de- 
termined to  a  large  extent  the  course  of  English  philosophy  for  a  time, 
helped  (not  quite  so  fortunately)  a  certain  ebb  of  the  national  character 
from  romantic  to  sordid  schemes  of  life,  and  by  a  cross  of  the  French 
politique  begat  the  English  "  trimmer."  Nor  were  the  minor  translators 
in  their  own  day  and  way  less  influential.  Among  these  Philemon 
Holland,  bom  at  Chelmsford  in  1552,  a  Fellow  of  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  a  doctor  of  medicine  and  a  schoolmaster  at  Coventry, 
where  he  died  in  1637,  executed  rather  late  in  his  life  versions  of 
Livy,  Pliny,  Plutarch  (the  Morals),  Suetonius,  and  Xenophon; 
Thomas  Underdowne  did  Heliodorus  and  Ovid ;  Nicolls  ventured  on 
Thucydides,  but  Thucydides  was  beyond  him  ;  William  Adlington,  of 

1  In  the  very  handsome  series  of  Tudor  Translations  published  by  Mr.  Nutt 
and  edited  generally  by  Mr.  W.  E.  Henley,  with  introductions  by  various  hands. 
Florio  has  also  been  given  by  Mr.  Waller  in  a  very  pretty  little  edition  (6  vols. 
I^ndon,  1897). 

2  Sir  Thomas  North  was  of  the  family  which  became  so  notable  later,  and 
was  second  son  of  the  first  Lord  North.  Very  little  is  known  about  him.  His 
Plutarch  first  appeared  in  1579,  and  he  did  other  translations. 

8  Of  Italian  extraction,  but  born  in  London  about  1553.  He  was  a  member 
of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  and  began  as  early  as  1578  a  series  of  handbooks 
in  the  modem  languages,  of  which  he  was  a  teacher.  The  chief  is  his  World  of 
Words,  an  Italian-English  dictionary.  He  was  much  patronised  by  Elizabeth's 
nobility,  and  held  places  in  the  Household  of  her  successor.  His  Montaigne 
(licensed  in  1599)  first  appeared  in  1603,  and  he  died  in  1625. 


CHAP.  VI     LYLY   AND   HOOKER  — THE  TRANSLATORS,   ETC.     303 

University  College,  Oxford,  took  Apuleius  ;  "  R.  B."  Englished  some 
Herodotus ;  Sir  Henry  Savile,  the  learned  Provost  of  Eton,  did 
Tacitus ;  and  Angel  Day  wrought  Longus  through  Amyot  into  the 
vernacular. 

It  will  readily  be  understood  that  whatever  interest  these  transla- 
tions possess  arises  to  hardly  the  smallest  extent  from  faithful  repre- 
sentation of  the  original--.  Savile  certainly,  Holland  to  some  degree, 
one  or  two  others  more  or  less,  were  scholars  ;  but  the  most 
famous  and  popular  of  the  versions  were  usually  taken,  characterLtics. 
not  direct  from  the  original,  but  from  previous  French  or 
Italian  translations,  and  it  was  hardly  the  object  of  a  single  one  of 
these  writers  to  give  their  author,  their  whole  author,  and  nothing  but 
their  author,  in  rigidly  classical  English.  Had  it  been  so,  they  had 
been  of  far  less  interest  and  value  to  posterity.  On  the  contrary, 
such  community  of  design  as  is  to  be  seen  in  them  (and  it  is  rather 
remarkable)  consists  in  the  effort  to  be  at  once  as  vernacular  and  as 
variegated  as  may  be.  They  compress,  expand,  omit,  or  sometimes 
even  insert,  as  no  modern  translator  would  dare  to  do ;  they  exhibit 
to  the  very  fullest  the  double  tendency  of  Euphuism  to  the  finest  and 
the  most  familiar  expressions ;  and  following  in  this  respect  Lord 
Berners,  if  not  earlier  translators,  they  put  English  dresses  on  foreign 
words  and  terms  in  a  way  infinitely  delightful  and  full  of  refreshment 
to  the  tongue,  but  such  as  would  make  our  modern  purists  stare  and 
gasp.  To  this  day  these  translations  are  a  repertory  of  slang  that 
still  exists,  of  racy  but  obsolete  expressions  which  would  else  be  lost, 
of  Latinisms,  Gallicisms  —  isms  of  every  kind.  No  class  of  work  is 
fuller  of  that  most  English  of  all  idioms,  the  turning  of  any  noun, 
adjective,  or  substantive  into  a  verb.  They  had,  no  doubt,  little  idea 
of  proportion,  choice,  grace ;  but  these  were  not  the  things  the  lan- 
guage needed  at  the  time.  It  wanted  to  be  thoroughly  suppled, 
thoroughly  vernacularised,  and  at  the  same  time  to  be  charged  with 
store  of  good  words,  native  and  foreign,  classical  and  modern,  from 
which  a  standard  vocabulary  could  be,  as  it  was,  riddled  out  after- 
wards. The  late  fourteenth  and  the  fifteenth  century  writers  had 
done  their  part  in  teaching  English  prose  ''  to  go  "  ;  Fisher  and  the 
Ascham  school  had  given  it  a  thorough  grammar-school  education. 
But  these  writers  and  others  of  Elizabeth's  time  were  putting  it  to 
the  university,  practising  it  in  all  sports  and  arts  at  once,  allowing  it, 
it  may  he,  raiher  a  full  allowance  of  wild  oats,  but  enriching  it,  exer- 
cising it,  giving  it  possessions,  memories,  experience ;  preparing  it  for 
its  future  business  in  a  fashion  as  necessary  as  the  more  orderly 
and  sedate  processes  of  training  which  it  had  previously  undergone. 

Exactly   the   same   drift   and   tendency,  though   in   more   original 
matter,  is  shown  by   the  curious   and  interesting  range   of  pamphlet 


304    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 

literature  which,  connected  very  directly  in  point  of  authorship  with 
the  t^roup  of  University  Wits,  fills  the  last  twenty  years  of  Elizabeth, 
and  extends  into  those  of  James  and  even  Charles.  This 
"hMeers  touches  all,  or  almost  all,  varieties  of  subject  with  a  univer- 
sality which  comes  not  so  very  far  short  of  the  modern 
newspaper ;  while  in  some  of  its  developments  may  be  found  a  stage 
—  a  far-off  and  rudimentary  one,  it  is  true  —  of  the  great  cliange 
which  converted  the  romance  into  the  modern  novel.  These  pam 
phlets  ^  —  a  form  of  publication  which  could  hardly  have  come  into 
being  without  the  printing  press,  and  which  the  printing  press  was  almost 
certain  to  bring  about  —  had  been  in  their  earliest  shape  either 
devoted  to  the  controversies  of  the  Reformation,  or  else  shortened 
chap-book  versions  of  medijEval  literature,  romances  in  verse  and  in 
prose,  jests,  books  of  saws  and  instances.  The  sharp  discipHne  of 
the  Tudor  Queen  made  the  religious  pamphlet  a  probable,  and  the 
political  one  an  almost  certain,  short  way  to  the  gallows,  or  at  least 
the  whipping-post  and  chopping-block ;  so  it  was  little  cultivated. 
Yet  one  famous  outbreak,  that  of  the  Martin  Marprelate 
Marprdate.  Controversy,  defied,  though  only  for  a  time,  these  pre- 
ventive checks.  It  concerned  (as  indeed  the  pseudonym 
of  the  various  writers  on  the  aggressive  side  confesses)  the  anti-pre- 
latical  movement  in  England,  but  was  from  the  first  strongly  coloured 
by,  and  at  last  became  almost  wholly  merged  in,  the  flood  of  personal 
reviling  which,  to  the  great  discredit  of  the  Reformers,  they  had  been 
the  first  to  let  loose.  The  defenders  of  orthodoxy  and  authority 
included  some  grave  churchmen  and  more  irresponsible  men  of 
letters,  whom  a  not  erring  instinct  told  that  Puritanism  was  as  much 
the  foe  of  literatul-e  as  of  loyalty  and  order  in  religion  and  politics. 
Lyly,  Nash,  and  the  Harveys  almost  or  quite  to  a  certainty  took  part 
in  it,  and  their  lampoons,  as  well  as  some  at  least  of  those  of  their 
antagonists,  display  the  revel  and  riot  of  words  which  has  been  indi- 
cated above  at  its  very  wildest. 

This,  however,  was  only  an  episode  in  the  pamphlet  history ; 
and  it  was  quickly  stopped. ^      The  pamphlet  itself  persevered  in  less 

1  Until  recently  most  of  them  were  inaccessible  except  in  large  libraries,  and 
even  now  they  are  best  found  in  the  privately  printed  issues  of  Dr.  Grosart.  His 
"  Huth  Library  "  contains  Greene,  Nash,  Dekker,  Harvey,  and  his  "  Chertsey 
Worthies"  the  enormous  work  of  Nicholas  Breton.  The  Marprelate  tracts  were 
printed  half  a  century  ago  by  the  bookseller  Petheram,  and  some  more  recently, 
with  an  invaluable  account  of  the  whole  controversy,  by  Mr.  Arber,  whose  English 
Garner  contains  a  great  number  of  scattered  pamphlets.  Lodge  has  been  given  by 
the  Hunterian  Club. 

2  I  may  be  permitted  to  refer  the  reader  who  wishes  for  more  on  "  Martin  " 
and  the  pamphlets  generally  to  my  separate  history  of  Elizabethan  Literature, 
pp.  223-252.  These  byways  of  history  are  almost  closed  to  the  general  historian; 
at  least  he  strays  if  he  pursues  them  too  far. 


CHAP.  VI     LYLY  AND    HOOKER— THE  TRANSLATORS,    ETC.     305 

dangerous  forms  —  novels,  generally  of  a  strongly  Euphuist  tinge ; 
personal  reminiscences,  true  or  feigned ;  disquisitions  serious  or 
comic,  not  very  different,  allowing  for  the  time,  from  those  of  the 
Addisonian  Essay ;  a  very  curious  batch  of  sketches  of  the  manners, 
especially  the  lower  and  looser  manners,  of  the  capital ;  and  lastly, 
literary  criticism.  In  all  these  respects  except  the  last,  Robert 
Greene  (see  last  chapter)  was  the  most  prolific,  and  on  the  whole  the 
most  gifted.  His  short  Euphuist  stories,  often  diversified  by  scraps 
of  verse,  not  merely  furnished  subjects  to  Shakespeare  and  others, 
but  undoubtedly  helped  to  foster  in  readers  a  taste  for  imaginative 
fiction.  His  personal  sketches  are  among  the  earliest  of  literary 
autobiographies,  though  they  have  to  be  taken  with  rather  numerous 
grains  of  salt.  Above  all,  his  series  on  "coney-catching"  ("rooking," 
card-sharping,  etc.),  though  again  not  to  be  taken  too  literally,  is  a 
most  amusing  and,  with  caution,  instructive  collection,  and  continued 
as  it  was  by  Dekker  in  the  next  generation,  gives  us  a  panorama  of 
the  shady  side  of  London  life  for  nearly  half  a  century.  Nash,  with 
less  romantic  gift  than  Greene,  and  with  no  poetical  power,  yet 
achieved  in  Jack  Wilton,  or  the  Unfortunate  Traveller,  a  novel  of 
merit,  which  "coney-catched"  many  generations  as  to  the  loves  of 
Surrey  and  "Geraldine,"  and  besides  his  "  Marprelate"  contributions, 
perhaps  in  consequence  of  them,  engaged  in  a  furious  paper  war,  the 
other  party  to  which  was  Gabriel  Harvey.  Later,  Nash,  like  others, 
wrote  repentant  and  pious  pamphlets.  Perhaps,  except  in  bulk. 
Lodge  is  even  the  superior  of  Greene,  in  respect  of  the  romantic 
tone  of  his  prose  and  the  exquisite  lyric  touch  of  the  verse  with 
which  it  is  strewn ;  while  the  enormous  pamphlet  work  of  Nicholas 
Breton,  a  step-son  of  Gascoigne  and  a  voluminous  writer  in  prose 
and  verse,  belongs,  as  does  that  of  Dekker,  rather  to  the  next  period 
than  to  this.^ 

Lodge,  however,  will  bring  us  conveniently  to  the  critics,  of 
whom  he  was  one,  and  who  were  very  often  the  same  persons  just 
mentioned,  engaged  for  the  moment  in  literary  controversies.  The 
most  important   of  these   controversies  were   the  Puritan    ^, 

1  he  critics. 

attacks  on  plays  and  poetry  generally,  which  was  opened 
by  the  School  of  Abuse   of  Stephen    Gosson  {vide  supra),  and   the 
other,  longer,  and  more  important  controversy,  first  between  metrical 
forms  exactly  corresponding  to  those  of  the  classics,  and  then  between 
"rhymeless    rhythms    adjusted    more    intelligently    to    the    genius    of 

1  The  titles  of  these  pamphlets  play  a  great  part  in  them  —  those  of  the 
"  Marprelate "  set  having  a  Rabelaisian  extravagance,  and  often  a  wonderful 
length ;  others  abounding  in  favourite  Elizabethan  catchwords  and  word-plays, 
like  that  on  "Will"  and  "Wit";  and  the  more  romantic  pieces  attaining  great 
prettiness,  as  in  Lodge's^  Margarilc  of  America. 
X 


3o6     ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH     bk.  v 


English.      The   earlier  stage    of    this    is    best    represented    by   the 
Four   Letters  of  Spenser  and    Harvey,    the   later   by   Campion   and 

Daniel. 

The  little  book  of  William  Webbe,  and  the  much  larger  one 
attributed  to  George  Puttenham,  both^^  especially  the  former,  show 
the  influence  of  the  first  part  of  this  craze.  The  almost  unknown 
William  Webbe,  who  is  thought  to  have  been  a  member  of  St.  John's 
College,  Cambridge,  and  who  appears  to  have  been  tutor  to  the  sons 
of  an  Essex  squire  named  Sulyard,  published  his  Discojcrse  of  English 
Poetriein  1586.  It  contains  enthusiastic  praise  of  Spenser,  "the  new 
poet,"  "our  late  famous  English  poet  who  wrote  the  Shepherd's 
Calendar,''''  refers  a  good  deal  to  the  ancients,  and  rather  superficially 
to  the  English  poets,  "  scorns  and  spews  out  the  ragged  rout  of  our 
rakehelly  rhymers  —  for  so  themselves  use  to  hunt  the  letter,"  as 
"  E.  K.,"  for  self  or  partner,  had  done  before  it,  gives  us  some 
very  comical  hexameters  for  the  two  first  eclogues  of  Virgil,  and 
with  more  zeal  than  discretion  turns  Spenser's  "  Ye  dainty  nymphs " 
into  a  slipshod  sort  of  slovenly  Sapphics.  But  Webbe's  enthu- 
siasm is  pleasing,  and  his  style  typical.  Puttenham,  if  he  was 
the  author  of  the  Art  of  English  Poesie  which  appeared  in  1589, 
was  more  cautious  about  the  new  mania.  His  volume,  which  is  of 
some  length,  is  a  rather  orderly  treatise  on  Poetics  and  Rhetoric 
mixed  as  commonly,  divided  into  three  books,  the  first  of  Poets 
and  Poesie,  the  second  of  Proportion,  and  the  third  of  Ornament 
—  this  last  being  almost  entirely  devoted  to  a  very  full  list  of  the 
Figures  of  Speech.  In  dealing  with  proportion  he  does  not  dis- 
dain the  fancy  shapes — pyramids,  etc.  —  which  aroused  the  anger  of 
Addison.  As  may  be  guessed  from  this,  Puttenham,  who  quotes 
his  own  verse  freely  and  seems  to  have  written  it  fairly  in  the  stiffer 
manner  of  the  first  half  of  the  reign,  is  rather  a  formalist,  but  his 
judgment,  when  he  can  get  it  out  of  stays,  is  not  contemptible.  The 
book  is  very  full,  learned,  and  careful,  the  work  of  a  scholar  and  a 
gentleman,  and  far  exceeding  in  detail  and  scope  anything  of  the  kind 
that  was  written  for  ages  afterwards. 

i  Both  in  Mr.  Arber's  Reprints, 


INTERCHAPTER    V 

Attention  has  often  been  drawn  to  the  ambiguity  of  the  title 
Elizabethan  Literature,  as  commonly  used.  "  Is  it  not,"  they  say, 
"  absurd  to  include  under  such  a  head  the  work  of  men  who,  like 
Milton  and  Browne,  were  not  born  till  after  the  Queen's  death,  and 
did  not  die  till  the  last  quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century  had  arrived 
or  was  at  the  door?"  "Is  it  not  even  the  fact  that  most  of  the 
masterpieces  of  this  literature  were  not  produced  at  all  till  the  reign 
of  James  ? "  It  is  desirable  to  remember  these  facts ;  but  it  is  still 
more  desirable  to  remember  the  others,  first  that  all  the  seed  of  the 
whole  period  called  Ehzabethan  was  sown,  and  that  not  a  little  of  it 
had  come  up,  before  the  Queen's  death  ;  and  secondly,  that  the  quality 
of  the  period  1580- 1660  is  essentially  one  and  indivisible.  There 
are  differences  between  Milton  and  Spenser,  but  they  are  differences 
rather  of  degree  than  of  kind.  The  differences  between  Milton  and 
Dryden  are  differences  at  least  of  species,  almost  of  genus. 

Our  present  arrangement  has  the  advantage  of  keeping  both 
sets  of  facts  in  view,  and  in  especial  of  directing  attention  to  the 
characteristics  of  the  first  generation  of  the  period,  the  generation 
which,  as  typified  by  Spenser,  ended  a  little  before  the  last  evil  days 
of  Elizabeth's  own  life  closed.  It  is  perfectly  true  that  among  the 
completed  work  of  this  time  we  find  but  one  name,  that  of  Spenser 
himself,  which  represents,  undoubtedly  and  unquestionably,  a  star  of 
the  first  magnitude  and  the  widest  orbit,  and  that  perhaps  two  others, 
Marlowe  and  Hooker,  are  the  only  companions  that  can  be  assigned 
to  him  by  a  criticism  which  unites  exactness  with  liberality.  But  it 
is  not  at  all  necessary  to  take  refuge  from  this  fact  in  another,  the 
fact  that,  in  the  last  date  at  least  of  the  time,  we  have  the  wonderful 
beginnings  of  Shakespeare  in  drama,  of  Bacon  in  prose,  of  Donne  and 
otliers  in  jiure  poetry.  There  is  a  third  aspect  under  which  the 
period  requires  no  allowance,  no  compensation  of  any  kind,  and  which 
enables  it  to  stand  on  the  credit  of  its  own  capital  and  revenue.  It 
is  this  aspect,  too,  which  makes  it  peculiarly  desirable  to  mark  it  off 
distinctly,  though  not  too  sharply,  from  its  successor.     It  was  the  period 

307 


3o8      ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH      bk. 


of  the  remaking,  in  different  degrees  for  the  different  departments,  but 
in  all  of  the  remaking,  and  in  one  practically  of  the  making,  of  English 
Literature. 

This  process  is  most  definitely  and  clearly  mapped  out  in  regard 
to  Poetry.  If  the  facts  of  the  foregoing  Books  and  the  concentrated 
lessons  of  their  Interchapters  have  been  followed,  the  necessity  for  the 
remaking  will  here  need  little  enforcement.  Chaucer  had  gathered 
up  all  the  stuff  and  all  the  methods  of  media;val  work  in  English 
verse,  had  added  much  of  his  own,  and  had  left  poetry  in  a  stage  of 
relative  perfection.  But  the  succession  failed.  Even  men  who  were 
of  more  than  man's  estate  at  the  time  of  his  death,  like  Lydgate  and 
Occleve,  could  not  manage  what  he  left  them ;  and  changes,  obscure 
in  process  but  obvious  in  kind  and  in  result,  increased  the  difficulty 
for  their  successors.  Nor  were  Wyatt  and  Surrey  in  a  position  to 
undertake  the  reshaping  with  a  view  to  the  future,  not  the  past.  Both 
had  genius,  but  it  was  genius  rather  fine  than  strong :  both  were 
shortlived ;  and  both  came  a  little  too  early  for  their  task.  Nor  did 
they  for  a  long  time  find  any  seconds,  and  perhaps  it  was  just  as 
well.  The  obscure  alterations  of  constitution,  the  changes  of  life, 
had  to  complete  themselves  before  the  new  poetry  could  come. 
Then  "  the  new  poet  "  brought  it. 

On  the  whole,  what  Spenser  did  has  been  rather  under-  than  over- 
valued, and  his  greatness  only  depends  in  part,  and  hardly  the  largest 
part,  on  the  personal  opinion  which  this  or  that  reader  may  form 
of  the  poetical  merit  even  of  the  Faerie  Queene.  It  may  be,  as 
some  think,  a  venerable  and  in  parts  beautiful  but  tedious  and  out-of- 
date  allegory,  or  it  may  be,  as  others  think,  by  far  the  greatest  long 
poem  in  English.  It  may  be  anything  between  these  two  estimates. 
But  the  aesthetic  variation  has  no  place  in  the  clear  verdict  of 
history.  It  is  indisputable  (which  is  not  the  same  thing  as  being 
undisputed)  that  Spenser  practically  created  the  diction  and  prosody 
of  English  poetry  as  both  have  subsisted  in  the  main  to  the  present 
day.  He  did  not,  of  course,  finish  the  creation.  Shakespeare  had 
to  come,  and  Milton,  at  least,  before  that  was  done;  but  he  did  a 
great  deal  more  than  begin  it.  His  versification  had  to  receive  not  a 
little  extension,  and  an  infinite  process — a  process  not  yet  ended  —  of 
permutations  and  combinations,  but  it  has  not  to  the  present  day 
undergone  any  fundamental  change.  His  diction— correctly  but 
short-sightedly  condemned  by  Ben  as  "no  language"  —  was  in  fact  a 
bold  recognition  of  the  fact  that  merely  the  current  language  of  the 
day  or  any  common  day  can  never  be  the  diction  of  poetry,  that 
poetry  needs  a  diction  cunningly  and  carefully,  but  always  to  a  greater 
or  less  extent  alienated,  refined,  distinguished  from  the  diction  of 
prose.     The    enormous  dead-lift   which   he  gave  to  poetry,  and  the 


INTERCHAPTER   V  309 


results  of  which  were  apparent  in  the  ten  last  years  of  his  life,  and 
the  fifty  or  more  following  it,  was  only  in  very  small  part  due  to 
direct  imitation  of  his  own  work  as  such.  It  was  due,  even  in 
the  hands  of  Shakespeare,  even  in  the  hands  of  Milton,  to  the  fact 
that  Shakespeare  first  and  Milton  afterwards  had  in  their  hands  the 
stock  of  language,  the  plant  of  prosody,  which  Spenser  had  first 
founded  and  set  going.  The  kinds  of  sonnet  and  of  satire,  of  history- 
poem  and  poem-philosophical,  which  sprang  up  so  abundantly  in  his 
footsteps  are  interesting,  but  they  are  not  really  so  interesting  to 
history  as  this  complete  reorganisation  of  the  poet's  material  and  of 
his  means,  as  this  remaking  of  English  verse.    •  ' 

The  position  of  the  age  in  Prose  is  hardly  less  important,  though 
its  achievement  is  much  less  decided.  No  single  prose-writer  of  the 
time,  not  even  Hooker,  holds  the  same  rank  in  prose  that  Spenser 
holds  in  poetry ;  perhaps,  indeed,  no  single  writer,  not  even  Dryden, 
ever  has  held  that  rank.  For  prose,  the  lower  and  less  intense 
harmony,  is  the  more  varied  and  indefinitely  adjustable  instrument. 
And  while  it  is  conceivable  that  one  man  —  indeed,  Shakespeare  has 
very  nearly  done  so  —  should  catch  up  and  utter,  in  hint  and  intima- 
tion at  least,  the  whole  sum  of  poetry,  no  one  could  do  the  like  in 
prose.  Here,  too,  the  comparative  newness  of  the  form  had  its 
inevitable  effect ;  even  the  period  of  sheer  experiment  and  exploration 
was  not  over  when  the  sixteenth  century  ended. 

Very  great  advances  had  been  made  in  both,  and,  above  all,  the 
antinomy  of  prose,  the  opposition  of  the  plain  and  ornate  styles  which 
was  to  dominate  the  rest  of  its  history,  was  for  the  first  time  clearly 
posed  and  definitely  worked  out  on  either  side.  This  could  not  have 
happened  in  the  earlier  period  of  mere  or  main  translation  as  regards 
subject,  of  tentative  accumulation  of  vocabulary  and  experimental 
adaptation  of  arrangement.  Vestiges,  or  rather  rudiments,  of  the 
antinomy  would,  of  course,  appear  encouraged  by  nature  of  subject  or 
temperament  of  writer.  A  Chaucer  translating  the  metres  of  Boethius 
about  the  motion  of  the  heavens  was  not  likely  to  write  like  a  Cap- 
grave  in  his  chronicle.  But  the  opposition  was  accidental  and  rudi- 
mentary first  of  all.  Not  till  the  weariness  of  the  "aureate"  diction  of 
the  fifteenth  century  —  itself  shown  chiefly  in  verse  —  led  the  Cambridge 
.school  to  denounce  inkhorn  terms,  and  combined  with  their  worship 
of  the  classics  to  devise  a  plain  classical  style,  could  the  inevitable 
revolt  and  rebound  array  itself  definitely  with  a  purpose,  a  programme, 
a  creed,  and  become,  first  in  the  hands  of  Lyiy  and  his  followers,  a 
striking  grotesque,  and  then  in  those  of  Bacon  and  the  great  seven- 
teenth-century writers,  a  magnificent  resurrection  of  rhetoric  in  a  far 
more  glorious  form  than  she  had  ever  known.  But  at  any  rate  the 
quarrel  was  at  last  fairly  put,  the  "  dependency  "  distinctly  established. 


3IO      ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  TO   SPENSER'S   DEATH      bk. 

Henceforward  the  ebb  and  flow  of  prose  style  has  reigned  with  only 
superficial  change  for  three  centuries,  alternately  seeking  the  correct 
and  simple  or  the  out-of-the-way  and  gorgeous  as  ideals,  and  falling 
into  the  tame  or  vulgar,  the  extravagant  or  gaudy,  as  excesses. 

In  Drama,  the  third  division,  which  deserves  to  be  kept  apart 
from  poetry  and  prose,  not  only  because  it  indifferently  applies  the 
form  of  both,  but  because  by  its  importation  of  speech  and  action  it 
introduces  elements  not  strictly  appropriate  to  either,  the  importance 
of  the  time  has  commonly  seemed  greatest  of  all.  It  is  certainly 
somewhat  different  in  nature.  Here  we  have  neither  a  reconstruc- 
tion and  recovery  in  greater  and  more  promising  form  of  a  state 
formerly  reached  and  then  lost,  as  in  poetry ;  nor  a  comparatively 
orderly  extension  of  a  campaign  not  yet  crowned  with  complete 
victory,  as  in  prose.  But  we  most  certainly  have  the  sudden  shaking 
together  into  their  right  places  of  elements  which  hitherto  have  been 
loosely  whirling  like  the  Lucretian  atoms ;  and  it  is  at  least  arguable 
that  we  have  the  attainment  of  a  final  form.  At  any  rate  three  entire 
centuries  have  failed  to  produce  any  new  really  fertile  cross,  or. to 
import,  in  conditions  suitable  to  the  climate,  any  foreign  form  capable 
of  standing  comparison  with  that  Elizabethan  play  which  shook  itself 
into  shape,  a  hundred  minor  hands  besides  those  of  Marlowe  and 
Shakespeare  aiding,  by  the  date  of  the  production  of  Every  Man  in 
his  Humour. 

Much  as  has  been  written  about  this  play,  it  has  perhaps  been 
insufficiently  recognised  that  its  idea,  whether  the  matter  be  tragical 
or  comical,  whether  it  keep  these  kinds  apart  or  mix  them  "as 
ingeniously  as  in  the  famous  classification  of  Hamlet,  is  essentially 
the  same  —  to  wit,  that  the  play  shall  be  a  piece  of  life,  rendered  as 
faithfully  and  separately  as  possible,  with  all  its  divagations,  its  in- 
terludes, its  inconsistencies,  its  interruptions.  This  is,  of  course, 
diametrically  opposed  to  the  classical  theory,  and  to  the  theory  of 
almost  every  modern  drama  except  the  Spanish,  even  to  a  certain 
extent  of  that.  Aristotle's  at  first  sight  odd,  but,  whether  right  or 
wrong,  all-important  comparison  of  a  play  to  an  animal  ^  helps  us, 
perhaps  better  than  anything,  to  understand  the  difference.  Nothing 
that  is  not  vitally  connected  with  the  animal  —  with  the  central  notion 
of  the  play  itself — must  appear;  the  Unities  (not  in  their  absurd  seven- 
teenth-century caricature,  but  in  their  actual  Greek  limitation)  follow 
naturally;  second  plots  are  impossible,  for  two-natured  is  no  nature. 
We  may  have  intensity  and  accomplishment ;  but,  above  all,  we  must 
have  limit. 

The  Elizabethan   idea  is  far  more  ambitious  and  grand,  even   if 

1  I  am  aware  that  some  of  the  latest  authorities  take  ^(^ov  in  the  sense  of 
"picture,"  but  I  cannot  agree  with  them,  at  least  for  an  exclusive  explanation. 


INTERCHAPTER   V 


doomed  to  fail  in  all  but  the  strongest  hands.  The  poet  does  not 
attempt  to  isolate  action  or  situation  merely ;  his  play  is  but  a 
piece  of  the  life  of  the  actors  —  their  life  is  but  a  piece  of  larger  and 
ever  larger  lives.  Nothing  is  superfluous,  irrelevant,  common,  un- 
clean ;  everything  may  and  shall  go  in.  The  intenser  nature  of  the 
interests  of  tragedy  may  give  to  the  vv'orking  of  tragic  plays  a  closer 
unity  than  that  of  comic ;  the  majesty  or  the  pathos  of  some  particular 
character  may  dwarf  in  presentation  as  in  attention  the  episodes  and 
the  interludes.  But  the  principle  is  always  the  same.  The  touch 
with  the  actual  is  never  loosed,  the  farrago  of  the  play  is  the  farrago 
of  life. 

It  is  the  just  and  abiding  glory  of  Marlowe  that,  so  far  as  one 
man  could,  he  really  seems  to  have  hit,  consciously  or  not,  on  this 
vast  conception,  and  that  he  certainly  perfected,  or  went  far  to  per- 
fect, the  only  instrument  of  verse  that  could  possibly  serve  as  a 
medium  of  execution  for  it.  But  his  own  plays  as  plays  are  after  all 
only  the  most  magnificent  of  failures,  and  without  a  Shakespeare  the 
possibility  of  the  thing  could  never  have  been  shown.  Whether  the 
possibility  of  it  has  ever  been  fully  shown  except  by  Shakespeare  is  a 
point  on  which  it  would  be  partly  irrelevant  and  wholly  anticipatory 
to  dwell  here. 

That  the  mere  form  of  play  which  was  strong  enough  and  elastic 
enough  to  give  shape  to  this  mighty  attempt  developed  itself  out  of 
the  beggarly  elements  of  the  mystery  and  interlude,  with  the 
undoubted  but  only  partial  help  and  crossing  of  the  classical  drama, 
has  been,  I  hope,  shown,  with  less  violence  to  fact  and  probability  than 
other  theories  require.  But  it  can  never  be  denied  that  the  trans- 
formation is  astonishing.  It  was  not  so  rapid,  nor  does  it  display 
such  individual  power  of  genius,  as  that  which  in  a  single  man's 
hands  evolved  the  relatively  perfect  poetical  work  of  Chaucer  from 
the  interesting  but  in  no  single  case  perfect  experiments  of  the 
hundred  and  fifty  years  before  him.  More  tlian  a  generation  had  to 
pass,  a  vast  company  of  men,  unknown,  half-known,  and  known,  had 
to  be  continuously  at  work,  before  the  childish  puppet-plays — com- 
paratively speaking  —  of  Udall  and  Sackvillc  and  Still  passed  into  the 
completed  work  of  Shakespeare.  But  as  the  process  was  slower,  so 
the  result  was  more  sure.  Chaucer's  work,  as  we  have  seen,  found 
no  following  except  in  a  half-foreign  country,  and  from  men  who  were 
themselves  unable  to  hand  on  the  art  in  living  condition.  The  thirty 
years  of  e.xperiment  in  drama,  from  1560  to  1590,  were  succeeded  by 
fifty  more  of  the  most  abundant,  varied,  vigorous,  and,  for  the  best 
of  the  time,  brilliant  production  that  any  literary  form  has  ever 
enjoyed. 


BOOK   VI 

LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE 


CHAPTER   I 

SHAKESPEARE 

The  luck  of  Jacobean  literature  —  Concentration  of  the  great  drama  in  it  — 
Shakespearian  chronology  —  The  life  —  The  work  —  The  poems  —  The  Sonnets 
—  Their  formal  and  spiritual  supremacy — Probable  divisions  of  plays:  the 
earlier  —  Their  verse  and  phrase — Their  construction  —  Their  characters  — 
The  middle  division:  the  Merry  Wives  —  The  Romantic  comedies — The 
great  tragedies,  Roman  and  Romantic —  Last  plays —  Doubtful  plays 

It  will  have  been  seen  already  with  what  large  cautions  and  provisos 
the  familiar  term  Elizabethan  Literature  has  to  be  taken.  The 
phenomenon  to  which  we  apply  it  took  its  rise  within  the  reign  of 
the  Queen,  or  —  if  we  take  that  rise  to  be  manifested  by  The  luck  of 
the  publication  and  appreciation  of  the  Songs  ami  Sonnets  Jacobean 
—  on  the  latest  eve  of  that  reign.  But  it  grew  very 
slowly.  More  tlian  twenty  years  passed  before  anything  really 
striking  and  decisive  either  in  prose  or  poetry  appeared ;  nearly 
thirty  before  really  characteristic  and  original  drama  emerged,  and 
then  not  by  any  means  completely,  from  the  condition  of  experiment. 
Even  after  Enphues  and  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  had  distinctly  fore- 
told great  things  in  the  two  ordinary  harmonics,  another  ten  or 
fifteen  years'  schooling  had  to  be  undergone  before  the  general  time 
of  production  was  reached.  And  the  greatest  work  of  all,  putting 
Spenser,  Hooker,  and  Marlowe  aside,  was  mostly  borne,  though  as 
noH  sua  porna,  by  the  reign  of  James. 

Despite  the  extreme  uncertainty  of  Shakespearian  chronology,  we 
do  know  that  a   considerable   part   of  Shakespeare's  work  was  done 


514   LATER  ELIZABEl'HAN  AND  JACOBEAN   LITERATURE   bk.  vi 


before  1603.  But  certainly  the  best  part  was  not.  Very  little  of 
Jonson  antedates  the  Queen's  death  ;  the  meagre  bundles  of  notes, 
interesting  and  pregnant  as  they  are,  which  constitute  the  first  edition 
of  Bacon's  Essays,  would,  had  they  never  been  augmented,  have 
given  us  no  idea  whatever  of  his  real  literary  powers ;  the  best 
work  of  men  like  Daniel  and  Drayton  was  to  come.  What  is 
perhaps  not  more  really  surprising,  but  more  startling  at  first 
sight  than  the  slowness  of  the  rise  of  this  great  literature,  is  the 
rapidity,  in  the  case  of  its  most  notable  and  characteristic  constituent, 

of  the  decline.  Omitting  the  work  of  Marlowe,  which 
^°""f"the"°"  was  prematurely  brought  to  a  close,  the  early  work  of 
great  drama    Shakespeare,  and  a  little  more   on   the  farther  side,  with 

a  much  smaller  part  of  that  of  Ford,  Massinger,  and 
others  on  the  hither  —  the  whole  bulk  of  the  English  drama  was 
written  between  1600  and  1625.  Almost  the  whole  bulk  of  it 
that  has  really  commanding  merit  was  written  between  1590 
and  1640  —  periods  of  exactly  a  quarter  of  a  century  in  the  first 
case,  of  exactly  half  a  century  in  the  second.  Fletcher  died 
less  than  ten  years  after  Shakespeare,  and  in  the  work  of  all 
the  men  who  survived  Fletcher,  decadence  is  apparent.  There 
are,  of  course,  those  who  would  say  that  it  is  apparent  in  Fletcher 
himself,  even  in  those  works  of  his  which,  being  certainly,  or  almost 
certainly,  in  part  due  to  Beaumont  (who  died  before  Shakespeare),  are 
contemporary  with  the  masterpieces  of  the  class.  But  this  is  perhaps 
an  extravagantly  rigid  and  arbitrary  scheme  of  classification.  It  is 
enough  to  say  that  between  1600  and  1625  all  the  best  of  our 
dramatists  except  Marlowe  were  working  more  or  less  simultaneously ; 
and  that  within  this  period  all  the  known  kinds  of  the  great  drama 
itself  had  been  discovered  and  practised.  What  is  more  is  that 
within  this  same  time  the  great  metrical  effect  of  drama  upon  English 
poetry  had  been,  for  good,  entirely  accomplished,  and  was  already 
beginning  to  turn  to  evil  —  an  evil  which  was  not  limited  to  its  own 
immediate  form. 

Reference  has  already  been  made  to  the  fact  that  an  attack  on 
the  score  of  plagiarism  and  other  misdemeanors  had  been  made  by 
Greene,  before  his  death  in  1592,  upon  a  certain  Shakescene.  who 
_,  ,  .      has  been    naturally  identified  with   William  Shakespeare. 

Shakespearian  t,    .  i  ^      ,  .  ,  .  .  •    /     . 

chronology.  """^  '^^^  ^0  not  know  With  any  certam  or  satisfactory 
knowledge  upon  what  work  of  Shakespeare's  this  attack 
was  directed.  All  the  more  careful  and  reasonable  accounts  of  his 
life  and  work  mark  the  earliest  play-dates,  where  they  give  them, 
with  a  tell-tale  circa.  It  is  only  by  guesses  that  anything  is  dated 
before  the  Comedy  of  Errors,  at  the  extreme  end  of  1594;  and  the 
Comedy   of  Errors,   unmistakably    Shakespearian   as   it  is   here   and 


CHAP.  I  SHAKESPEARE  315 

there  in  character  and  versification,  is  so  exceedingly  crude  both  in 
these  points  and  in  composition  generally,  that  the  conjectural  ante- 
dating of  plays  like  Richard  III.,  and  still  more  A  Midsttin?ner 
NigJifs  Dreatn,  becomes  from  the  literary  point  of  view  almost 
utterly  incredible.  And  it  may  not  be  improper  to  add  a  very  earnest 
protest  against  the  attempt  to  group  plays  and  classes  of  plays 
according  to  successive  supposed  states  of  the  poet's  mind  and 
temper.  Where  there  is  crudity  of  character,  artlessness  of  verse, 
or  very  flagrantly  chaotic  composition  (it  must  be  remembered  that 
Shakespeare's  composition  is  not  to  be  judged  by  the  rules  of  any 
ancient  abbe  or  modern  journalist)  then  we  may  with  a  clear  literary 
conscience  ticket  this  as  "probably  early."  Otherwise,  in  default  of 
positive  documentary  evidence,  there  would  not  be  much  reason  for 
putting  The  Tempest  later  than  A  Midsummer  Nighfs  Dream,  or 
A  14  Ititer's  Tale  than  Romeo  and  Juliet.  A  poet,  especially  a  poet 
like  Shakespeare,  is  not  a  vegetable ;  you  cannot  count  the  years  of 
his  work  by  any  real  or  fancied  number  of  rings  in  his  heart.  Bad 
verse,  inhuman  character,  clumsy  composition  —  become  after  a  time 
impossible  to  him ;  in  temper  and  choice  of  subject  he  abides 
supreme  and  free. 

The  results  of  the  almost  ferocious  industry  spent  upon  unearth- 
ing and  analysing  every  date  and  detail  of  Shakespeare's  life  are  on 
the  whole  very  meagre,  and  for  literary  purposes  almost  entirely 
unimportant,  while  with  guesswork  we  have  nothing  to 
do.  The  certainties  may  be  summarised  very  briefly. 
William  Shakespeare  was  traditionally  born  on  the  24th  of  April,  and 
certainly  baptized  on  the  26th  of  April  1564,  at  Stratford-on-Avon. 
His  grandfather's  name  was  Richard,  that  of  his  father,  a  dealer  in 
hides,  gloves,  corn,  wood,  etc.,  was  John,  and  the  poet's  mother  was 
Mary  Arden.  He  had  two  sisters  and  three  brothers.  The  family, 
which  through  Mary  Arden  had  some  small  landed  property,  was 
at  one  time  prosperous,  at  others  not.  Shakespeare  himself  married 
early ;  the  date  of  the  actual  ceremony  is  not  known,  but  a  bond  of 
marriage  passed  between  him  and  his  wife  Anne  Hathaway  on 
November  1582,  when  he  was  little  more  than  eighteen,  and  his 
wife,  a  yeoman's  daughter,  eight  years  older.  They  had  three  children, 
Susanna,  Hamnet,  and  Judith,  and  there  is  absolutely  no  docu- 
mentary evidence  of  the  slightest  value  as  to  the  terms  on  which 
they  lived  together.  Tradition  there  is  —  though  of  no  great  age, 
and  of  exceedingly  slight  authority  —  as  to  his  leaving  Stratford  for 
London,  perhaps  in  1585,  1586,  or  1587,  and  perhaps  in  consequence 
of  a  deer-stealing  prank  in  the  neighbouring  park  of  Sir  Thomas 
Lucy  of  Charlccote.  He  perhaps  began  his  connection  with  the 
theatre  as  a  horse-holder,  and  was    pretty  certainly  an  actor  before 


3i6   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE   bk.  vi 

long.  In  1593  appeared  his  first  work,  the  remarkable  Venus  and 
Adonis,  and  next  year  the  rather  less  remarkable  Lucrece.  He  was 
connected  soon  after  the  middle  of  the  last  decade  of  the  century 
with  divers  theatres,  became  a  shareholder  in  them,  and  by  1597 
could  buy  a  good  house,  New  Place,  at  Stratford,  where  he  afterwards 
enlarged  his  property.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  his  constant  residence 
at  London  during  these  ten  years,  his  desertion  of  his  wife,  etc.,  are 
all  matters  of  guesswork  founded  on  barely  negative  evidence.  It  is 
not  in  the  slightest  degree  impossible  that  Anne  Shakespeare  was 
with  her  husband  for  the  whole  time,  or  that  he  made  frequent  visits 
home.  But  there  are  fair  grounds  for  supposing  that  London  was 
his  headquarters  during  the  decade  from  1586  to  1596,  his  partial 
residence  during  the  next,  and  only  occasionally  visited  by  him 
during  the  third  —  at  the  close  of  which,  in  1616  on  23rd  April,  he 
died.  The  best-known  detail  about  him  perhaps,  and  a  sample  of 
the  trivial  things  on  which  structures  of  gossip  have  been  based,  is 
his  bequest  of  his  second-best  bed  to  his  wife.  Personal  references 
to  him  are  not  numerous  and  rather  vague,  though  except  in  the 
case  of  Greene's  splenetic  outburst  (if  it  be  meant  for  Shakespeare) 
always  complimentary.  His  reputation,  though  it  has  steadily  grown, 
has  always  been  great ;  there  has  never  from  the  day  of  his  death  to 
this  day  been  wanting  testimony  to  his  position  from  the  greatest 
living  names  of  the  time  in  English  literature. 

Shakespeare's  works,  in  the  generally  accepted  canon,  consist  of 
a  comparatively  small  body  of  non-dramatic  poems,  the  two  pieces 
above  mentioned,  a  body  of  154  sonnets,  and  a  very  few  shorter 
pieces  somewhat  more  doubtfully  genuine,  on  the  one 
hand ;  on  the  other,  of  about  twenty  times  as  much 
dramatic  work  divided  into  thirty-seven  plays,  which  in  the  original 
edition,  published  seven  years  after  the  owner's  death  by  his  friends 
Heminge  and  Condell  (this  does  not  contain  Pericles'),  are  classed  as 
"tragedies,  comedies,  and  histories."  Before  this  edition,  and  during 
Shakespeare's  lifetime,  only  a  few  of  the  plays  had  been  printed  in 
quartos  of  doubtful  authenticity;  the  Fenus,  the  Lucrece,  and  the 
Sonnets  appeared  with  his  name  and  pretty  certainly  under  his 
superintendence.  The  spelling  of  the  name  varies  from  Shaxper  to 
Shakespeare.  But  if  Greene's  gibe  at  it  is  good  for  anything,  it 
settles  the  pronunciation  as  nearest  the  latter  form,  and  this  is  the 
spelling  on  the  title-page  of  the  Sonnets,  the  only  book  of  his  pub- 
lished in  his  lifetime,  after  he  was  famous,  and  obviously  with  his 
leave  if  not  by  him. 

In  view  of  the  extreme  uncertainty  of  date  of  most  of  the  plays 
before  1600,  the  certain  attribution  of  the  two  larger  poems  to  1593- 
94,  and  of  the  Sonnets  (though  they  were  not  printed  till  1609)  to 


CHAP.  I  SHAKESPEARE  317 

1598  or  earlier,  when  they  are  mentioned  in  Meres's  Palladis  Tamia^ 
is  very  important  and  solid.  These  early  dates,  and  the  fact  that  all 
the  three  larger  pieces  or  groups  are  concerned  with  love,  show  us  in 
a  more  personal  fashion  than  the  scheme  of  the  drama  (always  more 
or  less  impersonal,  and  in  Shakespeare's  hands  extraordinarily  so) 
what  manner  of  man  and  poet  Shakespeare  was  in  his  youth. 
The  dominant  tone  in  all  three  is  passion,  combined  in  the  Sonnets 
with  an  intense  and  wide-sweeping  thought.  In  some  more  general 
and  obvious  characteristics  Venns  and  Adonis  and  The  Rape  of 
Lucrece  differ  little  from  other  members  of  a  large  class  of  Elizabethan 
poems  referred  to  above  (p.  267).  They  select,  on  the  pattern  of 
many  writers  of  the  French  and  Italian  Renaissance,  subjects  at  once 
luscious  and  tragical,  and  they  apply  the  new  melodious  verse,  of 
which  Spenser  had  taught  the  secret,  to  the  discussion  of  them  in  a 
manner  which  appeals  at  once  to  the  sensual  and  the  sentimental 
emotions. 

But  if  the  class  was  the  same,  the  individuals  are  very  different. 
There  were  already  many  tuneful  singers  in  1593;  but  none  of  them 
except  the  master  himself  could  raise  such  a  pageant  of  voluptuous 
imagery,  or  accompany  it  with  such  a  symphony  of  harmonious 
sound,  as  we  find  in  Venus  and  Adonis.  No  one  except  Spenser  and 
Sackville  evoked  the  rhyme-clangour  of  the  stanza  ^  with  such  deli- 
cate art ;  no  one  except  these  two  had  portrayed  such  vivid  pictures 
as  the  arrest  of  Adonis  by  Venus,  the  captivity  of  Mars,  the  portrait 
of  herself  by  the  goddess,  the  escape  of  the  courser,  the  description 
of  the  boar  and  of  the  hare-hunt,  the  solitary  night,  the  discovery  of 
the  foolish  youth  who  has  fled  from  Love's  arms  to  those  of 
Death.  But  while  none,  save  these,  of  men  living  had  done,  or 
could  have  done,  such  work,  there  was  much  here  which  —  whether 
either  could  have  done  it  or  not  —  neither  had  done. 

In  the  first  place  there  is,  almost  for  the  first  time  in  English 
poetry  since  Chaucer,  a  directness  of  observation  in  the  sketches 
from  nature.  Sackville,  so  far  as  his  brief  space  and  peculiar  subjects 
allowed   him,   Spenser   far   more,  are   great   painters   and    ^„ 

•1  V,  11,  1  The  poems. 

describers.  But  even  the  later  and  greater  poet  rather 
displays  a  magnificently  decorative  convention  in  painting  than  a 
direct  re-creative  or  reproductive  touch.  Shakespeare,  even  in  these 
earliest  days,  has  this  latter  —  the  horse  and  the  hare,  though  the 
most  famous  and  elaborate,  arc  only  two  out  of  many  instances  of  it 
in  llie  Venus.     In  the  second  place,  the  slow  movement,  whicli  is  of 

1  Meres's  extremely  interesting  tliough  singularly  uncritical  sketch  of  contem- 
porary and  otiier  Knglish  literature  will  be  found  in  Mr.  Arbor's  English  Garner, 
ii.  94. 

'^  Venus  and  Adonis  is  in  the  six-,  Lucrece  in  the  seven-lined  stave. 


3l8   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE  bk.  vi 

the  essence  of  the  poetry  of  Sackville  and  of  Spenser,  and  which  is 
certainly  invited  by  the  six-lined  stanza  in  which  the  Venus  is  written 
almost  as  much  as  by  the  rhyme-royal  and  the  Spenserian,  cannot 
adjust  itself  to  the  infinite  variety  and  the  directly  lyrical  flow  of 
Shakespeare's  versification.  It  is  not  a  mere  accident  which  has 
made  composers  choose  "  Bid  me  discourse  "  and  "  Lo,  here  the  gentle 
lark  ■'  for  setting  to  song  measures  of  the  lightest  quality ;  and 
throughout  the  poet  shows  himself —  even  more  than  Spenser,  how 
much  more  then  than  any  one  else!  —  the  absolute  master  of  his  metre, 
the  tregetour,  to  \i'hom  all  conditions  of  phrase  and  rhythm  are 
merely  materia  prima  out  of  which  he  can  make  whatsoever  he  will. 
And  lastly,  though  of  necessity  in  less  measure  and  degree,  that  gift 
of  indicating  character,  of  opening  up  whole  unending  vistas  of 
thought  by  a  single  phrase,  which  is  Shakespeare's  as  it  is  hardly 
any  one  else's,  is  here.  Of  Adonis,  the  story  forbade  him  to  make 
much.  But  it  would  have  been  so  easy  to  make  Venus  contemptible 
or  disgusting  or  simply  tedious;  and  she  escapes  all  three  fates  so 
completely!  The  escape,  no  doubt,  is  effected  partly,  if  not  mainly, 
by  the  unfailing  intensity  of  passion  which  the  poet  suffuses,  but  we 
are  concerned  chiefly  with  the  means  of  suffusion.  They  are,  I  take 
it,  mainly,  if  not  wholly,  comprised  in  that  magic  of  the  single  phrase 
in  which  Shakespeare  (for  this  is  not  Spenser's  gift)  reminds  us  of 
no  predecessor  but  Chaucer,  and  in  which  he  outdoes  Chaucer  more 
than  Chaucer  outdoes  others. 

Ten  kisses  short  as  one,  one  long  as  twenty — 
Leading  him  prisoner  in  a  red-rose  chain  — 
Love  is  a  spirit  all  compact  of  fire  — 
He  sees  her  coming  and  begins  to  glow 
Even  as  a  dying  coal  revives  with  wind  — 
Her  two  blue  windows  faintly  she  upheaveth  — 
Was  melted  like  a  vapour  from  her  sight  — 

are  mere  specimens  selected  half  at  random  from  the  things  of  this 
kind  with  which  the  piece  swarms.  "Conceited,"  "over-luscious," 
"unoriginal"  — half  a  dozen  other  epithets  the  merely  stop-watch 
critic  may  heap  upon  Venus  and  Adonis.  One  epithet,  sometimes 
used  in  disparagement,  it  does  deserve  —  it  is  young,  but  with  the 
youth  of  Shakespeare. 

Much  of  what  has  been  said  will  apply  to  Lucrece,  which  chiefly 
differs  from  its  predecessor  in  having  a  seven-line  stanza,  and  in 
dealing  with  criminal,  and  not  merely  unhappy  and  tragic,  passion. 
It  is,  however,  on  the  whole,  inferior ;  being  not  merely  longer  (and 
the  style  is  not  improved  by  length),  but  written  with  something  more 
of  an  approach  to  the  old  fifteenth-century  manner  of  allegoric  and 


CHAP.  I  SHAKESPEARE  319 

other  padding.     We  should  be  sorry  not  to  have  it  as  well  as  the 
Venus,  but  it  could  not  supply  its  companion's  place. 

The  Sonnets  do  not  reveal  to  us  a  more  exquisite  or  richly  gifted 
poet  than  does  the  Venus ;  but  they  take  us  to  a  higher  range  of 
subject,  where  sensuous  imagery  is  indeed  not  absent,  but  where  the 
poet's  absorption  in  it  has  given  way  to  a  more  direct 
domination  of  the  ideal,  to  meditation  upon  passion 
rather  than  realisation  of  it.  The  endless  discussions  on  the  person- 
ages probably  or  possibly  concerned  must  be  sought  elsewhere. 
The  famous  dedication  ^  is,  almost  to  a  certainty,  enigmatic  of  malice 
prepense ;  but  there  is  no  reason  to  question  the  fact  suggested  by 
the  text  throughout,  and  explicitly  asserted  once  in  it,  that  "a  man 
right  fair "  and  ''  a  woman  coloured  ill "  were  the  objects,  either  suc- 
cessive or  simultaneous,  of  the  poet's  passionate  attachment.  That 
these  two  persons  were  live  individual  beings ;  that  the  passion  was 
actually  felt,  but  for  one,  two,  five,  or  fifty  other  persons  quite  differ- 
ent from  those  adumbrated ;  or  that  the  poems  have  no  necessary 
connection  with  any  particular  person,  will  never  be  exclusively 
asserted  or  denied  by  any  one  acquainted  with  human  nature. 

All  these  theories  and  others  are  possible ;  none  is  proved ; 
and,  for  the  literary  purpose,  none  is  really  important.  What  is 
important  is  that  Shakespeare  has  here  caught  up  the  sum  of  love 
and  uttered  it  as  no  poet  has  before  or  since,  and  that  in  so  doing  he 
carried  poetry  —  that  is  to  say,  the  passionate  expression  in  verse  of 
the  sensual  and  intellectual  facts  of  life  —  to  a  pitch  which  it  had 
never  previously  reached  in  English,  and  which  it  has  never  out- 
stepped since.  The  coast-line  of  humanity  must  be  wholly  altered, 
the  sea  must  change  its  nature,  the  moon  must  draw  it  in  different 
ways,  before  that  tide-mark  is  passed. 

These  Sonnets  are  written  in  the  English  form,  which  is  some- 
times  called   from   them   the    Shskespearian,   and    which,  as   already 
explained,  is  quite  entitled  to  claim  equality  with  the  chief  Italian  or 
Petrarchian.      Three    quatrains,    not    connected    by    any   xheir  formal 
necessary  or  usual  community  of  rhyme,  are  tipped  with    and  spiritual 
a  couplet ;  and,  generally  speaking,  though  not  invariably,    ^"P'^'^'"*'^^- 
the  opposition  or  balance  of  octave  and  sestet  which  the  Petrarchian 
form  naturally  invites  is  replaced  here  by  a  steady  building  up  of  the 
thought  through  the  douzain,  and  then  either  a  climax  or  a  quick  anti- 

1  "  To  the  only  begetter  of  these  ensuing  sonnets  Mr.  W.  H.  all  happiness 
and  that  eternity  promised  by  our  ever-living  poet  wisheth  the  well-wishing  ad- 
venturer in  setting  forth.  T.  T."  "T.  T."  is  admitted  to  be  Thomas  Thorpe 
the  puljlisher;  the  "ever-living  poet"  is  open  to  no  doubt,  as  the  title-page  has 
"Shakespeare's  Sonnets."  I5ut  who  "Mr.  \V.  H."  was,  that  is  the  question.  If 
matters  extremely  little,  but  general  opinion  and  fair  probability  incline  to  Williana 
Herbert,  Earl  of  Pembroke,  Sidney's  nephew. 


320   LATER   ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE  bk.  vi 

strophe  in  the  final  couplet.  The  form  is  extraordinarily  suitable  to  the 
subjects  and  may  be  said  to  be,  for  the  sonnet  meditative,  actually  pref- 
erable to  the  octave-and-sestet,  though  the  latter  may  have  advantages 
for  the  sonnet  descriptive.  No  such  samples  of  the  peculiar  phrase 
beauty  of  the  So7inets  can  be  given  as  those  which  \itxt  possible  in 
the  case  of  the  Venus,  simply  because  of  their  bewildering  abundance. 
Every  sonnet,  and  perhaps  a  majority  of  the  two  thousand  lines  or 
thereabouts,  contains  them ;  and  among  them  are  numbered  no  small 
proportion  of  the  highest,  the  intensest,  the  most  exquisite  jewels  of 
En"-lish  poetry.  But  their  general  characteristic  as  verse  is  a  steady 
soaring  music,  now  lower,  now  higher,  never  exactly  glad  but  always 
passionate  and  full,  which  can  be  found  nowhere  else  —  a  harmonic 
of  mighty  heart-throbs  and  brain-pulsings  which,  once  caught,  never 
deserts  the  mind's  ear.  Like  all  the  greatest  poetry,  this  is  almost 
independent  of  meaning  though  so  full  of  it;  you  can  attend  to  the 
sense  or  disregard  it  as  you  please,  certain  in  each  case  of  satisfac- 
tion. The  thoughts  are  not  so  far-fetched,  the  music  not  quite  so 
unearthly,  as  in  some  poems  of  the  next  generation,  but  they  are  more 
universal,  more  commanding,  more  human.  The  mastery  which  had 
been  partially  attained  in  Venus  and  Adonis  is  complete  here.  There 
is  nothing  that  the  poet  wishes  to  say  that  he  cannot  say,  and  there 
is  hardly  a  district  of  thought  and  feeling  into  which  he  does  not  at 
least  cast  glances  of  unerring  vision. 

The  faculty,  which  in  this  direction  attained  such  early  command, 

seems   in   the   more   complex   and   various    departments    of  dramatic 

exercise  to  have  developed  itself,  as  might  be  expected,  more  slowly 

in  proportion  to  the  bulk  and  variety  of  its  accomplish- 

diVision^'s'of    ment.      What    really   is    Shakespeare's    earliest   dramatic 

plays:  work  is,  as  has  been  said,  in  the  highest  degree  un- 
certain ;  and  of  the  pieces  which  are  with  more  or  less 
probability  ascribed  to  his  earliest  period  it  is  not  definitely  known 
how  much  is  his  own,  how  much  supplied  by  or  borrowed  from  others. 
From  the  beginning  of  the  play,  as  distinguished  from  the  interlude, 
the  habit  seems  to  have  established  itself,  in  England  as  in  other 
countries,  of  constantly  reworking  old  pieces  by  new  hands ;  and  it 
is  probably  to  some  exceptional  popularity  of  Shakespeare  as  a 
refashioner  in  this  way  that  Greene's  outburst  refers.  His  early  pieces, 
then,  may  be  divided  into  anticipations,  more  or  less  original,  of  his 
special  masterpiece,  the  romantic  comedy,  attempts  in  the  blood- 
and-thunder  melodrama  of  the  time,  and  probably,  in  most  cases, 
refashioned  chronicle-plays  or  "  histories,"  a  kind,  as  we  have  seen,  as 
old  as  Bale.  To  the  first  division  belong  Love''s  Labour''s  Lost,  the 
Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  the  Comedy  of  Errors  (this  touching  the 
translated  classical  play),  Measure  for  Measure  ( ?),  the  series  culminat- 


CHAP.  1  SHAKESPEARE  321 

ing  in  A  Midsummer  Nighfs  Dream ;  to  the  second  T/ius  Atidroni- 
ciis ;  to  the  last  the  majority  of  the  great  series  of  the  English  histories, 
while  Romeo  and  Jidiet  stands  apart  as  what  we  may  call  a  romantic 
tragedy  corresponding  to  the  romantic  comedy,  and  promising  almost 
greater  things  to  come. 

In  all  this  work,  guessing  as  little  as  we  can,  and  proceeding  as 
gingerly  as  possible,  we  can  see  the  poefs  genius  growing  and  settling 
itself  in  every  possible  way.     In  metre  he  begins  with  the  lumbering 
fourteeners,   not  as   yet   quite   spirited   up   even   by   him, 
the  stiff  blank  verse  which  even  from  the    first   becomes     and  phrase! 
pliant  in  his  hand,  the  richer  but  almost  stiffer  Marlovian 
hectoring  style,  the  quaint  fantasies  and  euphuistic  devices  of  Lyly, 
all    frequently    lapsing   into   rhymed   couplet   and  even  stanza.      But 
almost  from  the  very  first  there  are  glimpses,  and  very  soon   there 
are  much  more   than   glimpses,   of    something   that   we    have    never 
seen  before.     Such  a  phrase,  for  instance,  to  take  but  the  first  that 
occurs,  as  the 

And  shake  the  yoke  of  inauspicious  stars 
From  this  world-wearied  flesh, 

of  Romeo  and  Juliet  takes  us  a  long  way  beyond  IVIarlowe,  a  longer 
way  beyond  Peele.  In  both  these  masters  there  is  a  deficiency  of 
vibration  in  the  verse,  and  a  certain  poverty,  or  at  least  simplicity, 
of  verbal  music.  "  Native  wood-notes  wild  "  is  rather  truer  of  Peele 
than  of  Shakespeare.  Even  Shakespeare  could  not  often  outdo 
Marlowe  in  a  sort  of  economy  of  majesty,  the  grandeur  of  a  huge 
blank  cliff-face,  or  of  the  empty  welkin  itself.  But  as  his  meaning  is 
more  complex,  farther-ranging,  mon;  intricately  developed  than  theirs, 
so  are  his  versification  and  his  form.  The  incomparable  skill  that  was 
to  achieve  such  things  as 

Peace,  peace ! 

Dost  thou  not  see  my  baby  at  my  breast 

That  sucks  the  nurse  asleep? 

or  the  famous  Tempest  passage  about  "  the  stuff  that  dreams  are 
made  of,"  confronts  us  in  the  making  (and  a  very  rapid  making) 
quite  early.  We  find  in  it  the  quaint  euphuisms  of  Love'^s  Labour^s 
Lost,  in  the  unequal  speeches  of  the  Two  GentleDten,  even  in  such  a 
partly  farcical  medley  as  the  Comedy  of  Errors,  and  such  an  ill- 
mingled  mass  of  farce  and  tragedy  as  Measure  for  Measure.  The 
real  Shakespeare  cannot  help  showing  himself,  if  only  by  a  flash  of 
verse  here  and  there ;  and  then  we  are  in  i)resence  of  something 
new  —  of  a  kind  of  Englisli  poetry  that  no  one  has  hit  upon  before 
and    which,   as    we    cannot    but    feel,    is    revolutionising    the    whole 

Y 


322  LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE  bk.  vi 

structure  and  character  of  English  verse.  He  may  rhyme,  or  he  may 
not  rhyme,  or  he  may  turn  to  prose;  but  always  there  is  the  new 
phrase,  the  new  language,  conceited  to  the  despair  of  pedants,  playing 
on  words  in  a  fashion  maddening  to  dullards,  not  always  impeccable 
from  the  stricter  standpoints  of  taste,  but  always  instinct  with  creative 
genius. 

In  respect  of  construction  and  dramatic  conception  these  early 
works,  as  we  might  expect,  are  less  advanced.  The  chronicle  play 
of  its  nature  defies  construction  of  the  ordinary  kind,  though  some- 
times, as  in  Marlowe's  Edivard  11.  and  Shakespeare's 
struction.'  ^^^  Ric/iafih,  the  actual  story  may  be  short  and  central 
enough  to  give  something  like  definite  plot.  It  is,  how- 
ever, remarkable  how  Shakespeare  contrives  to  infuse  into  these 
chronicles,  or,  as  they  may  be  not  inaccurately  termed,  these  dra- 
matic romances,  something  of  the  unity  of  the  regular  play  or  dramatic 
epic.  He  will  do  it  by  the  most  various  means  —  sometimes,  as  in 
King  John,  by  the  contrasted  attraction  of  the  tragedy  of  Constance 
and  Arthur  and  the  comedy  of  the  Bastard  Falconbridge ;  some- 
times, as  in  Henry  /V.,  by  the  inclusion  of  a  non-historical  char- 
acter, like  Falstaff,  of  the  very  first  interest  and  importance,  with 
the  subsidiaries  necessary  to  set  it  off";  sometimes,  as  in  Henry  V., 
by  projecting  an  idea  (in  this  case  the  patriotic  idea  of  England) 
in  such  a  fashion  that  the  whole  of  the  play,  humours  and  all,  im- 
poses it  on  the  spectator.  But  in  the  miscellaneous  plays  there  is 
much  less  unity  of  construction,  and,  as  yet,  the  romantic  attraction 
of  character  is  not  quite  secured.  The  defeat  of  the  project  of 
seclusion  from  womankind  in  Love's  Labour^s  Lost  might  hardly,  in 
any  case,  have  been  sufficient  by  itself,  and  is  certainly  not  made 
sufficient ;  the  play,  agreeable  as  it  is,  loses  itself  in  humours,  and 
episodes,  and  single  combats  of  wit  and  love.  The  central  story  of 
the  Two  Gentlemen  is  not  more  than  enough  for  an  ordinary  nonvelle, 
and  it  may  be  questioned  whether  that  of  Rotneo  and  Juliet  is  in 
itself  much  more.  But  this  latter  is  quintessenced,  and  exalted  to 
the  heavens,  by  the  pure  and  intense  poetic  quality  of  its  verse,  by 
the  pity  of  it  in  the  case  of  the  hero  and  still  more  the  heroine,  and 
by  the  contrasted  flashes  of  wit  and  gallantry  in  Mercutio  and  Tybalt 
and  the  rest.  So  in  the  other  and  lighter  masterpiece,  A  Midsiwi- 
vier  Nighfs  Dream,  which  probably  belongs  to  this  period,  the  subtle 
fidelity  to  the  dream-nature  perhaps  makes  it  unnecessary  to  give, 
but  certainly  as  a  matter  of  fact  excludes,  any  elaborate  character- 
drawing.  Indeed,  always  and  everywhere  at  this  period,  Shake- 
speare's character  is  far  ahead  of  his  plot.  Some  indeed,  to  whom 
critical  adhesion  can  here  by  no  means  be  given,  would  maintain 
that  this  was  always  the  case,  and  that  to  the  very  last  the  dazzling 


CHAP.  I  SHAKESPEARE  323 

and  transcendent  truth  and  mastery  of  the  great  personages  help  to 
blind  the  reader  to  the  want  of  that  "  clockwork  "  excellence  of  con- 
struction which  Jonson  could  perhaps  already  give,  and  was  certainly 
to  give  before  Shakespeare's  death.  Let  it  rather  be  said  that 
Shakespeare  at  this  time  had  not  quite  acquired  the  art  of  construct- 
ing up  to  his  character-level ;  that  later,  when  he  had  learnt  it,  he 
never  cared  to  give  more  construction  than  was  necessary  for  his 
characters ;  and  that  in  this  he  was  right.  It  may  be  questioned  — 
heresy  as  the  statement  will  seem  to  some  —  whether  construction, 
pitched  to  the  perfection  of  the  Silent  ll'of/ian  or  of  Tom  Jones,  is 
not  something  of  a  tour  de  force,  and  whether  it  does 
not  deserve  Bacon's  pleasant  sneer  in  another  matter,  acters.*"^ 
"you  may  see  as  good  sights  in  tarts."  Life  does  not 
consider  or  contrive  so  curiously.  However  this  may  be,  Shake- 
speare at  this  time  was  certainly  not  "our  best  plotter";  he  was 
already  at  times  an  almost  perfect  artist  in  character,  as  he  was  a 
quite  perfect  poet.  Even  in  such  "more  rawer"  work  as  the  Two 
Gentlemen,  "Who  is  Silvia  ?"does  not  more  show  us  the  master  of 
lyric  than  Julia  and  Lance  show  us  the  master  of  the  graver  and  the 
lighter,  the  more  passionate  and  the  more  frivolous,  psychology  and 
ethology.  Even  in  that  unequal  medley,  Measure  for  Measure,  the 
great  scene  between  Isabel  and  Claudio  so  far  transcends  anything 
that  English,  anything  that  European,  drama  had  had  to  show  for 
nearly  two  thousand  years,  that  in  this  special  point  of  view  it  remains 
perhaps  the  most  wonderful  in  Shakespeare.  Marlowe  has  nothing 
like  it ;  his  greatest  passages,  psychologically  speaking,  are  always 
monologues ;  he  cannot  even  attempt  the  clash  and  play  of  soul  with 
soul  that  is  so  miraculously  given  here.  Yet,  though  the  play  (which 
some  call  a  comedy!)  is  not  known  to  have  been  acted  till  1604,  its 
general  characteristics  put  it  far  earlier. 

The  second  or  middle  division  of  plays  may  be  said  to  be  con- 
nected with  the  first  by  the  link  between  Henry  IV.  and  Henry  V.^ 
the  latest  and  most  matured  of  the  early  batch,  and  the  Merry  Wives 
of  Windsor,  probably  the  first  of  the  .second.  The  The  middle 
Merry  Wives  itself  is  a  curious  study.  It  has  failed  division:  the 
to  find  favour  with  some,  owing  to  a  not  ignoble  dislike  '  "^'^^  '^"' 
at  seeing  the  degradation  or  discomfiture  of  Falstaff,  hut  it  must  be 
rememljered  that  Shakespeare,  though  never  cruel  with  the  morbid 
cruelty  of  the  modern  pessimist,  is  always  perfectly  awake  to  the 
facts  of  life.  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  bowls  that  Falstaff  played 
involve   the    rubbers    that   are    here   depicted.      It   has   also    been   a 

'  It  is  well  to  say  nothing  about  Henry  ]'I.,  because,  though  I  have  no  doubt 
that  this  trilogy  is,  as  we  have  it,  in  the  main  Shakespeare's,  it  is  also  beyond 
all  doubt,  and  beyond  all  others,  a  refashioning  of  earlier  plays. 


324   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE   bk.  vi 


common  saying  that  the  play  is  little  better  than  a  tarce.  If  so,  it  can 
only  be  said  that  Shakespeare  very  happily  took  or  made  the  oppor- 
tunity of  showing  how  a  farce  also  can  pass  under  the  species  of 
eternity.  How  infinitely  do  the  most  farcical  of  the  characters,  such 
as  Sir  Hugh  and  Dr.  Caius,  excel  the  mere  "Vices"  of  earlier  play- 
wrights !  Who  but  Shakespeare  had  —  we  may  almost  say  who  but 
Shakespeare  has  —  made  an  immortal  thing  of  a  mere  ass,  a  mere 
putf-ball  of  foolish  froth  like  Slender?  If  Chaucer  had  had  the 
dramatic  as  he  had  the  narrative  faculty  and  atmosphere,  he  might 
have  done  Mrs.  Quickly,  who  is  a  very  near  relative,  in  somewhat 
lower  life,  of  the  Wife  of  Bath,  and  rapidly  ripening  for  her  future 
experiences  in  Eastcheap.  But  Shallow  is  above  even  Chaucer,  as 
are  also  the  subtle  differentiation  between  Mrs.  Page  and  Mrs.  Ford, 
and  the  half-dozen  strokes  which  her  creator  judged  sufficient  for 
sweet  Anne  Page.  As  for  Falstaff,  it  is  mistaken  affection  which 
thinks  him  degraded,  or  "  translated "  Bottom-fashion.  He  is  even 
as  elsewhere,  though  under  an  unluckier  star. 

This  completeness  exhibits  itself,  not  perhaps  in  more  masterly 
fashion,  but  in  a  somewhat  higher  and  more  varied  material,  in  the 
great  trio  of  Romantic  comedies  which  is  supposed  to  represent  the 

work  of  the  last  year  or  two  of  the  sixteenth  century  — 
^^^ome^dies"''''  Twelfth  Night,  Much  Ado  about  Nothing,  and  As  You 

Like  It.  Whether  this  order  represents  the  actual  com- 
position or  not,  it  certainly  represents  an  intellectual  and  literary 
progression  of  interest  and  value,  though  the  steps  between  the  three 
are  not  wide.  Twelfth  Night,  like  the  Merry  Wives  though  not 
quite  to  the  same  extent,  is  pure  comedy  with  a  leaning  to  farce. 
The  exquisite  delicacy  of  the  character  of  Viola  suffuses  it  with  a 
more  romantic  tone ;  but  the  disasters  of  Malvolio  are  even  less 
serious  than  Falstaff 's,  and  the  great  appeal  of  the  play  lies  wholly 
on  the  comical  side,  in  the  immortal  characters  of  Sir  Toby  and  Sir 
Andrew,  in  Feste,  the  first  distinctly  and  peculiarly  Shakespearian 
clown,  in  Maria,  the  "  youngest  wren  of  nine,"  in  the  glorious  fooling 
of  the  plot  against  the  steward,  and  the  minor  Comedy  of  Errors  put 
upon  Viola  and  Sebastian.  There  is  no  touch  of  sadness,  though  the 
clown's  final  song  of  "  The  rain  it  raineth  every  day  "  gives  a  sort  of 
warning  note;  the  whole  is  sunny,  and  if  less  romantically  imaginative 
than  A  Midsummer  Nighfs  Dream,  it  is  almost  as  romantically 
fanciful. 

Much  Ado  About  Nothing  changes  us  from  pure  comedy  to  the 
tragi-comic — indeed,  to  what  threatens  at  one  time  to  be  tragedy 
undiluted.  Perhaps  here  only,  or  here  and  in  the  Winter's  Tale, 
Shakespeare  has  used  tragedy  to  heighten  his  comedy,  just  as  he 
habitually  does  the  opposite  ;  and  the  effect  is  good.     But  it  is  for  the 


CHAP.  I  SHAKESPEARE  325 

lighter  side  —  for  the  peerless  farce  of  Dogberry,  the  almost  peerless 
comedy  proper  of  Benedick  and  Beatrice  —  that  we  love  the  play.  And 
the  attraction  of  this  couple,  anticipated  very  early  in  Rosaline  and 
Biron,  is  used  yet  again  and  with  absolutely  supreme  success  in  As 
You  Like  It,  one  of  the  topmost  things  in  Shakespeare,  the  master- 
piece of  romantic  comedy,  one  of  the  great  type-dramas  of  the  world. 
Here,  as  in  so  many  other  places,  Shakespeare  borrowed  his  theme,  and 
even  no  small  part  of  his  minor  situations ;  but  this  matters  nothing. 
The  Tale  of  Gamely n  is  pleasant  and  vigorous ;  Lodge's  Rosalynde 
is  ingenious  and  fantastically  artistic.  But  As  You  Like  It  is  part 
of  the  little  "library  of  La  Quinte"  —  of  the  few  books  exhibiting 
imagination  and  expression  equally  married.  Rosalind  and  Touch- 
stone stand,  each  in  his  or  her  own  way,  alone. 

The  apparent  change  in  the  subject  and  temper  of  Shakespeare's 
work  at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  has  been  the 
subject  of  much  idle  talk.  There  is  no  more  reason  to  believe  that  he 
was  specially  and  personally  merry  when  he  wrote  this 
group  of  comedies,  than  there  is  to  believe  that  he  was  tragedks^ 
sad  or  embittered  during  the  period  which  produced  Roman  and 
Julius  CcEsar,  Hamlet,  Othello,  Lear,  Macbeth,  Antony 
and  Cleopatra  —  to  which  some  would  add  Troilus  and  Cressida, 
Timon,  and  even  Measure  for  Measure,  as  well  as  Coriolanus.  To 
the  present  writer  it  is  pretty  certain  that  Measure  for  Measure, 
Timon,  and  Troilus  ajtd  Cressida  represent  much  earlier  work, 
whether  or  no  they  had  been  actually  produced.  The  three  Roman 
plays,  Julius  Ca:sar,  Coriolanus,  and  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  make  an 
interesting  section  to  themselves,  which  in  Antony  and  Cleopatra 
almost  passes  into  that  of  romantic  tragedy,  and  so  joins  the  supreme 
quartette,  Hamlet,  Macbeth,  Othello,  and  Lear.  In  all  the  Roman  plays 
Shakespeare  applied  his  English-chronicle  method  pretty  exactly 
to  the  material  that  he  found  in  North's  Plutarch,  and,  since  his 
faculties  both  of  stage-management  and  of  versification  were  now  in 
complete  maturity,  with  the  noblest  effect.  But  in  character  he  does 
not  create  much,  he  only  interprets  —  till  we  come  to  the  ''Serpent  of 
old  Nile "  and  her  lover,  who  are  neither  the  crowned  wanton  and 
besotted  debauchee  of  uninspired  history,  nor  the  anti-Roman 
sorceress  and  victim  of  Horace's  craven-crowing  ode,  but  a  real  hero 
and  heroine  of  romance,  luckless  though  not  blameless,  sympathetic 
though  not  ill  served. 

Much,  however,  even  of  Antony  and  Cleopatra  is  only  chronicle, 
and  like  the  other  two,  great  as  they  are,  falls  beneath  the  magnificent 
creation  of  the  four  great  romantic  tragedies.  In  each  of  these, 
of  course,  Shakespeare  had  again  his  authorities,  and,  as  his  wont, 
he   sometimes  followed   them   closely.     But   the   interest  of  the  four 


326   LATER   ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE  bk.  vi 


does  not  depend  in  the  very  least  upon  Cinthio  or  Saxo,  upon 
Geoflfrey  or  Holinshed.  Here,  as  in  the  great  companion  comedies, 
the  dramatist  breaks  quite  free ;  his  real  themes  are  human  passion 
and  human  action  at  large,  caught  and  embodied  for  the  nonce  in 
individual  character  and  fate.  Nowhere  else  does  even  Shakespeare 
lavish  his  resources  as  he  does  in  these  four  plays,  and  certainly  in 
none  does  he  manifest  such  a  power  of  displaying  the  irony  of  life 
and  fate.  Viewed  from  one  standpoint,  all  four  are  as  well  entitled 
to  the  motto  "  Vanity  of  vanities  "  as  Ecclesiastes  itself.  The  love, 
the  heroism,  and  the  great  leading  qualities  of  Othello  and  Macbeth, 
the  filial  duty  and  intellectual  subtlety  of  Hamlet,  the  generous  if 
reckless  and  passionate  bonhomie  of  Lear,  all  make  shipwreck  against 
the  rocks  thrown  in  their  way  by  inauspicious  stars,  and  sought  out 
too  often  by  their  own  mistakes  and  crimes.  With  that  supreme 
genius  which  distinguishes  him  from  the  common  playwright, 
Shakespeare  has  never  made  his  heroes  or  heroines  types ;  and  this 
has  puzzled  many,  and  driven  not  a  few  to  despairing  efforts  to  make 
them  out  types  after  all.  It  is  exactly  what  they  are  not.  Shakespeare 
was  no  duped  or  duping  preacher  of  the  ruling  passion  like  his 
second  editor.  Othello  is  indeed  the  simplest  of  the  four ;  but  even 
here  the  character  of  lago,  which  is  almost  as  complex  as  that  of 
Hamlet,  invites  a  great,  from  some  the  greater,  part  of  the  interest. 

Those  who  would  make  Hamlet  a  mere  irresolute,  a  mere 
Waverley,  not  only  do  not  supply  a  full  explanation  of  him  even  in 
their  terms,  but  forget  that  irresolution,  at  least  such  as  his,  is  the 
most  complex  of  qualities.  The  inability  of  the  will  to  "  let  itself  go  " 
is  partly  caused  by,  much  more  complicated  with,  the  inability  of  the 
intellect  to  decide.  To  compare  Lear  with  the  wretched  other  play^ 
on  the  subject,  which  is  beyond  all  doubt  anterior,  or  with  Holinshed, 
or  with  Geoffrey's  original,  is  perhaps  the  very  best  single  means  of 
appreciating  the  infinite  variety  and  intricacy  of  Shakespeare's  know- 
ledge and  expression  of  humanity.  Although  the  hapless  King  is 
always  in  the  Latin  sense  impotent,  —  incapable  of  resisting  the 
impulse  of  the  moment,  —  this  fault  of  his  is  conditioned,  coloured, 
transformed  at  every  instant  by  circumstances,  many  of  them 
Shakespeare's  own  invention,  and  all  rearranged  with  new  effects  by 
him.  The  gifting,  the  unexpected  fractiousness  of  Cordelia  (and  let 
it  be  remembered  that  Cordelia  is  not  a  perfect  character,  that  she  is 
as  hyper-frank  as  her  sisters  are  hypocritical),  the  petty  insults  at 
Goneril's,  the  bolder  outrage  at  Gloster's  under  the  orders  of  Regan 
and  Cornwall,  the  terrors  of  the  storm,  and  the  talk  (dangerous 
to  already  tottering  wits)  of  the  sham  madman,  the  rescue  even  as  it 

1  To  be  found,  with  other  similar  apparatus,  in  Hazlitt's  Shakespeare' s  Library. 


CHAP.  I  SHAKESPEARE  327 


is  too  late,  the  second  fall  into  the  hands  of  his  enemies,  and  the 
final  blow  in  the  murder  of  Cordelia  — all  these  engines,  all  these 
reagents,  the  dramatist  applies  to  Lear's  headstrong  petulance  with  the 
most  unvarying  precision  of  science,  the  most  unfailing  variety  of 
art.  We  have  the  ungovernable  king  and  ex-king  in  twenty  different 
"  states,"  in  twenty  different  relations  and  presentments,  all  connected 
by  the  central  inexorable  story.  And  so  in  Macbeth  the  hero — 
ambitious,  uxorious,  intensely  under  the  influence  of  nerves  and  of 
imagination,  as  different  from  the  mere  "butcher"  of  Malcolm's 
insult  as  his  greater  but  not  less  complex-souled  wife  is  from  a 
"fiendlike  queen"  —  passes  before  us  whole  and  real,  terrible  but 
exact,  before,  at  the  crisis  of,  and  in  his  criminal  stage,  at  once  with 
the  fluttering  and  phantasmagoric  variety  of  a  dream,  and  with  an 
utterly  solid  and  continuous  story-interest.  The  Macbeth  who  is 
excited  by  the  prophecy  of  the  witches  is  exactly  the  same  Macbeth 
as  he  who  shrinks  from  the  visioned  dagger,  as  he  who  is  struck  to 
a  kind  of  numb  philosophising  by  the  cry  of  women  that  announces 
his  wife's  death. 

Of  the  numberless  and  magnificent  passages  of  our  poetry  which 
these  four  plays  contain  it  were  vain  to  attempt  to  speak.  It  must 
be  sufficient  to  say  that  in  them  the  Shakespearian  line,  which,  with 
its  absolute  freedom  of  shifting  the  pause  from  the  first  syllable  to  the 
last,  its  almost  absolute  freedom  of  syllabic  equivalence,  and  the  infinite 
variety  of  cadence  which  the  use  of  these  two  main  means  (and  no 
doubt  some  magic  besides)  allowed  it  to  attain,  is  the  central  fact  of 
English  poetry — this  line  came  to  its  very  farthest.  We  only  observe 
in  the  plays  of  the  last  six  or  seven  years  of  his  life  one  change,  and 
that  not  a  quite  certain  one,  the  inclination  to  greater  indulgence  in  the 
redundant  syllable  which  is  so  exceedingly  noticeable  in  his  successors 
in  romantic  drama,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher.  It  is  pretty  certain  that 
this  license,  which  he  had  always  used  to  some  extent,  would  never  in 
his  hands  have  reached  the  excess  which  we  find  in  them,  and  which 
in  their  followers  simply  disbands  the  line  into  loose  ungirt  prose, 
with  some  reminiscences  of  verse  here  and  there.  But  it  cannot  be 
considered  on  the  whole  an  improvement. 

The  plays  of,  or  probably  belonging  to,  the  last  period  of  Shake- 
speare's life  are  fewer  in  proportion  than  those  of  either  of  the  pre- 
ceding periods,  but  those  of  them  that  are  certain  present  interesting 
characteristics.  These  are  Cytnbelitie,  the  U'ln/er's  Tale, 
and  The  Tempest,  the  others  being  Henry  VIII.  and  ^^^'P^y^. 
Pericles.  This  last  play,  which  was  not  included  in  the  first  folio 
of  1623  by  Shakespeare's  friends  and  colleagues,  Heminge  and 
CondcU,  presents  curious  difficulties.  Great  part  of  it  must  be 
Shakespeare's ;  there  is  perhaps  no  part  that  viight  not  be ;   and  the 


328   LATER   ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN   LITERATURE   bk.  vi 

general  characteristics  of  story-management  and  versification  are  a 
very  odd  mixture  of  his  earUest  and  his  latest  manner  —  a  Love's 
Labours  Lost  blended  with  a  Winter's  Tale.  Nor  do  I  at  least  see 
reason  for  refusing  any  part  of  Henry  VIII.  to  Shakespeare,  though 
the  prominence  of  the  redundant  syllable  has  made  many  ascribe  it 
in  large  part  to  Fletcher.  But  about  the  other  three  there  is  no 
doubt,  and  certainly  there  is  more  excuse  than  usual  for  those  who 
read  in  them  a  special  index  of  the  author's  temper  in  these  his  last 
days  —  of  the  '*  calmed  and  calming  mens  adepta "  whereof  Fulke 
Greville  speaks.  Cv^/'^^i^/^w^  partakes  somewhat  of  the  same  character 
as  the  earlier  Much  Ado  about  Nothing.  It  is  very  nearly  a 
tragedy  —  indeed,  unlike  Much  Ado  about  Nothing,  it  contains 
accomplished  tragic  incidents  in  the  deaths  of  the  Queen  and 
Cloten.  But  as  far  as  the  interesting  personages — Imogen, 
lachimo,  Posthumus  —  are  concerned,  the  tragedy  is  averted,  and 
the  whole  deserves  the  name  of  romantic  drame  in  the  French 
sense. 

This  word,  indeed,  exactly  describes  these  last  three  plays,  and 
with  ever-increasing  appropriateness.  Pedants  of  the  bookish  theoric 
of  playwright  craftsmanship  have  found  fault  with  the  construction  of 
Cymbeline,  which  is  admittedly  loose,  like  its  fellows  —  a  chronicle 
or  romance  rather  than  an  epic,  but  perfectly  sufficient  for  its  own 
object  and  purposes.  The  backbone  of  A  IVinier^s  Tale  is  a  little 
more  carefully  and  distinctly  vertebrated,  though  no  doubt  the 
action  is  rather  improbably  prolonged,  and  the  statue-scene,  in 
which  Hermione  is  restored  to  Leontes,  does  not  entirely  atone  by 
its  extreme  beauty  for  its  equally  extreme  improbability.  But  here, 
as  always,  Shakespeare  has  done  what  he  meant  to  do ;  and  here,  as 
always,  it  is  the  extremity  of  critical  impertinence  to  demand  from  an 
author  not  what  he  meant  to  do  but  something  that  the  critic  thinks 
he  might,  could,  should,  or  ought  to  have  meant.  The  vivid  truth 
of  the  Queen's  frank  courtesy,  Leontes'  jealous  rage  (so  different  from 
Othello's,  yet  equally  lifehke),  the  fine  lurid  presentment  of  the 
"coast"  of  Bohemia,  the  exquisitely  idyllic  (a  word  much  abused,  yet 
here  applicable)  figure  of  Perdita,  the  inimitable  brio  of  Autolycus, 
the  pendant  to  Touchstone  —  to  give  all  these  and  other  things  in 
a  pleasing  series  was  what  the  dramatist  intended  to  do,  and  he 
did  it. 

The  splendour  of  sunset  in  the  Tempest  can  escape  no  one,  and 
the  sternest  opponent  of  guesswork  must  admit  the  probable  presence 
of  a  designed  allegory  in  the  figure  of  Prospero  and  the  burying  of 
the  book,  the  breaking  of  the  staff,  at  the  close.  Even  if  this  be 
thought  too  fanciful,  nowhere  has  Shakespeare  been  more  prodigal 
of  every  species  of  his  enchantment.     The  exquisite  but  contrasted 


CKAP.  I  SHAKESPEARE  329 

grace  of  Miranda  and  Ariel,  the  wonderful  creation  of  Caliban,  the 
varied  human  criticism  in  Gonzalo  and  the  bad  brothers,  the  farce- 
comedy  of  Stephano  and  Trinculo,  do  not  more  show  the  illimitable 
fancy  and  creative  power  of  the  master  in  scene  and  character  than 
the  passages,  not  so  much  scattered  as  showered  over  the  whole  play, 
show  his  absolute  supremacy  in  poetry.  Both  in  the  blank  verse  and 
the  lyrics,  in  the  dialogue  and  the  set  tirades,  in  long  contexts 
and  short  phrases  alike,  he  shows  himself  absolute,  with  nothing 
out  of  reach  of  his  faculty  of  expression  and  suggestion,  with  every 
resource  of  verbal  music  and  intellectual  demonstration  at  his 
command. 

The  so-called  doubtful  plays  ^  of  Shakespeare  form  an  interesting 
subject,  but  one  which  can  be  dealt  with  but  briefly  here.  As 
attributed  by  older  tradition  and  assertion  or  by  modern  guesswork, 
they  amount  to  "some  dozen  or  sixteen,"  of  which  only 
three,  the  Two  Noble  Kinsjnen,  usually  printed  as  piayL" 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher's,  Edward  III.,  and  Arden  of 
Feversham,  have  any  serious  claims,  though  some  have  seen  such  in 
the  Yorkshire  Tragedy,  a  curious  little  horror-piece  which,  however, 
a  dozen  other  men  might  have  written.  Others  again,  Fair  Em, 
Locrine,  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  have  absolutely  nothing  but  unauthoritative 
though  pretty  ancient  assertion  to  recommend  them.  As  for  the 
excepted  three,  the  Two  Noble  Kinsmen,  a  dramatisation  of  Chaucer's 
Knighfs  Tale,  has  no  suggestion  of  Shakespeare  as  a  whole,  but  in 
parts  shows  extraordinary  similarity  to  his  versification.  This  has 
tempted  some  to  think  that  Shakespeare  may  by  chance  have  found 
his  younger  contemporaries  (Beaumont,  be  it  remembered,  died  in 
the  same  year  with  him)  working  at  the  play,  have  looked  at  it,  and 
have  mended  or  patched  here  and  there  for  amusement  or  out  of 
good-nature.  Ed%vard  HI.  has  the  same  similarities  of  versification, 
and  in  part,  though  a  small  part,  of  handling,  but  it  is  more 
suggestive  of  an  extraordinarily  clever  piece  of  imitation  or  inspira- 
tion than  of  actual  Shakespearian  authorship.  Arden  of  Fevershan:, 
on  the  other  hand,  has  no  similarities  of  versification,  and  does  not, 
in  its  dealing  with  the  murder  of  a  husband  by  his  wife  and  her  base- 
l)()rn  paramour,  suggest  Shakespeare's  choice  of  subject,  but  is  closer 
in  some  ways  than  any  other  play  to  his  handling  in  character  and 
psychological  analysis. 

1  A  complete  and  cheap  Shakespearian  "Apocrypha  "  is  much  wanted.  As  it 
is,  more  or  fewer  of  tlie  doubtfiils  are  included  in  some  of  the  old  large  library 
editions,  some  of  them  may  he  found  in  Hazlitt's  Dodslty,  others  in  Simpson's 
School  of  Shakespeare,  and  one  or  two,  especially  Arden  of  Fex'ersham,  are 
accessible  separately.  Otherwise  the  edition  of  Warnke  and  Proescholdt  (Halle, 
1878-88)  is  the  only  good  one. 


CHAPTER   II 

SHAKESPEARE'S   CONTEMPORARIES   IN  DRAMA 

Disposition  of  the  subject  —  Chronological  and  biographical  cautions  —  Ben  Jonson 

—  His  and  other  "humour"  —  His  plays  — His  verse  —  The  three  master- 
pieces —  Later  plays  —  The  Masques  —  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  —  Their  lives  — 
Their  characteristics  —  And  merits  —  Specimen  plays  —  Shadowy  personality  of 
other  dramatists  — Sufficiency  of  their  work  —  Chapman  —  Marston  —  Dekker 

—  Middleton  —  Heywood  —  Webster  —  His  two  great  plays  —  Day  —  Tourneur 

—  Rowley 

From  more  than  one  thing  which  has  been  said  already,  it  will  be 
seen  that  the  arrangement  of  the  great  period  of  the  English  drama 
for   treatment   in  a   literary   history   is   beset    by   various   difficulties. 

The  phases  come  so  quick  and  overlap  each  other  so 
of^thi'subject.  intricately,   that   separate   treatment   is   apt   to   create   an 

entirely  wrong  general  idea  chronologically,  while  collec- 
tive treatment  is  in  danger  of  confusing  the  successive  stages.  For 
our  present  purpose  the  best  way  will  probably  be  to  take  here  all  or 
almost  all  the  men  who  during  Shakespeare's  lifetime  produced  some- 
thing more  than  the  mere  beginning  of  their  work,  leaving  even 
Massinger  (though  it  is  almost  certain  that  he  wrote  before  1616), 
much  more  Ford,  Shirley,  etc.,  for  the  next  Book ;  but  to  preface  the 
individual  dealings  with  some  warning  remarks  which  may  keep  the 
general  procession  clear. 

Let  it  then  be  always  remembered  that  the  formative  period  of 
the  University  Wits  was  a  very  short  one,  and  was  contained, 
roughly  speaking,  in  the  >decade  from  1585  to  1596;  that  Shakespeare 

overlapped  them  at  the  one  end,  and  the  first  ten  years 
Chronological  ^^  Fletcher  —  the  whole  collaboration  of  Beaumont  and 
biographical    Fletcher — on   the    other;    that    Ben    Jonson,    beginning 

cautions.        ,,  ,^  ,  .  ,,,  'o  o 

before  the  Queen's  reign  ended,  by  some  years,  was 
the  dramatist  more  especially  of  the  reign  of  James,  though  he 
survived  till  near  the  outbreak  of  the  civil  dissensions ;  that 
Fletcher's  death  coincided  nearly  enough  with  the  accession  of 
Charles,   so    that    he    represents    one    side   of  the   purely  Jacobean 

330 


CHAP.  II       SHAKESPEARE'S   CONTEMPORARIES   IN   DRAMA       331 

drama  as  Ben  does  the  other ;  and  that  most  of  the  minor  but  still 
great  men,  Chapman,  Dekker,  Middleton,  Heywood,  Tourneur,  Day, 
Marston,  Webster,  while  often  anticipating  the  end  of  Elizabeth's 
reign,  and  sometimes  prolonging  themselves  into  the  beginning  of 
Charles's,  are  still  in  the  main  ornaments  more  especially  of 
that  of  the  British  Solomon,  who,  for  all  his  Rewlis  and  Caittilis 
(jiide  infra),  certainly  reaped  where  he  had  not  sown.  From  what 
has  been  said  already  of  this  curiously  tangled  character  of  the 
subject,  it  will  be  understood  that  a  strictly  chronological  arrange- 
ment of  the  writers  enumerated,  and  others,  is  practically  impossible. 
But  it  so  happens  that,  without  violating  chronology  in  any  important 
degree,  we  can  arrange  them  in  an  order  corresponding  quite  closely 
enough  to  their  literary  importance. 

Ben  Jonson^  (whose  non-dramatic  poetry  is  in  bulk,  and  still 
more  in  influence,  so  important  that  it  must  be  treated  separately  in 
the  next  chapter,  while  his  prose  will  also  come  in  for  handling  in  a 
third)   was  nearlv  ten    years  younger   than    Shakespeare,    „     ^ 

,,  .'t         ,.',  -•  Ben  Jonson. 

and  was  born  in  London  in  the  year  1573,  some  time 
after  the  death  of  his  father,  who  was  in  orders.  There  seems  to  be 
no  reason  for  doubting  that  the  family  was  a  branch  of  the  Annan- 
dale  Johnstones.  He  was  educated  at  Westminster,  but  probably  at 
neither  University,  though  he  afterwards  received  honorary  degrees 
from  both.  His  mother  married  a  master  bricklayer  or  builder,  and 
Ben  appears  to  have  tried  the  business,  but  naturally  did  not  like  it. 
He  enlisted  and  served  for  some  time  in  the  Netherlands,  but  seems 
to  have  come  home  while  still  a  boy  and  to  have  married  very-  early. 
The  famous  conversations  with  Drummond  (see  below),  which  though 
not  the  very  best  of  evidence,  are  about  the  best  we  have,  do  not 
represent  this  marriage  as  a  very  happy  one,  though  Ben  gives  his 
wife  a  somewhat  ungracious  testimonial  on  the  most  important  point. 
He  was  certainly  one  of  the  most  solidly  read  men  of  an  erudite  time. 
We  do  not  know  how  he  gravitated  to  the  stage,  but  Meres's  mention 
of  him  is  so  early  (1598)  that  Every  Man  in  his  Hiimonr.  Jonson's 
earliest  known  play,  is  sometimes  put  before  this  date.  But  we  do 
not  know  that  it  \<-as  acted  till  then,  and  Meres's  commendation  is 
for  tragedy.  The  wild  life  of  the  actors  and  playwrights  of  the  time 
had  nearly  made  Jonson's  own  end  tragically  premature,  for  he  fought 
a  duel  with  an  actor  of  Henslowe's,  Gabriel  Spencer,  in  this  same 
year,  killed  him,  was  tried  for  murder,  but  escaped  by  pleading 
"clergy"  and  being  burnt  in  the  hand,  with  loss  of  goods  and  chattels, 
which  were  probably  not  extensive.  During  the  early  years  of  James 
we  know  little  of  him  except  from  the  Conversations  and  a  few  tradi- 

1  Works,  cd.  Gifforil  ami  Cunningtiam  (3  vols.  London,  «.</.). 


332   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE  bk.  vi 

tional  stories,  mostly  of  literary  quarrels.  But  in  the  second  decade 
of  the  seventeenth  century  he  became  a  sort  of  regular  dictator  of 
literature,  the  head  of  successive  groups  of  young  men  of  letters 
whom  he  called  his  "sons,"  the  furnisher,  conjointly  with  Inigo  Jones 
as  designer  and  mechanician  till  they  quarrelled,  of  many  court  masques, 
which  contain  exquisite  poetry,  and  Poet  Laureate,  or  something  like 
it.  The  journey  to  Scotland,  in  which  he  visited  Drummond  at 
Hawthornden,  took  place  in  1619.  His  last  years  were  not  wholly 
happy,  for  his  health,  partly  owing  to  his  conviviality,  was  impaired, 
and  he  was  often  in  straits  for  money  from  the  fickleness  of  the  court 
and  stage  favour  on  which  alone  he  depended.  But  when  he  died  in 
1637  there  was  probably  no  competent  opinion  which  did  not  regard 
him  as  the  head  of  English  literature,  a  position  which  he  practically 
held  till  Dryden  was  served  heir  to  it. 

Jonson's  first  play.  Every  Man  in  his  Humour  (which  after 
having  been  acted  at  the  Rose  in  a  form  not  now  extant,  about  1596, 
was  transferred  in  its  present  shape  to  the  Globe  and  acted  in  by 
Shakespeare  two  years  later),  expresses  in  more  than  its  title  the 
kind  of  drama  in  which  he  specially  excelled.  The  successive  or 
contemporary  senses  of  the  much-discussed  word  "humour"  in 
English  can  be  put  shortly  without  too  much  assumption 
"'humour.'"  ^n  debatable  points.  Taking  its  original  meaning  in 
the  modern  languages  from  the  medico-philosophical 
sense  of  "  humour  "  as  a  constituent  of  the  bodily  frame  influencing 
health  or  disease,  it  passes  into  the  connotation  of  "temper,"  "  disposi- 
tion," which  it  still  retains.  From  this,  and  by  a  slight  reaction  and 
variation  upon  its  first  meaning,  it  comes  to  signify  a  particular 
idiosyncrasy,  —  a  whim  or  caprice  distinguishing  the  individual,  —  and 
it  is  in  this  sense  that  Jonson  constantly  uses  it  and  illustrates  it  in 
his  plays.  Only  much  later,  and  by  degrees  very  difficult  to  mark 
with  any  accuracy,  did  it  acquire  that  sense  of  distinction  from,  though 
not  opposition  to,  wit  in  which  it  has  become  the  designation  of 
a  quality  so  frequently  found  in  English  literature  and  elsewhere  —  a 
feeling  and  presentation  of  the  ludicrous  which  does  not  stop  there 
but  includes  something  more,  a  sympathetic,  or  at  least  meditative, 
transcendency.  In  this  last  sense  Shakespeare  is  the  greatest  of  all 
humourists,  and  Jonson  has  not  much  claim  to  be  one,  for  his  temper 
was  unsympathetic  and  his  intellect,  though  strong,  was  a  little  coarse. 
But  in  the  delineation,  never  absolutely  caricatured,  of  "humours"  in 
the  plural  form  and  lesser  sense  he  has  had  few  rivals. 

In  Every  Man  in  his  Humour  the  freshness  of  the  writer's  vein 
prevents  the  tendency  to  "  cut-and-driedness "  to  which  his  scheme 
is  exposed,  and  the  result  is  delightful,  especially  in  the  boasting 
coward  Bobadil  and  the  gull  Master  Stephen,  who  wants  "  a  stool  to 


CHAP.  11       SHAKESPEARE'S   CONTEMPORARIES   IN   DRAMA       33S 

be  melancholy  upon,"  while  the  sketches  of  manners,  always  the 
strong  point  of  the  humour-play,  show  us  almost  for  the  first  time  an 
interest  and  an  excellence  which  was  in  both  respects  one 
of  the  chief  features  of  the  Elizabethan  drama  out  of  '^P^y^-  ^ 
Shakespeare.  For  there  is  nothing  more  distinctive  of  Shakespeare 
than  the  way  in  which,  despite  his  intensely  English  patriotism  and 
his  intensely  English  spirit,  his  painting  of  manners  always  transcends 
the  merely  graphic  and  local.  He  has  enough  of  this  last  for  his 
purpose,  but  only  enough,  and  it  was  no  part  of  his  purpose  to  indi- 
cate for  us  accurately  the  flat  cap  and  shining  shoes  of  the  citizen,  or 
to  make  us  acquainted  with  Pickthatch  and  Hogsden. 

Every  Man  out  of  his  Htcmour,  which  followed  in  1599,  is  un- 
doubtedly open  to  some  of  those  strictures  on  sequels  which,  though 
often  applied  with  undiscriminating  woodenness,  have  some  basis  of 
experience.  The  elaborate  characterisings  of  the  persons  which 
the  author  thought  it  necessary  to  prefix  betray  a  certain  suspicion 
that  they  do  not  sufficiently  explain  themselves ;  the  mostly  Italian 
index-names,  Deliro,  Fallace,  Asper,  and  the  rest,  are  teasing  to  the 
reader,  and  slight  his  memory  and  his  judgment  by  suggesting  that 
the  one  is  too  short  and  the  other  too  feeble  to  identify  the  specimen 
without  the  label.  Yet  there  is  both  fine  verse  and  fine  prose  in  the 
play,  and  the  satire  on  the  word  "humour"  itself,  which  is  constantly 
put  into  the  mouths  of  the  characters,  shows  that  Jonson  was  never 
his  own  dupe,  though  he  might  sometimes  be  his  own  mimic.  And 
his  realism  has  the  advantages  of  its  defects.  We  might  have  gone 
all  over  the  London  of  1599  without  meeting  Falstaff  (who  indeed 
had  long  been  in  Arthur's  bosom),  but  we  should  have  had,  in  all 
probability,  no  difficulty  in  finding  twenty  Fastidious  Brisks  between 
St.  PauPs  and  Westminster. 

The  third  play,  Cynthia's  Revels  (1600),  is  an  attempt  to  follow 
Lyly,  but  with  direct  satire  on  Euphuism  itself,  and  in  a  harsher, 
harder  style  than  that  of  the  author  of  Midas.  Indeed,  Jonson's 
tendency  to  rough  personal  attack,  and  to  a  self-assertion  undoubtedly 
arrogant,  though  too  well  justified  by  his  gifts  to  be  absolutely  ludicrous, 
was  growing  on  him  very  fast.  And  his  next  play.  The  Poetaster 
(1601-1602),  in  which  the  ostensible  characters  are  those  of  Augustus 
and  his  court,  was  recognised  as  a  direct  assault  on  his  own  rivals, 
especially  Marston  and  Dekker,  while  Tucca,  the  principal  comic 
character,  was  seen  at  once  to  be  drawn  from  an  actual  parasite  of 
the  time,  one  Captain  Hannam.  Yet  there  is  .stuff'  in  it,  and  fine 
stuff",  while  Jonson's  progress  in  his  own  style  of  versifica- 
tion  is  very  marked.  This,  while  it  never  attains  to 
anything  like  the  universal  adaptai)ility  of  Shakespeare's  and  is 
seldom   distinguished  by  the  ease  and  grace  of  Fletcher's,  has  great 


334   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE   bk.  vi 

dignity  and  rhetorical  force  not  really  injured  by  any  compensating 
stiffness.  And  it  served  him  well  in  the  fine  Roman  play  of  Sejamis 
which  followed  (1603),  which  was  acted  in,  and  at  first,  perhaps, 
originally  contributed  to,  by  Shakespeare,  which,  except  some  of  the 
masques,  contains  Jonson's  best  dramatic  verse  as  verse,  and  which 
exhibits  extraordinary  familiarity  with  the  classic  originals  —  a  famili- 
aritv  not  resulting,  as  is  too  often  the  case,  in  any  overloading  with 
erudition. 

It  was,  however,  in  his  three  next  pieces,  Volpone,  or  the  Fox, 
Epicene,  or  the  Silent  IVoman,  and  The  Alchemist  that  Jonson's 
genius  as  a  dramatist  found  the  fullest  scope.  To  the  present 
writer's  judgment  they  seem  to  present  a  gradual  cres- 
masterpieces.  cendo  of  excellence.  Strong  as  is  Volpone  (in  which 
the  devices  of  a  rich,  wicked,  and  misanthropic  Italian 
to  bring  shame  and  disaster  on  his  flatterers  and  legacy-hunters 
result  in  his  own  utter  ruin),  it  is  still  marred  a  little  by  a  too  great 
separation  in  the  characters  (the  result  of  the  humour-theory),  by  the 
unmitigated  rascality  or  folly  of  almost  everybody  in  it,  and  by  the 
improbability  of  Volpone's  playing  a  game  as  dangerous  as  it  was  de- 
testable. TJie  Silent  Woman  was  unsparingly  admired  by  its  own 
and  the  following  generation  for  the  cunning  of  its  plot,  the  satisfac- 
tory adjustment  of  the  contributory  humours,  and  the  admirable 
character  of  Morose,  the  best  of  all  the  misanthropes  of  the  modern 
stage.  But  both  plays  fall  short  of  The  Alchemist.  Here  is  Sir 
Epicure  Mammon,  the  one  character  of  the  dramatist  who  requires 
no  allowances  and  exceptions  in  the  description  of  him  as  absolutely 
of  the  first  class,  no  longer  the  mere  vehicle  of  a  "  humour,"  but  the 
incarnation  of  a  human  temperament  —  that  in  which  voluptuous  and 
avaricious  concupiscence  is  sublimed  and  idealised  into  something 
immortal.  Even  this  great  central  figure  is  thoroughly  supported  by 
the  group  of  his  three  deluders,  and  deluders  of  each  other.  Subtle, 
Dol,  and  Face,  while  all  the  minor  characters,  especially  Abel  Drugger 
(later  Garrick's  best  character),  are  good,  and  the  story  of  the  play 
moves  with  a  combination  of  exactness  and  alacrity  rare  in  any  writer, 
and  particularly  rare  in  Jonson.  There  is  perhaps  no  old  play  which 
inspires  even  those  who  are  not  fanatically  devoted  to  the  theatre  with 
such  a  desire  to  see  it  performed  as  this  does,  owing  to  the  excellence 
of  the  stage-situations,  though  there  is  hardly  any  which,  from  the 
sensuous  enthusiasm  of  Sir  Epicure  and  the  brazen  yet  not  vulgar 
audacity  of  Dol,  his  "princess,"  to  the  fatuity  of  Drugger  and  the 
petulance  of  the  Angry  Boy,  would  require  so  powerful  a  cast. 

As  the  great  trio  was  led  up  to  by  one  of  Jonson's  Roman  plays, 
Sejatius,  so  the  descent  from  it  —  for  his  later  plays,  though  even  at 
the  worst  not  what  Dryden  in  his  rare  moment  of  unkindness  called 


CHAi'.  II       SHAKESPEARE'S   CONTEMPORARIES   IN   DRAMA       335 


"dotaojes."    a7-c   a    descent  —  was    begun    by  the    other,    Catiline,    a 


■*& 


piece  which  "is   critically  on  a  level  with  its  pendant  in  force,   learn- 
ins:,   and  a  certain    stiffness.     There    is    no    stiffness    in 

"  ,  .    ,       ^  ,,  1      X-      -T-         1  •      •       Later  plays. 

Bartholomew  Fair,  which  followed  Catiline,  but  it  is 
rather  an  immense  and  audacious  farce,  dealing  with  the  Puritans 
and  the  general  humours  of  holiday  London  in  a  fashion  excellently 
vigorous  though  undeniably  coarse,  than  a  comedy.  The  Devil  is  an 
Ass  soars  higher  in  scheme  and  kind.  It  is  a  comedy  with  a 
purpose,  and  a  rather  ambitious  and  hazardous  one,  being  in  effect  a 
satire,  as  Gifford  says,  on  monopolists  and  projectors  on  the  one 
hand,  on  witch-finders  and  sham  demoniacs  on  the  other.  After  this 
there  appears  to  have  been  a  very  long  gap  in  Jonson's  productions 
for  the  regular  stage,  though  he  was  fertile  in  masques.  When  he  re- 
appeared on  the  boards  in  1625,  with  The  Staple  of  News,  there  was 
no  great  if  any  perceptible  falling  off  either  in  wit,  in  satire,  or  in  the 
vivid  portrayal  of  the  "  humours."  But  of  his  last  three  plays.  The 
New  Inn,  The  Magnetic  Lady,  and  the  Tale  of  a  Tub,  the  first  was 
definitely  damned,  with  the  result  of  an  indignant  protest  from  the 
poet  and  divers  replies,  consolatory  or  otherwise,  from  other  writers. 
The  second  had  a  mixed  reception,  and  it  is  not  known  whether  the 
third  was  ever  acted  publicly,  though  it  certainly  did  not  please  when 
performed  at  court.  Nor  in  any  of  the  cases,  despite  passages  and 
characters  of  merit,  can  they  be  said  to  do  full  justice  to  the  author's 
powers.  That  these  powers  were,  however,  by  no  means  gone  is 
shown  by  his  last  and  unfinished  work.  The  Sad  Shepherd,  a  pastoral 
drama  fancifully  blended  of  the  story  of  Robin  Hood  and  a  fairy  tale, 
which  is  one  of  the  most  exquisite  things  of  the  Elizabethan  age  — 
the  "satire,  wit,  and  strength"  which,  far  more  than  to  Wycherley, 
may  be  attributed  to  its  author  being  here  accompanied  by  a  sweet- 
ness and  poetical  charm,  discoverable  indeed  in  his  minor  poetical 
productions,  but  seldom  to  be  observed  even  in  his  greatest  plays. 

Between  the  poems  and  the  plays,  but  connected  with  the  latter 
by  the  Sad  Shepherd  itself,  come  the  Masques,''  the  most  consider- 
able body  of  that  kind,  both  as  to  bulk  and  as  to  excellence,  to  be 
found    in    English.      Much    has    been    written,    without 

"  ,  The  Masques. 

much  being  determined,  on  the  origin  of  the  masque 
itself,  which  was  very  probably  Italian.  But  the  thing  is  so  natural 
a  growth  in  the  conditions  which  made  dramatic  entertainments  the 
particular  amusement  of  courts,  that  it  requires  no  elaborate  or  pre- 
cise pedigree.  It  may  be  described  as  a  dramatic  entertainment  in 
which  plot,  character,  and  even  to  a  great  extent  dialogue  are  sub- 
ordinated on  the  one  hand  to  spectacular  illustration,  and  on  the  other 

1  Mr.  II.  A.  Kv.ins's  Rn^'/ish  Masques  (London,  1897)  contains  a  good  selec- 
tion of  others  besides  Jonson's. 


336   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE   bk.  vi 

to  musical  accompaniment.  It  was  thus  a  sort  of  precursor  of  the 
opera,  and  disappeared  when  the  opera  became  popular.  The  seven- 
teenth century,  and  especially  the  first  half  thereof,  was  the  palmy 
time  of  the  masque  in  England.  Of  these  pieces  Ben  Jonson  has 
left  us  nearly  forty. ^  Most  of  them,  as  mentioned,  were  written  in 
conjunction  with  Inigo  Jones,  who  supplied  the  decorations,  going  far 
beyond  mere  scenery  and  dresses,  and  such  as  must  often  have  taxed 
the  utmost  ingenuity  even  of  a  consummate  architect  and  engineer. 
Special  dancing-masters  (a  profession  of  importance  at  the  time) 
arranged  the  choregraphy,  and  the  best  composers,  such  as  Ferra- 
bosco  and  Lanier,  gave  the  music  for  these  entertainments,  on  which 
sums  representing  scores  of  thousands  of  pounds  in  our  money  were 
lavished.  But  no  expense  could  be  more  than  worthy  of  the  inex- 
haustible supplies  of  wit,  learning,  and  real  poetry  on  which  Jonson 
drew  unsparingly  for  the  libretti.  If  Milton,  as  he  undoubtedly  did, 
bettered  Jonson's  instruction  in  Comiis  and  the  Arcades,  yet  it  was 
Jonson's  instruction  that  he  bettered,  and  by  far  less  than  is  com- 
monly thought.  For  hardly  any  one  now  reads  these  charming 
pieces,  couched  in  an  obsolete  form  and  burdened  with  the  rubbish, 
as  it  now  is,  of  stage  directions  and  stage  business,  but  displaying  in 
the  dialogue  constant  felicity,  and  in  the  abundant  lyrics  that  very 
sober  grace  and  half-demure  elegance  of  craftsmanship  by  which 
Milton  has  won  not  the  worst  or  least  genuine  part  of  his  own 
fame. 

The  work  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  ^  is  even  more  voluminous 
than  that  of  Jonson ;  it  is  indeed  the  most  voluminous  of  any  that 
we  have  from  the  greater  figures  of  our  drama,  so  that  to  go  through 
it  here  on  the  same  scale  as  that  which  has  been  allowed 
and  Fletcher,  ^o  Ben  would  be  impossible.  It  would  also  be  unneces- 
sary, for  their  plays  are  much  more  homogeneous  than 
his  in  general  conception.  They  are,  with  hardly  an  exception, 
romantic  comedies  or  romantic  tragedies,  differing  remarkably  from 
Shakespeare's  in  their  ethics,  and  usually  in  their  versification,  but 
distantly  belonging  to  the  same  general  group  in  scheme,  and  sub- 
ordinating all  their  subjects,  classical,  modern,  fantastic,  or  historical, 
to  this  general  scheme.     The  lives  of  the  pair  are  not  much  known, 

1  The  very  titles  of  these,  in  a  phrase  of  their  author's,  "speak  them"  — 
"The  Masque  of  Blackness"  (1605),  "  Love  Restored "  (1610),  "  For  the 
Honour  of  Wales,"  "Neptune's  Triumph,"  "The  Fortunate  Isles,"  etc. 

2  The  twin  dramatists  have  not  been  re-edited  as  wholes  since  the  editions  of 
Darley  (2  vols.)  and  Dyce  (11  vols.)  in  the  forties.  The  former  is  the  cheapest, 
the  latter  the  most  authoritative.  A  fairly  full  selection  of  complete  plays  will  be 
found  in  2  vols,  of  the  "  Mermaid  Series  "  edited  by  Mr.  St.  Loe  Strachey.  But 
the  last  century  edition  of  1750  (10  vols.),  by  various  editors,  though  not  very 
critical,  is  as  useful  as  any.    That  by  Weber,  Scott's  secretary,  is  about  the  worst. 


CHAP.  II       SHAKESPEARE'S   CONTEMPORARIES   IN    DRAMA       337 


and  the  distribution  of  tlie  dramatic  work  which  commonly  goes 
under  their  joint  names  is  extremely  uncertain,  though  from  Beau- 
mont's very  short  life  he  can  hardly  have  had  much  of  a  hand  in  the 
majority  of  it.  The  traditional  allotment  of  the  part  of  creator  to 
Fletcher  and  of  critic  to  Beaumont  rests  on  no  solid  authority,  and  is 
a  sort  of  commonplace  in  reference  to  such  collaborations. 

John  Fletcher,  the  elder,  the  longer-lived,  and  undoubtedly  the 
more  prolific  of  the  two,  though  perhaps  not  the  greater  genius, 
belonged  to  a  remarkable  literary  family,  though  the  power  was  not 
so  much  shown  in  his  father  (who,  as  Dean  of  Peter- 
borough, made  himself  unpleasantly  notorious  at  the  exe- 
cution of  Queen  Mary,  and  died  Bishop  of  London)  as  in  his  uncle, 
Giles  Fletcher,  the  author  of  Licia,  and  his  cousins,  Giles  and 
Phineas,  the  not  too  unequal  followers  of  Spenser  {iiide  infra).  The 
bishop  died  poor,  and  his  son,  who  had  entered  Benet  or  Corpus 
College  at  Cambridge  early,  was  left  to  shift  for  himself  at  seventeen. 
We  know  nothing  of  him  personally ;  but  the  anecdote  in  Shad- 
welFs  Bi/ry  Fair,  which  presents  him  as  living  in  lodgings  with 
one  maid-servant,  who,  when  he  entertained  friends,  "  had  her  sack 
in  a  beer-glass,"  is  quite  likely  to  be  an  actual  tradition,  for  the 
forte  of  "  Og "  was  not  inventiveness.  For  some  time,  we  are 
told,  he  and  his  partner  in  the  dramas  lived  together.  He  died 
of  the  plague  in  August  1625.  Francis  Beaumont  was  the  son  of  a 
Justice  of  the  Common  Pleas,  and  belonged  to  a  good  family  in 
Leicestershire,  in  which  county  he  was  born  at  Gracedieu  in  1584. 
He  became  a  member  of  Broadgates  Hall  (afterwards  Pembroke 
College)  Oxford,  in  1597,  and  entered  the  Inner  Temple  in  1600. 
Beaumont  was  an  intimate  friend  not  merely  of  Fletcher  but  of 
Jonson,  to  whom  he  wrote  a  very  remarkable  ode.  He  married  in 
1613,  and  died  three  years  later.  Except  Sabitacis  atid  Hcrmaphro- 
ditus,  an  Ovidian  paraphrase  in  the  luscious  school  of  which  Shake- 
speare's two  great  poems  and  Marlowe's  Hero  and  Leander  are  the 
chief,  and  the  anonymous  Britain^s  Ida  the  next  best,  Beaumont's 
poetical  work  is  very  uncertain,  and  the  collections  which  go  under 
his  name  (reproduced  in  Chalmers)  are  a  mere  medley  of  work, 
sometimes  certainly,  often  probably,  belonging  to  others.  But  the 
contemporary  estimate  of  his  poetical  genius  was  very  high,  and  he 
traditionally  has  the  credit  of  most,  if  not  all,  of  the  exquisite  songs 
which  are  scattered  about  the  plays,  while  Fletcher  in  the  same  tradi- 
tion contents  himself  with  drama  only. 

As  guesswork  is  kept  out  of  this  book  as  much  as  possible,  no 
space  will  be  given  to  the  attempts  which  have  been  made  (in  hardly 
any  ca.se  upon  documentary  evidence)  to  assign  the  authorship  of  the 
great  total    of  fifty-two    plays    to   Fletcher,   Beaumont   and   Fletcher, 


33S   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE   bk.  vi 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher  and  Shakespeare,  Fletcher  and  Massinger, 
Fletcher  and  Shirley,  Fletcher  and  Rowley.  It  is  sufficient  to  say 
that  in  the  whole  there  is  sufficient  similarity,  and  in  almost  every 
individual  play  there  is  sufficient  elasticity  and  variety  of  manner, 
to  make  such  distributions  extremely  hazardous,  if  not  utterly  idle. 
About  r/iilaster,  The  MaiiVs  Tragedy,  and  A  King  and  no  King, 
there  can  be  no  reasonable  dispute ;  because  the  ascription  of  joint 
authorship  to  them  is  older  than  Fletcher's  death.  And  it  so  happens 
that  these  three  plays  furnish  a  sufficient  range  both  of  comic  and 
tragic  handling  and  expression  to  enable  us  to  separate  the  special 
joint  quality  of  the  collaboration.  Nor  is  this  vi^anting  in  any  one  of 
the  others.^ 

In  verse  these  plays  tend  to  a  looser  style,  and  admit  more 
redundant  syllables,  than  those  of  Ben  or  even  of  Shakespeare ;  and 
we  have  spoken  of  their  general  scheme  as  dramas.     There  is  room 

for  somewhat    more    discussion   as   to   their  temper   and 
^'teris'tk'sT'^    morality.      This   has   been   as  a  rule  rather  unfavourably 

spoken  of,  and  it  is  true  that  the  authors  neither  observe 
the  bare  poetical  justice  which  is  one  of  the  notes  of  Jonson,  nor  that 
higher,  more  impartial  ethic  —  admitting  the  actual  conditions  of  life 
and  fate,  but  always  making  for  righteousness —  which  is  one  of  the 
greatest  glories  of  Shakespeare.  Their  sentiment,  though  frequently 
exquisite,  as  in  Philaster,  The  Maid''s  Tragedy,  Thierry  and  Theodoret, 
and  elsewhere,  is  often  if  not  always  slightly  strained  and  morbid, 
the  pathos  is,  so  to  speak,  "  loaded,"  and  the  situations  which  bring 
it  about  are  not  always  natural.  Towards  what  is  commonly  and 
widely  called  "  vice  "  they  hold  an  attitude  which,  while  it  never  even 
approaches  the  prurient  and  deliberate  provocation  of  the  Restoration 
drama,  comes  nearer  to  sympathy  than  the  Olympian  acknowledg- 
ment of  Shakespeare,  or  the  humorous  tolerance  of  Fielding.  In 
mere  language  they  are  no  coarser  than  their  fellows ;  and  Dryden 
committed  the  proverbial  blunder  of  self-excusers  when  he  tried  to 
shelter  himself,  and  his  fellow-sinners  at  the  other  end  of  the  century, 
under  even  the  exceedingly  broad  shield  of  the  Custom  of  the  Country. 
But  it  may  be  that  the  moral  standard,  to  adopt  the  favourite  phrase, 
is  a  little  lowered  in  them,  the  moral  currency  a  little  debased. 
Indeed,  this  is  almost  implied  in  the  fact  that  they  were,  and  long 
continued  to  be,  the  most  popular  of  all  English  dramatists,  their 
plays  not  merely  surviving  the  Restoration  and  its  change  of  taste, 
but  even  the  reaction  from  that  change  itself,  and  holding  the  stage 
all  through  the  eighteenth  century,  and  well  into  the  nineteenth. 
This,    while   a   testimony  to   their   stage-craft    on  one    side,   and    on 

1 A  brief  reasoned  catalogue  of  the  whole  will  be  found  in  my  Elizabethan  Lit- 
erature, pp.  258-266. 


CHAP.  II       SHAKESPEARE'S   CONTEMPORARIES   IN  DRAMA       339 


another  to  a  certain  kind  of  nature,  is  on  another  also  evidence  of  a 
certain  vulgarity  —  though  not  in  the  worst  sense  of  the  word. 

At  the  same  time,  their  merits  are  exceedingly  great.  The 
wonderful  copiousness,  variety,  and,  with  inevitable  inequality, 
freedom  from  failure,  of  this  vast  collection  of  plays  must  strike  every 
reader.     In    one    point,  —  a   delightful    feature    common, 

,  ,  ..  1  1*11  And  merits. 

though  not  universal,  at  the  time,  —  the  songs  which  they 
contain,  they  not  seldom  come  near  Shakespeare  in  quality,  while  in 
this  particular  respect  they  exceed  him  in  quantity  and  variety. 
Indeed,  it  is  not  quite  certain  whether  one  of  the  most  exquisite  ^  of 
this  entire  section  of  literature  is  Shakespeare's  or  theirs.  They 
brought  on  the  stage  a  crew  of  harum-scarum,  but  not  ungenerous 
young  men ;  of  lively,  merry,  but  not  unmaidenly  or  unladylike  girls ; 
who  are  very  natural  and  agreeable  people  to  keep  stage  company 
with.  As  distinguished  from  the  merely  chaotic  construction  of  the 
earlier  drama,  and  the  correct  but  slightly  ponderous  and  elaborately 
geared  machinery  of  Jonson,  their  arrangement  of  plot  and  incident 
is  at  once  workmanlike  and  easy.  Nor,  though  it  would  be  impossible 
to  go  through  all  their  plays,  must  we  omit  more  particular  notice  of 
some. 

Perhaps  the  most  general  favourite  of  all,  certainly  that  which 
has  the  prettiest  passages,  and  which  gives  the  best  example  of  the 
authors'  peculiar  variety  of  romantic  play,  is  Philaster,  a  tragi- 
comedy which  turns  on  the  causeless  jealousy  of  the 
hero  and  the  faithfulness  of  his  love,  who,  in  the  pl^.^" 
di.sguise  of  the  page  Bellario,  follows  him.  The  situa- 
tion, which  was,  of  course,  much  favoured  by  the  practice,  universal 
before  the  closing  of  the  theatres,  of  committing  women's  parts  to 
boys,  took  the  public  fancy,  and  was  much  imitated ;  but  the  charm 
of  the  play  is  quite  independent  of  it,  and  though  far  more  unreal 
and  merely  literary  than  that  of  not  wholly  dissimilar  things  in  Shake- 
speare, is  perhaps,  in  its  special  and  lower  kind,  unique  in  English 
literature.  This  same  taint  or  hant-gout,  whichever  it  be  preferred 
to  call  it,  of  unreality,  and  morbid  or  hectic  sentiment,  appears  with 
a  more  tragic  cast,  but  with  not  less,  or  little  less,  of  its  own 
peculiar  success,  in  another  of  the  undoubted  joint  works.  The  MaicVs 
Tragedy.  The  authors  have  here  appealed  to  some  of  the  most 
affecting,  thougli  not  the  most  simply  or  naturally  affecting,  motives 
that  the  playwright  can  bring  into  action  —  the  conflict  of  friendship 
between  Melantius  and  Amintor.  tlie  strain  on  tlie  former's  loyalty 
when  his  sovereign's  mistress  (not  even  a  cast  mistress)  Evadne  is 
put  off  on  him,  and  the  anguished  innocence  of  Aspatia.  The 
pathos,  and  even  in  a  sense  the  power,  of  the  working  out  of  these  is 
1 "  Roses,  their  sharp  spines  being  gone," 


340    LATER   ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE  bk.  vi 


assisted  by  very  many  passages  of  really  exquisite  poetry.  In  neither 
of  these  plays  is  there  much  pure  comedy,  but  in  A  King  and  no 
King  tliere  is  a  serious  part  and  a  comic  one,  both  good,  and  the 
latter  containing  the  fixmous  braggart  Bessus,  who  makes  up  the 
great  trinity  of  the  English  stage  in  this  kind  of  part  with  Parolles 
and  Robadil.  The  Scornful  Lady,  which  is  usually  attributed  to 
Fletcher  alone,  is  comic  merely,  and  not  only  supplies  comedy  of  a 
very  high  order,  but  had  an  immense  influence  on  following  genera- 
tions down  to,  and  perhaps  even  later  than,  Sheridan.  The  best 
pair  with  this  is  the  equally  famous  Hnvioroiis  Lieutenant,  which 
inclines  a  little  more  in  the  direction  of  farce.  Of  plays  approaching 
and  sometimes  reaching  the  first  class  there  must  be  mentioned 
among  the  comedies  Rule  a  Wife  and  Have  a  Wife,  with  its  famous 
character  of  the  '•  Copper  Captain "  ;  The  Little  French  Lawyer, 
Monsieur  Thomas,  The  Chances,  The  Wild  Goose  Chase,  and  that 
most  agreeable  burlesque  The  Knight  of  the  Burtiing  Pestle ;  among 
the  tragedies  The  False  One,  Valentinian,  Thierry  and  Theodoret,  and 
Boadicea,  each  of  which  has  one  or  more  characters,  and  many  more 
than  one  or  two  passages,  of  astonishing  merit.  The  Two  Noble 
Kinsmen  would  hardly  rank  very  high,  if  it  were  not  for  the  regular 
echo  of  Shakespearian  verse  which  here  and  there  meets  us ;  but  The 
Faithful  Shepherdess,  of  which  again  Fletcher  has  the  sole  credit,  is 
a  most  charming  production,  less  pathetic,  perhaps,  than  Jonson's  com- 
panion fragment  above  noted,  but  more  complete  and  not  less  sweet. 
And  .it  may  also  be  said  that  in  the  whole  half-century  and  more 
of  plays  there  is  hardly  one,  even  of  the  weakest,  where  examples  may 
not  be  found  not  merely  of  that  strange  "joint-stock  poetry,"  as 
Scott,  I  think,  once  well  described  it,  which  is  common  to  almost  the 
whole  Elizabethan  drama  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest,  but  of 
special  and  peculiar  music.  Again,  in  a  favourite  catchword  of  their 
own  day,  they  had  "wit  at  will."  On  the  merely  humorous  side  it 
was  almost  as  verbally  felicitous  as  that  of  Congreve,  and  far  more 
pbundant,  succulent,  and  various  in  its  application ;  on  the  critical 
side  it  comes  short  of  the  very  greatest  only  by  an  indefinite  quantity. 
For  the  greater  part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  until  very  lately,  they 
have  paid  by  a  certain  slighting  for  their  immense  and  enduring 
vogue  during  two  centuries  earlier.  But  with  all  their  drawbacks, 
all  the  slight  tokens  of  "  decadence  "  in  them,  they  must  be  ranked 
so  high  that  none  except  der  Finzige  can  be  put  above  them. 

Of  the  personal  history  of  those  writers  who  will  occupy  the  rest 
of  this  chapter  almost  incredibly  little  is  known,  the  amount  in  some 
cases  extending  not  much  beyond  the  bare  name,  without  any  certain 
dates,  and  with  not  much  certainty  of  authorship,  while  in  hardly  any 
case  does  it  extend  beyond  the  barest  outline  of  a  life.     George  Chap- 


CHAP.  II       SHAKESPEARE'S   CON  TEMPORARIES   IN   DRAMA      341 


man  was  probably  born  at  or  near  Hitchin  in  or  about  1558,  became 
a  member   of  the   University  of  Oxford   in    1574,  was   known   as   a 
dramatist    soon   after   tlie   beginning   of  the   last   decade 
of    the    century,    was    a    good   friend    of    Jonson's,    with    pH^smSy 
whom   and   Marston   he   got   into  trouble   in    161 3  for  a    jj.°^^°^|';^[^ 
supposed    insult    to    the    Scotch    in    Eastward  Ho,   was 
patronised   by  Prince    Henry  and   by   James's   favourite   Carr,   wrote 
plays,  poems,  and  translations  for  many  years,  and  died  in  or  about 
1634.      John  Marston  (birth-date  unknown,  but  of  a  good  family  in 
the    Midlands)   was  educated   at  Coventry  School  and  at  Brasenose 
College,  wrote  poems  and  satires  before  the  beginning  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  and  plays  after  it,  was  beaten  by  Jonson,  and  had  his 
pistol  taken  from  him  (Ben  teste),  took  orders  late,  became  vicar  of 
Christchurch,  and  died  in  the  same  year  with  Chapman.     Of  Thomas 
Dekker  we  know  no  date,  no  fact,  no  anecdote,  nothing  at  all,  exxept 
that  by  his  own  statement  in  1637  he  was  threescore  or  thereabouts. 
John  Webster  is  in  similar  case,  it  being  merely  a  guess  that  he  was, 
as  some  one  of  his  name  certainly  was,  parish  clerk  of  St.  Andrew's, 
Holborn.     Of  Thomas  Middleton  we  know  a  little  more,  which,  how- 
ever, includes    neither   the   certain    date    nor   the   place  of  his   birth 
(London  and  1570  appear  probable)  nor  his  education.      He   began 
to  write  paraphrases  and  satires  before  1600,  passed  like  others  into 
play  writing,  was  chronographer  to  the  City  of  London  in  1620,  and 
in  1623  imprisoned  for  the  attack  on  Gondomar  in  his  Came  of  Chess. 
He    died    at    Newington    Butts,    in    1627,   and   left   a   widow   named 
Magdalen.     Of  Hey  wood,  another  Thomas,  we  know  little  or  nothing, 
save  that  he  came  from  Lincolnshire  and  was  a  fellow  of  Peterhouse, 
Cambridge.     Of  John  Day,  little  save  that  he  was  a  member  of  Gon- 
ville  and  Caius  College,  in  the  same  University.     Of  Cyril  Tourneur 
literally  nothing  at  all. 

Fortunately,  however,  if  we  know  little  about  the  men,  which  is  a 
matter  of  slight  consequence,  or  none  at  all,  to  literature,  we  know  a 
good  deal  about   the  works,  which  are  of  the  highest  consequence. 
Much    is   no   doubt   lost,   very   few    MS.    dramas    having     c;,in-,ciency 
escaped   the   rough  usage  in  the  original  stage,  the  care-       of  their 
lessness  of  the  fifty  years  or  more  when  such  things  were 
regarded   as  rubbish,  and  the  ixisitive  destruction  which  occurred  in 
at   least   one    nntorious    case   (that   of  the    herald   Warburton,  whose 
cook  used  up  old  plays  for  household  puri)oses).  and  beyond  all  ques- 
tion in  scores  of  unrecorded   ones.      Even   of  those   wliich  got  into 
print    there    has    been    loss.       But  nevertheless  there  is  no  author  of 
Klizabcthan  drama  whom  there  is  any  reason  to  believe  to  have  been 
really  remarkable,  and   of  whom   we    have   not   more   or   less  ample 
remains.     The  actual  amount  varies  from  tlie  two  dramas  of  Tourneur 


342   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE   BK.  vi 

to  the  two  or  three  dozen  —  remnants  of  between  two  and  three 
hundred  — of  Heywood.  And  while  we  have  thus  sufficient  material 
for  discerning  the  idiosyncrasies  of  individuals,  the  total  mass  of 
matter  is  so  great  and  so  varied  that  we  are  very  unlikely  indeed  to 
miss  specimens  of  any  general  kind. 

The   dramatic  work  of  Chapman, ^   almost  first   made  and  almost 
latest  left  of  all  the  knights  of  this  Round  Table,  includes  no  single 
play  of  very  commanding   excellence,  and   is   distinguished,  even   in 
this  period,  for  want  of  finish.     But  in  individual  passages 
Chapman.     .^  g^ows  the  same  great  though  insufficiently  co-ordinated 
and  organised  power  which  animates  his  poems  and  translations,  and 
it  includes   one  of  those  interesting  series  of  mainly  chronicle  plays 
which  form  one  of  the  most  remarkable  features  of  the  whole  subject. 
Bussy  iVAmbois,  The  Revenge  of  Bussy  iVAinbois,  ByroiCs  Cotispiracy, 
The  Tragedy  of  Charles,  Dtike  of  Byron,  and  The  Tragedy  of  Philip 
Chabot,  Admiral  of  France,  all  dealing  with  the  nearly  contemporary 
history  of  a  neighbouring   country,  show,  when   regarded   from   one 
point  of  view,  how  the  drama  was    striving   to   do    the   part  of  the 
uninvented  newspaper  and  the  still   rudimentary  novel.      They  even 
give  the  latest  instances  of  the  early  "  Titanic "  style  of  Elizabethan 
drama.     Chapman  was  connected  in  more  than  one  literary  way  with 
Marlowe,  whose  Hero  and  Leander  he  finished ;    and  while  his  best 
tragic  passages  preserve  not  a  little  of  the  "  thunder-smoke "  of  his 
great   predecessor,  it   is    noteworthy    that,    by  the   confession   of  the 
greatest  writer  of  the  next  age,  they  had  considerable  influence   on 
what  we  unkindly  call  the  rant  of  Dryden's  own  heroic  drama.     Good 
examples  of  Chapman's   tragic   power  are   almost   confined  to  these 
plays,  the  later  tragedies  of  Ccesar  and  Pojnpey,  Alphonsjis  Emperor 
of  Germany,  and  Reve7ige  for  Hottotir  being  unworthy  of  their  author, 
if  indeed  the  two  last  be  his  at  all.     But  in  the  Blind  Beggar  of 
Alexandria,   An    Humorous    Day^s   Mirth,    The    Gentle7na7i    Usher, 
Monsieur  d'Olive  (a  kind  of  farcical  offshoot  of  the  French   history 
series),  The  Widow's  Tears,  and,  above  all.  All  Fools  and  May  Day, 
Chapman  shows  very  satisfactory  comic  power.      These  plays,  with 
Eastward  Ho,  in  which,  it    must   be   remembered,  he   collaborated, 
place  him  high  in  the  exposition  of  a  kind  of  comedy  less  compact  of 
mere  humours  than  Jonson's,  and  if  less  airily  gay  than    Fletcher's, 
and  less  saturated  with   poetry  than  Shakespeare's,  yet  exceeding  in 
these  various  qualities  the  work  of  most  other  men. 

There  is  little  gaiety  —  less  than  in  Jonson  himself —  in  the  third 
shareholder  in  Eastward  Ho  and  its  misfortunes.      Marston  ^  began 

1  Works,  ed.   R.    H.    Shepherd,    with    Essay    by    Mr.    Swinburne,   3    vols. 
London,  1875. 

2  Ed.  Halliwell,  3  vols.  London,  1856;  ed.  Bullen,  3  vols.  London,  1887. 


CHAP.  II       SHAKESPEARE'S   CONTEMPORARIES   IN   DRAMA      343 

as  a  satirist ;  and  botli  the  deliberate  misanthropy  of  thought  and  the 
not  always  well  carried-off  extravagance  of  expression  which  mark  his 
satires  distinguish  his  plays  pretty  nearly  throughout. 
The  two  parts  of  Antotiio  and  Mellida  might,  for  the 
sanguinary  inconsequence  of  the  plot  and  the  high-strung  and  hectoring 
tone  of  the  language,  have  been  written  some  dozen  or  sixteen  years 
earlier  than  they  actually  were.  There  is  good  poetry  in  the  play, 
but  hardly  good  drama.  The  subject  of  Soplionisba,  which  was 
particularly  tempting  to  the  more  melodramatic  dramatists  of  the 
seventeenth  century  in  several  countries,  naturally  did  not  tame 
Marston's  disposition  to  horrors  in  incident  and  rant  in  language; 
but  it  kept  him  more  to  the  point,  and  permitted  fewer  alarums  and 
excursions.  His  masterpiece,  however,  must  be  sought  either  in 
What  You  Will,  a  comedy  which  could  not  be  a  more  complete 
contrast  to  Shakespeare's  play  of  the  name,  but  which  had  distinct 
merits,  or  else  in  The  Malcontent,  a  satirical  play  of  the  same  stamp 
as  Jonson's,  Moliere's,  and  Wycherley's,  representing  an  honest 
misanthrope.  Parasitaster  and  The  Dutch  Courtesan  are  inferior; 
while  if  The  Insatiate  Countess  be  his,  it  most  certainly  does  not  do 
him  much  credit.  It  was  Marston's  great  misfortune  that  to  a  decided 
want  of  range  he  joined  an  intensity  which  is  not  itself  entirely  free 
from  suspicions  of  affectation.  His  readers  not  only,  like  Lamb  with 
Hazlitt,  "  wish  he  would  not  quarrel  with  the  world  at  the  rate  he 
does,"  but  sometimes  doubt  whether  Marston  really  thought  so  badly 
of  human  nature  as  he  seems  to  do.  Nevertheless,  he  is  by  no  means 
destitute  of  the  towering  strain  of  his  predecessors  and  earlier  con- 
temporaries, and  his  gloomy  rhetoric  not  very  seldom  becomes  real 
eloquence. 

No  greater  contrast  of  tone  and  temper  could  be  imagined  than 
that  which  is  actually  presented  in  the  works  of  Marston  and  in  those 
of  his  colleague  in  the  unknown  proceedings  which  drew  down  on 
both  the  wrath  of  Ben  Jonson.     Nor,  looking  at  Dekker^ 

.  Dekker 

from  another  point  of  view,  does  any  writer  of  the  time 
illustrate  more  strikingly  that  other  contrast  which  has  been  referred 
to,  the  contrast  between  the  abundant  literary  and  the  almost  non- 
existent biographical  documents  about  these  men.  Of  Dekker  the 
man,  we  know,  as  has  been  said,  as  nearly  as  possible  nothing ;  from 
Dekker  the  writer,  we  have  not  only  an  abundant  body  of  prose  work 
which  will  be  noticed  below,  but  a  plentiful  collection  of  plays,  some- 
times written  in  conjunction  with  other  men,  but  often  enough  inde- 
pendent. Moreover,  it  so  happens,  and  luckily,  that  by  putting 
together   this    last    work,    his    work    in    collaboration,    and    the    work 

1  Plays  (ed.  R.  H.  Sliepherd?),  4  vols.  London,  1873;  Prose,  cd.  Grosart, 
5  vols,  piivakrly  printed,  1884. 


344  LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE  bk.  vi 

either  alone  or  with  others  of  his  collaborators,  we  can  obtain  an  idea 
of  his  own  literary  temper  and  genius  which  is  almost  logically 
demonstrable.  There  is  no  evidence  that  he  had  any  connection 
with  the  Universities,  with  the  Inns  of  Court,  or  with  any  learned 
profession,  or,  as  commonly  reputed,  respectable  means  of  livelihood. 
He  seems  to  have  been  simply  a  working  dramatist  and  man  of 
letters,  an  inhabitant  of  the  earlier  and  more  romantic,  but  not  more 
fortunate,  Grub  Street.  For  some  forty  years  he  appears  to  have 
written  plays  and  pamphlets,  the  direct  ancestors  and  representatives 
of  the  novels  and  the  newspapers  by  which  his  kind  live,  sometimes 
in  splendour,  often  in  decent  comfort,  to-day.  It  is  certain  that 
Dekker  did  not  live  in  splendour,  and  probable  that  he  did  not  often 
live  in  comfort.  But  he  displays  in  his  prose  works  great  talent  for 
observation  and  descriptive  narration,  and  in  his  plays  a  most 
charming  dramatic  genius,  a  little,  as  is  the  wont  of  the  time,  chaotic 
and  irregular,  but  sweet  and  pathetic,  as  is  no  contemporary  save  the 
master  of  all,  especially  in  the  delineation  of  women's  characters, 
while  he  has  both  blank  verse  and  lyric  touches  and  flashes,  not 
seldom  well  sustained,  of  divinest  poetry.  In  the  plays  that  are 
attributed  to  him  in  part  or  ascribed  to  him  by  guess,  such  as  the 
Virgin  Martyr,  which  appears  in  Massinger's  works,  and  the  Witch 
of  Edmonton,  these  characteristics  are  seen ;  but  they  are  more 
eminently  visible  in  his  own  undoubted  plays.  The  Shoe/naker's  Holi- 
day, Patient  Grissil,  Satiro7nastix,  Old  Fortnnatiis,  and  The  Honest 
Whore.  It  is  sufficient  proof  of  Dekkefs  power  in  this  way  that  in 
The  Shoe7naker''s  Holiday  and  Satironiastix  neither  the  clumsy  com- 
posite device  then  in  favour,  of  blending  or  rather  strapping  together 
(for  there  is  practically  no  blend)  a  serious  and  a  comic  plot,  in  both, 
nor  in  the  latter,  the  desire  to  hit  back  at  Jonson  for  his  attack  in  The 
Poetaster,  prevents  the  display  of  it.  Old  Fortunatus,  the  well-known 
story  of  the  wishing-cap  and  other  gifts,  is  his  chief  exploit  in  purely 
romantic  and  fanciful  drama,  and  though  chaotic  beyond  even  his 
wont,  has  wonderful  force  and  fancy.  Patient  Grissil  and  The 
Honest  Whore  —  the  former  based,  of  course,  on  Boccaccio,  the  latter 
taking  for  heroine  a  woman  who  has  lost  her  reputation,  but  retrieves 
it  by  her  patience,  constancy,  and  inviolable  purity  after  marriage  — 
are  the  great  texts  for  Dekker's  dealing  with  the  characters  of  women, 
and  the  latter  shows  a  felicity  of  conception  and  power  of  execution 
of  which  the  very  greatest  dramatists  might  be  proud.  Nor  does 
Dekker  rank  much  below  Shakespeare  or  Fletcher  for  his  lyrics,  the 
best  of  which,  "  Cold's  the  wind  and  wet's  the  rain,"  "  Fortune's 
smiles  cry  Holiday ! "  "  Art  thou  poor,  yet  hast  thou  golden 
slumbers,"  "  Cast  away  care,"  and  others,  are  better  known  than  the 
plays  containing  them. 


CHAP.  II       SHAKESPEARE'S   CONTEMPORARIES   IN   DRAMA       345 


Middleton,  confining  himself,  or  nearly  so,  to  drama,  was  even  a 
more  voluminous  playwright   than   Dekker,  at   least    so  far  as  extant 
pieces   are    concerned,   his   works   extending   in   the   best     j^jj^jj^^^^ 
edition  to  eight  volumes. ^     About  half  a  score  of  these  are 
examples  of  those  dramas  of  manners  of  which,  as  has  been  said,  the 
Elizabethan  dramatists  other  than  Shakespeare  have  left  us  so  many. 
No  one  of  these  -  is  very  much  above  or  very  much  below  the  others ; 
indeed,  Middleton,  while  rather   rarely  reaching   or   approaching   the 
highest  rank,  seldom  drops  so  low  as  most  of  his  fellows  occasionally 
do.     Yet  he  was  capable    of  much    better  work    than   this  journalist 
drama,  as  it  may  be  called,  and  he  showed  it  in  nearly  as  many  more 
plays    written   chiefly   in   collaboration  with    Dekker   or   Rowley,  but 
distinguished  very  remarkably  from  their  independent  work.     At  the 
head   of  these   stands   the   great   play  of  The    Changelings   where,  as 
indeed  usually  in  these  mixed  plays,  the  comic  part  is  nearly  worth- 
less,  while   the   tragic    contains,   in   the    characters   of    the   heroine, 
Beatrice-Joanna  and  her  —  he  can  hardly  be  called  lover  —  but  first  tool 
and  then  tyrant,  the  bravo  De  Flores,  some  of  the  greatest  things  out 
of  Shakespeare.      So,   too,    The  Mayor  of  Queenbo rough,  comically 
despicable,    or  at    least    commonplace,   takes    for   the    tragic   subject 
Vortiger's  passion  for  Rowena,  and   determination   to   get  rid  of  his 
wife   Castiza,   and   treats   it   with  the   same  intensity   and   nearly  the 
sanne   wonderful   projection   of  character.       Women   beware   IVomen, 
sometimes  spoken  of  as  his  masterpiece,  is  a  tragedy  more  domestic 
in  type  than  those,  and  less  lurid,  but   almost   equally,  though  more 
quietly,  intense ;  and  The  Witch  has  interest  besides  the  remarkable 
problem  of  its   relation   to   Macbeth.     A  Fair  Quarrel  has   received 
very  high    praise   from   some,  but    seems    to   others    distinctly  below 
these.     But  the  political  attractions  of  A  Game  of  Chess  are  not  its 
only   ones ;    and    The   Spanish    Gipsy  is   a   romantic   comedy   which 
deserves   to   stand    not    too    far    below   As   Vou   Like   It,   Middleton 
having  for  once  transcended  mere  manners  and  humours,  shaken  off 
the  atmosphere  of  Fleet  Street  and  Duke  Humphrey's  tomb,  avoided 
the  way  of  extravagant  tragedy,  and  hit  upon  that  —  less  trodden  but 
almost  certain  to  lead  the  due   feet  to  success  —  of  romance  crossed 
with  or  expressed  in  drama. 

In  the  voluminous  work  of  Heywood,  the  "  prose  Shakespeare  "  of 
Lamb  (a  phrase  which  has  been  a  good  deal  misunderstood),  there 
are  less  definite  and  eminent  qualities  than  in  that  of  almost  any 
man   yet   mentioned   in    this   chapter.     He   wrote   much  else   besides 

1  Ed.  BuUen,  8  vols.  London,  1885. 

2  Blurt,  Master  Constable,  Michaelmas  Term,  A  Trick  to  Catch  the  Old  One, 
The  /■'amity  of  Love,  A  Mad  World,  tny  Masters,  A  Chaste  Maid  in  Cheapside, 
Anything  for  a  Quiet  Life,  etc. 


346  LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE  bk.  vi 

plavs,  but  his  non-dramatic  worli  is  almost  entirely  forgotten,  and  of 

his'dramatic  it  can  hardly  be  said  that  more  than  one  piece,  the  famous 

A   Woman  Killed  with  Kindness,  survives  as  much  more 

Heywood.     ^^^^  ^   ^^^^^       -j>j^j^    j^^g    for   theme    the    difficult    and 

dangerous  subject  of  the  self-restraint,  and  —  though  not  tolerance  — 
charity  of  the  betrayed  husband  Frankford.  And  Heywood  has 
plucked  safety  and  success  from  danger  by  the  extreme  pathos  and 
tenderness  with  which  he  treats  a  rather  impossible  situation.  Else- 
where, though  never  quite  contemptible,  he  is  seldom  great.  His 
chronicle  plays  {Edward  IV.  and  The  Troubles  of  Queen  Elizabeth, 
each  in  two  parts)  exhibit  the  want  of  unity  which  is  the  drawback 
of  their  kind,  without  the  panoramic  and  historical-novel  effect  which 
can  be  got  out  of  them  by  those  who  know  how.  His  dramatisations 
of  the  Metamorphoses  and  other  such  things  show  a  continuance  of 
the  earlier  confusion  as  to  what  is  and  what  is  not  matter  for  drama, 
which  is  rare  after  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century;  while 
his  masques  and  pageants  entirely  lack  the  grace  and  fancy,  mixed 
with  learning,  which  save  spectacles  in  the  hands  of  Jonson.  He  is, 
however,  fairly  strong  in  the  comedy  of  London  manners  and  humours, 
and  very  strong  in  the  domestic  drama,  of  which  his  already 
mentioned  masterpiece  may  claim  to  be  our  chief  instance.  Nor  has 
he  small  command  of  another,  not  the  least  agreeable  of  the  sub- 
varieties  of  the  plays  of  the  time,  the  adventure-drama,  of  which  he 
has  left  us  some  remarkable  specimens. ^  He  is  not  a  great  master 
of  versification,  and  one  is  apt  to  be  more  convinced  of  the  "  prose  " 
than  of  the  "  Shakespeare  "  in  Lamb's  dictum.  Yet,  as  if  to  show  in  a 
single  instance  the  truth  well  put  in  Scott's  observation  quoted  above, 
some  of  the  very  finest  things  of  the  whole  body  are  his. 

In  all  respects  John  Webster  ^  is  the  direct  opposite  to  Heywood. 

The  work  attributed  to  him  is   fairly  voluminous,  and  we  know  that 

some,  perhaps  much,  is  lost ;  but  a  good  deal  both  of  the  extant  and 

non-extant  work   attributed   to   him    seems   to  have  been 

^  ^^"'  done  in  collaboration,  and  very  little  of  this,  as  we  now 
have  it,  is  worth  much.  But  two  very  great  plays,  Vittoria  Corombona, 
or  the  White  Devil,  and  the  Duchess  of  Malfy,  and  two  lesser  ones, 
the  DeviVs  Law  Case  and  Appiiis  and  Virginia,  are  ascribed  to  him, 
without  assertion  or  suggestion  of  any  helper.  Appins  and  Virginia 
is   a  classical   tragedy,  showing   neither   the   learning   and  dignity  of 

1  The  Fair  Maid  of  the  Exchange,  the  Fair  Maid  of  the  West,  The  English 
Traveller,  A  Challenge  for  Beauty,  Fortune  by  Land  and  Sea,  A  Royal  King 
and  Loyal  Subject,  may  represent  these  two  classes.  Indeed,  we  have  between 
twenty  and  thirty  plays  of  Heywood's  reprinted  (6  vols.  London,  1874),  and  his 
actual  production  (much  of  it,  no  doubt,  adaptation  only)  was  some  ten  times  as 
large. 

2  Ed.  Dyce,  i  vol.  London. 


CHAP.  II       SHAKESPEARE'S   CONTEMPORARIES   IN   DRAMA       347 

Jonson's  nor  the  universal  humanity  of  Shakespeare's  attempts  in 
this  style ;  and  the  DeviVs  Law  Case,  though  attractive  in  parts, 
has  a  treble  portion  of  the  chaotic  defect  of  the  time.  But  the  first 
pair  would  suffice  to  put  Webster  in  the  very  first  rank.  All  the  four, 
as  well  as  most  of  the  remaining  work  attributed  to  him,  and  the  titles 
of  some  that  are  lost,  imply  a  remarkable  tendency  to  gloom,  and  to 
supernatural  as  well  as  natural  terror  and  horror.  He  has  left  us,  in 
the  ''Address  to  the  Reader  "of  the  White  Devil,  a  curious  apprecia- 
tion of  the  seven  contemporary  dramatists,  whom  he  seems  to  have 
ranked  highest,  and  though  the  language  (especially  taken  with  his 
own  caveat)  must  not  be  strained  too  far,  yet  it  may  be  suspected  that 
his  classification  of  Shakespeare  with  Dekker  and  Heywood,  and  the 
particular  phrase^  he  selects  for  them,  may  have  something  to  do 
with  the  general,  though  not  universal,  cheerfulness  which  prevails  in 
all  three. 

Of  cheerfulness  Webster  himself  knows  nothing;  his  comedy, 
wherever  he  attempts  it,  is  a  forced  guffaw,  his  passion  of  love, 
though  powerful,  has  nothing  bright  or  ethereal  about  it,  but  shares 
the  luridness  of  his  other  motives ;  and  he  is  most  at 
home  in  the  horrors,  almost  unmitigated,  of  his  two  great  '^p'l^ys^'^'^' 
plays.  The  White  Devil  (printed  161 2)  is  founded  with 
extreme  closeness,  and  only  a  few  dramatic  and  nobler  embellish- 
ments, on  the  historical  story  of  Vittoria  Corombona  (or  rather 
Accoramboni),  which  may  be  found,  told  by  the  late  Mr.  T.  A. 
Trollope,  in  an  early  number  of  Dickens's  All  the  Year  Round.  The 
heroine  is  an  Italian  Helen,  whose  beauty  and  unscrupulousness 
bring  murder  and  crime  wherever  she  goes,  and  who  is  seconded  or 
egged  on  in  her  evil  deeds  by  her  brother  Flamineo,  a  ruffian  who, 
though  less  human  and  natural  than  lago,  De  Flores,  or  even 
Aaron,  in  Titus  Audronicus,  completes  the  quartette  brilliantly,  and 
so  stands  far  above  all  others.  The  action  is  so  extremely  compressed 
as  to  have  the  appearance  of  confusion,  but  it  is  in  reality  clear 
enough ;  and  many  of  the  separate  scenes  and  passages  have  a 
gloomy  intensity  of  passion  difficult  to  parallel  elsewhere,  except  in 
the  companion  play.  The  mad  scene  of  Cornelia,  Vittoria's  mother, 
with  her  dirge  over  her  son  Marcello,  murdered  by  his  brother 
Flamineo,  has  received  deserved  praise  from  all  for  its  wonderful 
"  eeriness " ;  but  perhaps  Vittoria's  own  words  after  she  has  been 
mortally  stabbed  — 

My  soul,  like  to  a  ship  in  a  dark  storm, 

Is  driven  I  know  not  whither, 

1 "  Right  happy  and  copious  industry."  He  had  assigned  a  "  full  and 
heightened  style  "to  Chapman,  "laboured  and  understanding  work"  to  Jonson, 
and  "  no  less  worthy  companions  "  to  Beaumont  and  Fletcher. 


348   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE  ek.  vl 

rank  even  higher  for  then-  attainment  of  the  greatest  poetical  effect 
with  the  simplest  language  and  the  least  out-of-the-way  imagery. 

The  Duchess  of  Malfy  (printed  1623),  the  story  of  which  was  no 
doubt  taken  from  that  usual  storehouse  of  the  Elizabethan  dramatist, 
Painter's  Palace  of  Pleasure,  is  of  less  concentrated  attraction.  The 
heroine  marries  her  steward,  and  is  persecuted  for  it  by  her  brothers. 
They  employ  an  instrument  named  Bosola,  a  second  but  weaker 
Flamineo,  who  plays  the  outspoken  misanthrope.  The  real  excellence 
of  the  play  is  almost  confined  to  the  fourth  act,  where  the  unhappy 
duchess  is  first  imprisoned  in  a  madhouse  by  her  brothers,  and  then 
murdered.  The  fifth,  at  the  end  of  which  everybody  kills  off  everybody 
else  —  the  husband,  the  brothers,  and  Bosola — is  no  improvement, 
and  shows  Webster's  lack  of  dramatic  tact.  But  he  had  a  great 
though  confused  imagination,  and  a  wonderful  power  of  phrase. 

The  work  of  John  Day  ^  is  a  good  example  of  the  "  intricate 
impeach "  of  these  plays  and  playwrights  generally.  His  life  would 
appear  to  have  extended  practically  over  the  whole  of  the  dramatic 
period  (1580- 1640),  and  from  record  it  would  seem  that 
^'  in  five  of  these  years  only  (i  598-1603)  he  collaborated 
in  twenty-one  plays,  of  which  only  the  odd  one,  the  Blind  Beggar 
of  Bethnal  Green,  survives  in  accessible  form.  Besides  these  he 
wrote  with  others  and  alone  in  later  years,  Law  Tricks,  the  Travels 
of  Three  Brothers  (the  Shirleys),  The  Isle  of  Gulls,  Humour  out  of 
Breath,  and  his  most  famous  work,  the  Parliament  of  Bees.  Most, 
if  not  all,  of  these  seem  to  have  been  produced  in  a  space  not 
longer  than  that  taken  by  the  earlier  and  mostly  unknown  batch. 
They  display,  however,  or  most  of  them  do,  a  certain  character  which 
is  distinct  from  that  of  most  of  the  plays  of  the  period,  and  comes 
nearest  to  Lyly's  —  that  is  to  say,  the  presentation  in  dramatic  form 
of  a  series  of  scenes  or  tableaux  embodying  a  more  or  less  fan- 
tastic satire  of  the  ethical  kind,  rather  than  a  definite  play-story. 
This  is  especially  noticeable  in  the  Parliament  of  Bees,  by  which 
indeed,  except  to  more  or  less  thorough-going  students.  Day  may  be 
sufficiently  known.  For  the  last  thirty  years  of  his  presumed  life  he 
appears  to  have  written  httle  or  nothing ;  and  indeed  he  would  seem 
altogether  to  have  been  one  of  those  men  who  were  rather  hatched 
and  coaxed  into  production  by  the  prevailing  heat  and  inspiration  of 
the  time  than  driven  to  it  by  necessity  of  their  own  talent.  A  gay 
and  graceful  spirit  of  fantastic  allegory  is  his  chief  note. 

Nothing  that  is  gay  and  little  that  is  graceful  appears  in  the  two 
grim  plays  of  Cyril  Tourneur,-  though  allegory  had  hold  on  him  also, 
as  is  seen  in  his  non-dramatic  piece,  the  Transformed  Metamorphosis. 

J  Ed.  Bullen,  privately  printed,  1881. 

2  Ed.  Churton  Collins,  2  vols.  London,  1878. 


CHAP.  11       SHAKESPEARE'S    CONTEMPORARIES   IN   DRAMA       349 

The  Atheisfs  Tragedy  and  the  Revenger's  Tragedy  are  the  extremes 
of  the  kind  of  extravagant  horror-mongering  in  drama  which  Marlowe 
ahnost    dragged    to    success    in   the  Jew  of  Malta,   and     ^ 

J-Ourncur 

which  Shakespeare  tried  and  left  in  Titus  Andronicus. 
The  Revenger's  Tragedy  is  by  far  the  better  of  the  two,  having  a 
glimmering  of  plot  and  some  noble  though  austere  sketches  of 
character,  vk^ith  abundance  of  magnificent  though  gloomy  poetry. 
The  Atheisfs  Tragedy,  with  glimpses  of  the  patlietic,  and  the  strange 
bronze-medallion  stamps  of  line  here  and  there  which  these  horror- 
mongers  not  seldom  contrive  to  impress,  is  mere  chaos  and  night- 
mare, beside  which  the  Spanish  Tragedy  is  an  orderly  attempt  in 
serious  drama,  and  the  Insatiate  Countess  a  well-arranged  study  of 
manners. 

From  William  Rowley,  besides  a  very  large  amount  of  known  or 
probable  collaboration,  we  have  two  or  three  separate  plays,  such  as  A 
New  Wonder  and  A  Match  at  Midnight,^  which  are  very  far  from 
contemptible,  and  help  us  to  mark  off  and  appreciate  his 
work  with  others.  His  special  gift  would  appear  to  have 
been  the  arrangement  of  that  humours-and-manners  comedy  of  con- 
temporary London  which,  as  has  been  said,  played  such  a  large  part  in 
the  dramatic  works  of  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Of 
this  he  must  have  had  no  small  command,  for  though  his  comedy  is 
rather  rough,  and  his  construction  seldom  soars  above  a  kind  of 
rough-and-ready  stage-craft,  he  has  humour  and  po\ver  of  direct 
presentation.  If  any  one  will  take  one  of  his  plays  and  a  specimen 
from  even  the  more  commended  writers  of  the  next  century,  Mrs. 
Centlivre,  Gibber,  Mrs.  Cowley,  down  to  Foote  and  O'Keefe,  he  will 
begin  to  understand  why  the  ordinary  plays  of  the  seventeenth 
century  are  ranked  as  literature,  while  those  of  the  eighteenth  are  not. 

1  This  will  be  found  in   Hazlilt's  Dodsley.     A  separate  edition  of  Rowley  has 
long  been  expected  from  Mr.  Bullen. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  SCHOOLS  OF  JACOBEAN  POETRY 

Drayton  —  The  Polyolbion  —  Other  poems  —  Daniel  —  Sylvester  —  Sir  John  Davies 
—  Minor  poets  —  Chapman — Fairfax — Campion  —  The  Spenserians  :  minor 
poets  —  The  Fletchers  —  Giles — Phineas  —  W.  Browne  —  Wither  —  Basse  — 
The  lyrical  impulse  —  Jonson's  poems  —  Donne 

The  division  which  has  been  here  adopted,  striking  a  line  at  the 
death  of  Spenser,  and  starting  afresh  from  it,  enables  us  in  most 
respects  to  make  cleaner  work  than  if  the  death  of  Gloriana  had  been 
taken  instead  of  that  of  Colin.  We  have  behind  us,  and  still  freshly 
behind  us,  the  remarkable  school  of  the  sonneteers  —  occasionally  over- 
valued, but  more  often  and  more  likely  to  be  underestimated  — the 
quaint  batch  of  early  satirists,  a  group  artificial  and  transitory ;  and 
the  beginnings  of  the  historical  style  of  poetry.  We  have  befo»e  us 
three  well-marked  schools :  those  of  Spenser,  Jonson,  and  Donne ;  in 
two  cases  with  the  heads  of  them  living  and  exercising  personal 
influence,  in  the  third  with  the  leader  dead  but  none  the  less  living 
in  his  work. 

We  have,  however,  two  remarkable  writers  in  the  strictly  poetical 
way  to  deal  with  —  one  of  them  hardly  a  dramatist  (so  far  as  extant 
work  goes)  or  prose-writer,  though  a  very  voluminous  poet ;  the 
other  the  author  both  of  prose  and  of  plays,  but  a  poet  chiefly  — 
who  began  to  write  some  decade  before  Spenser's  death.  Of  these, 
one  lived  till  six  years  before  the  accession  of  Charles  I.,  the  other  till 
six  years  after  it.  Both  were  sonneteers ;  both  were  historical  poets ; 
but  both,  with  quite  admirable  touches  of  poetic  genius  now  and  then, 
and  an  almost  too  plentiful  vein,  lacked  at  once  the  initiative  and 
the  perfecting  wit  of  Spenser.  These  were  Michael  Drayton  and 
Samuel  Daniel. 

All  former  accounts  of  Drayton's  life  have  been  antiquated  by 
Mr.  Oliver  Elton's  capital   monograph  for  the  Spenser  Society,^  yet 

1  Privately  printed.  There  is  no  complete  edition  of  Drayton,  but  Chalmers 
has  nearly  the  whole. 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   SCHOOLS   OF  JACOBEAN   POETRY  351 

even  now  it  cannot  be  said  that  we  know  very  much  about  him.  He 
came,  like  Shakespeare,  from  Warwickshire,  and  if  not  of  gentle 
birth  himself,  was  from  the  first  attached  in  the  honour- 
able fashion  of  service  to  gentle  houses,  and  seems  to  "y'°"- 
have  had  some  employment  at  court.  His  life  nearly  covered  the 
full  seventy  years,  for  he  was  born  about  1563  and  died  in  163 1. 
He  seems  to  have  had  no  permanent  connection  with  the  stage,i 
but  he  fell  early  into  the  custom  of  sonneteering,  his  Idea  (1594) 
being  very  probably  addressed  to  the  daughter  of  the  house  which 
protected  him.  The  notices  that  we  have  give  the  notion  of  a  man 
of  masterful  and  not  very  obliging  temper,  who  perhaps  did  not  reach 
the  rank  or  position  which  he  thought  his  due,  and  was  unwilling  to 
be  hail-fellow-well-met  with  mere  pot-companions.  Yet  he  seems  to 
have  been  widely  known,  and  to  have  excited,  if  no  vehement  friend- 
ships, yet  no  sharp  dislike. 

His  poetical  production  is  extremely  voluminous ;  in  fact,  it  is 
probably  the  largest  that  we  have  from  any  non-dramatic  poet  of  real 
merit  during  the  period.  Its  largest  and  most  famous  single  item, 
the  Polyolbion  (1613-22)  was  not  early  —  it  could,  in- 
deed, hardly  be  so,  for  the  idea  of  compiling  a  poetical  pohoWion 
gazetteer  of  the  whole  of  England  would  be  unlikely  to 
occur  to  a  very  young  poet,  and  could  not  possibly,  in  the  dearth  of 
books  on  the  subject,  have  been  carried  out  by  any  one  who  had  not 
had  many  years  to  observe  and  amass  materials.  It  has  long  been, 
and  probably  will  ever  hereafter  be,  little  read  ;  but  those  who  read 
it  doubt  whether  to  reprobate  the  choice  of  poetic  form  (the  Alex- 
andrine with  middle  caesura)  for  such  a  subject,  or  to  admire  the 
extraordinary  resolution,  resource,  and,  on  the  whole,  success  with 
which  the  work  is  carried  out.  It  leaves,  moreover,  a  considerable 
balance  of  work  to  Drayton's  credit,  a  little  of  which  is  actually 
familiar  to  the  choicer  memories,  while  much  deserves  to  be  so.  The 
sonnets,  with  the  famous  one  — 

Since  there's  no  help,  come  let  us  kiss  and  part, 

which  does  not  appear  in  all  editions,  and  the  authorship  of  which 
has  been  disputed;  The  SJiepherd's  Garland  (1593)1  which  was  also 
addressed   to   "  Idea,"  and  in  fact  preceded  the   sonnets,  as  did  the 

1  It  was,  however,  busy  while  it  lasted,  during,  as  it  seems,  the  last  five  years 
of  the  Queen,  when  Dr.-iyton  was  one  of  Henslowe's  hacks,  botching  up,  generally 
in  collaboration,  nearly  a  score  of  plays,  almost  all  lost.  William  Loiii^sword 
,  (price  ^6,  of  which  we  have  his  receipt  to  Henslowe  for  forty  shillings'  advance) 
is  the  only  one  mentioned  as  his  sole  work.  He  had  a  fourth  share  in  the  pseudo- 
Shakespearian  Sir  yohn  Oldcastle,  the  only  certain  play-work  of  his  which  sur- 
vives. The  attribution  to  him  of  the  much  better  Merry  Devil  of  Edmonton  is 
only  guess. 


352   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JA^BEAN  LTrERATURE   bk.  vi 

sacred  poem  of  The  Har7nony  of  the  Chirch  (1591);  Mortimeriados, 
which  he  issued  in  two  forms  and  under  two  names,  once  in  1596  with 
the  title  just  given,  and  once  in  1603  as  The  Barons^ 
Other  poems,  ^y^^^.^  .  ^^^^  EnglaniVs  Heroical  Epistles  (1597),  a  batch 
of  extremely  vigorous  historical  pieces  in  miniature,  —  all  came  before 
the  period  at  which,  strictly  speaking,  we  begin  in  this  chapter.  But 
Drayton  did  very  much  else  besides  these  and  the  Polyolbion,  being 
evidently  much  attracted  to  history.  He  wrote  two  poems  on  Agin- 
court.  the  one  a  slightly  heavy  narrative  of  length  in  ottava  rima, 
the  other  the  famous  ballad  beginning  — 

Fair  stood  the  wind  for  France, 

the  excellence  of  which  in  itself,  and  its  importance  as  a  pattern,  have 
long  been  recognised.  The  Barons^  Wars,  the  expanded  form  of  the 
Mortimeriad,  extends  to  six  books.  The  Heroical  Epistles  deal  in 
couplets  with  passages  of  English  story  that  give  romantic  persons 
such  as  Fair  Rosamond,  Matilda  FitzWater,  Queen  Isabel  and  Mor- 
timer, Queen  Margaret  and  Suffolk,  etc.  etc.,  together  with  Surrey 
and  Geraldine  (a  proof  how  Nash's  fiction  had  taken  hold)  in  pairs 
of  epistles  on  the  Ovidian  model.  The  Miseries  of  Queen  Mar- 
garet is  an  independent  poem  in  octaves,  and  in  the  same  metre 
Drayton  executed  four  other  historical  legends  on  Robert  Curthose, 
the  above-mentioned  Matilda,  Gaveston,  and  Thomas  Cromwell.  Of 
a  different  kind  are  Nyt/iphidia,  the  most  elaborate  fairy  poem  in  the 
language ;  The  Mooncalf  an  odd  political  and  social  satire  in  coup- 
lets ;  The  Owl,  a  long  bird-fable ;  and  The  Man  in  the  Moon,  a 
version  of  the  Endymion  story.  Besides  these  Drayton  has  left  a 
collection  of  odes  in  divers  metres  and  some  pastorals ;  The  Muses'' 
Elysium  (this  appeared  in  1630,  just  before  his  death;  he  had  col- 
lected many  of  the  others  in  a  volume  three  years  before)  in  ten 
*'  Nymphals,"  and  some  odd  versifyings  of  the  stories  of  Noah,  Moses, 
and  David.  He  can  be  sometimes  flat ;  but  few  English  poets  have 
grappled  with  a  larger  number  of  important  poetic  subjects  more 
vigorously  and  with  happier  touches  at  times. 

The  shorter  life  of  Samuel  Daniel,^  who  was  born  near  Taunton, 
in  1562,  was  mainly  passed  as  tutor,  "servant,"  or  friend  and  inmate 
of  divers  noble  families,  the  Cliffords,  Wriothesleys,  and  Herberts. 
He  received  education  at  Oxford,  and  was  Master  of 
the  Revels  and  Gentleman  of  the  Chamber  to  James  L, 
as  well  as  groom  thereof  to  his  queen.  His  Delia  and  his  Sen- 
ecan   plays  have   been  already  noticed.      Besides  them  he  wrote  in 

1  Poems  in  Chalmers;  complete  works  in  a  very  handsome  edition  by  Dr. 
Grosart  (5  vols,  privately  printed,  1885-96). 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   SCHOOLS   OF  JACOBEAN   POETRY  353 

prose  the  also  noticed  Defence  of  Rhyme,  and  a  considerable  History 
of  Efigland  (161 2-17).  In  verse  he  produced  the  History  of  the 
Civil  IVars  of  York  and  Lancaster  (1595-1609),  in  seven  books  of 
octaves ;  a  Funeral  Poem  in  couplets  on  the  Earl  of  Devonshire ;  a 
Panegyric  Congratulation  to  James  ;  verse-addresses  to  Lord  Henry 
Howard,  to  the  Countess  of  Cumberland,  to  the  Countess  of  Bedford, 
to  his  pupil  Lady  Anne  Clifford,  afterwards  a  countess,  to  Lord  South- 
ampton ;  Musophiliis,  a  verse-defence  of  learning ;  some  minor 
poems ;  and  The  Complaint  of  Rosamond,  in  rhyme-royal,  the  best  of 
his  narrative  work.^  Daniel  is  less  unequal  than  Drayton,  less  given 
to  merely  prosaic  statements  of  fact,  and  possessed  of  a  command  of 
high  ethical  reflection  which  inevitably  reminds  us  of  Wordsworth, 
and  of  hardly  any  one  else.  But  he  is  apt  to  be  dull ;  his  lyrical 
power,  though  shown  to  great  advantage  in  the  choruses  of  his  plays, 
in  his  masque  Hyinen''s  Triumph,  and  elsewhere,  does  not  often  pass 
into  vivid  or  inspired  verse  in  other  kinds,  and  he  almost  entirely 
lacks  Drayton's  occasional  fire,  as  well  as  his  almost  continuous 
sinewiness  —  the  faculty  which  enables  the  author  of  the  Polyolbion  to 
grapple  with  and  give  a  fair  account  of  almost  any  subject.  Daniel's 
meditativeness  is  apt  to  pass  into  languor,  and  except  when  he  trans- 
ports us,  which  is  not  very  often,  he  is  apt  to  send  us  to  sleep. 

An  almost  exact  contemporary  of  both  Drayton  and  Daniel  in 
point  of  birth,  and  of  one  of  them  in  death-date,  was  Joshua  Sylvester'^ 
(1563-1618).  Sylvester,  though  not  exactly  a  successful  man  (he 
seems  to  have  been  engaged  in  business,  and  died 
secretary  of  a  Company  of  Merchants  at  iMiddleburgh,  in  -^y^*^^"- 
Holland)  was  very  popular  in  his  own  day.  In  the  next  generation 
or  a  little  later  he  became  a  byword  for  "  conceit "  and  extrava- 
gance, and  later  again  was  totally  forgotten.  It  is  improbable  that 
he  will  ever  reacquire  any  considerable  number  of  readers,  for  his 
genius  was  in  no  sense  original ;  he  had  neither  the  sententious  weight 
and  occasional  grace  of  expression  of  Daniel,  nor  the  vigour  and 
frequent  force  of  Drayton  ;  and  his  chief  work,  a  version  of  the  Divine 
Semaiiie  of  the  great  French  Huguenot  poet,  Du  Bartas,  was  un- 
luckily not  suited  to  correct  eccentricities  of  taste  and  extravagance  of 
diction.  Besides  this  mighty  task,  which  extends  to  some  thirty 
thousand  verses  in  couplets,  he  translated  other  pieces  from  the  same 
and  other  writers  in  F" reach  and  Latin,  and  has  left  many  thousand 
lines  of  more  profuse  and  original  work,  usually  in  couplets  or 
quatrains,  but  sometimes  in  lyrical  metres.  Of  these  last  Sylvester 
has    no   effective    control;    he    has    neither   "cry"    nor  song  in   him. 

1  He   collected  his    poems   repeatedly  in  his  lifetime,  and  in  1623  the   wiiolc 
appeared. 

*  Ed.  Gros;irt,  2  vols,  privately  printed,  i88o. 
2A 


354   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN   LITERATURE   bk.  vi 

But  he  is  not  destitute  of  a  certain  kind  of  poetical  or  at  least  verse 
rhetoric,  which,  if  it  had  been  accompanied  by  a  somewhat  greater 
critical  sense,  might  have  ranked  him  higher  among  poets  than  he 
now  stands.  Such  eminent  oddities  as  the  much-ridiculed  one  about 
snow  "  periwigging  the  woods  "  are  not  so  fatal  as  the  flatness  which 
too  often  surrounds  them. 

A  very  much  better  poet  than  Sylvester  was  Sir  John  Davies,  ^ 
whose  business  as  a  lawyer  caused  him  to  abandon  poetry  in  James's 
reign,   but  whose   work,   though  all   of  it   probably  composed   under, 

and  some  of  it  actually  addressed  to,  Elizabeth,  is  of  the 
johnDavies    seventeenth    rather    than   the    sixteenth   century  in  tone. 

Davies  was  of  a  good  family  in  Wiltshire,  and  was  born 
about  1560,  went  first  to  Oxford  and  then  to  the  Temple.  He 
lived  for  some  considerable  time  in  his  University,  and  seems  to  have 
written  most  of  his  poems  there.  But  he  entered  Parliament  in  the 
last  years  of  Elizabeth,  was  much  favoured  by  James,  and  became 
Attorney-General  in  Ireland,  writing  during  his  long  residence  there 
one  of  the  most  valuable  books  of  the  time  on  the  country.  Then 
he  returned  home,  practised  at  the  Bar,  and  did  a  good  deal  of  work 
on  the  Bench,  though  he  was  never  regularly  made  a  judge,  and  died 
in  1626.  We  have  from  him  in  the  way  of  verse  Nosce  Teipsum 
(1599),  a  poem  on  the  Immortality  of  the  Soul,  in  quatrains,  which 
connects  itself  backwards  with  much  of  the  poetry  of  Spenser,  and 
forwards  with  the  philosophic  verse  of  More  and  Beaumont ;  a 
collection  of  acrostics  in  honour  of  Elizabeth,  entitled  Astrcea  (1599)  ; 
and  a  poem  of  Dancing  called  Orchestra  (1596).  All  three  may,  from 
their  general  description,  sound  uninteresting ;  all  three,  in  fact,  show 
both  the  extraordinarily  diffused  poetic  power  of  the  time  and  the 
large  share  of  it  which  had  fallen  to  this  author.  Nosce  Teipsum  is 
full  of  passages  finely  thought  and  expressed  in  a  stately  music ;  the 
hymns  of  Astrcsa,  the  initials  of  each  making  ''  Elizabetha  Regina," 
and  arranged  in  five-five-six  lined  stanzas  of  octosyllables,  full  or 
catalectic  rhymed,  aabab,  aabab,  aabaab,  have  a  grace  which 
is  beyond  artifice,  and  manage  their  frequent  double  rhymes 
with  singular  skill.  And  lastly  Orchestra,  which  is  a  whimsical 
praise  of  ordered  movement  of  all  kinds,  with  examples  from  history, 
cosmogony,  anatomy,  and  everything  else,  is  one  of  the  crowning 
instances  of  Elizabethan  power,  by  dint  of  sheer  poetry,  to  transform 
fantastic  conceit  into  matter  of  real  value.  Indeed,  little  known  as 
Davies  is,  except  to  students,  he  is  one  of  the  most  useful  poets  in 
English  to  show  how  very  little  the  subject  has  to  do  with  poetry. 

1  Poems  in  Chalmers ;  with  additions  in  Grosart,  3  vols.  Capell's  remarkable 
Prolusions  (1760),  the  first  attempt  to  edit  old  English  poetry  critically  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  contains  Nosce  Teipsum. 


CHAP,  in  THE  SCHOOLS   OF  JACOBEAN   POETRY  355 


Another  Sir  John,  Beaumont/  the  elder  brother  of  Fletcher's 
partner,  died  not  long  after  Davies,  but  was  a  much  younger  man, 
as   he  was  born   in    1582.      He  was,    like   his   brother,   a 

1       r      1         T  /-    /-  Minor  poets. 

member  of  Broadgates  Hall  and  of  the  Inns  of  Court, 
but  seems  to  have  lived  chiefly  at  home  in  Leicestershire.  His 
title  of  baronet  was  given  to  him  by  Charles  I .  only  two  years  before 
his  death  in  1628.  His  principal  work.  The  Crown  of  Thortis, 
a  sacred  piece  well  spoken  of  by  contemporaries,  seems  to  be 
strangely  lost ;  his  actual  remains  consist  of  Bosworth  Field,  a 
history  poem,  in  couplets,  not  of  the  first  merit,  some  translations 
from  the  Latin,  and  a  few  smaller  poems  on  which  his  fame  ought  to 
be  allowed  to  rest.  They  are  mainly  of  a  sacred  character,  with 
some  topographical  pieces,  complimentary  addresses,  and  the  like. 
We  can  but  name  here  for  the  second  time  the  voluminous  pam- 
phleteer in  verse  as  well  as  in  prose,  Nicholas  Breton^;  for  the  first 
the  writing-master  John  Davies  of  Hereford,^  who  sometimes  has 
wit ;  Samuel  Rowlands.-*  who  very  seldom  has  any ;  and  the  so-called 
"Water  Poet,"  John  Taylor,^  1580-1659,  a  waterman,  publican,  and 
pedestrian,  who  composed  a  vast  quantity  of  doggerel,  became  in  his 
own  time  and  since  a  "  curiosity  of  literature,"  and  has  had  the  very 
undeserved  honour,  denied  to  better  men,  of  full  reprint  in  our  own 
times. 

Superior  to  Taylor  by  far  in  birth,  education,  and  talents,  yet, 
with  one  single  exception  in  the  whole  of  his  voluminous  work, 
Hke  him  merely  a  curiosity  of  literature,  is  Richard  Braithwaite,  who 
has  shared  the  partiality  of  antiquarian  students  for  the  miscellanists 
of  this  age.^  He  was  a  Westmoreland  man,  born  near  Kendal 
about  1588,  and  seems  to  have  died  quite  late  in  the  latter  half  of 
the  century  (1665?  1677?)  at  his  wife's  house  of  Catterick,  near  the 
Yorkshire  Richmond.  He  was  a  good  Cavalier.  In  Braithwaite's 
voluminous  work,  which,  if  completely  edited,  would  probably  extend 
beyond  Taylor's  or  even  Breton's,  there  is  no  sense  of  criticism.  The 
rare  good,  the  frequent  bad,  and  the  usual  indifferent,  jostle  each  other 
without  any  apparent  discrimination  on  the  part  of  their  author.  He, 
like  others  of  his  time,  was  a  member  of  both  Universities,  beginning 
at  Oriel  and  moving  thence  to  Cambridge.  But  he  seems  to  have 
passed   most   of  his   life   in   his    own    north    country.     His  journeys 

1  In  Chalmers.  2  Ed.  Grosart.  8  Ibid. 

<  Partially  printed  for  the  Percy  Society,  more  fully  for  the  Hunterian  Club. 

6  By  the  Spenser  Society. 

8  As  examples  (they  are  not  the  only  ones)  of  this  may  be  mentioned  the 
edition  of  Harnahec's  Jounia/,  given  by  Haslcwood  in  1820,  and  reissued  by 
Mr.  W.  C.  Hazlitt  in  1876,  with  a  very  elaborate  memoir  and  bibliography;  and 
that  of  the  Utrappado  for  the  Devil,  and  other  poems  by  the  Rev.  J.  W.  Ebsworth, 
in  1878. 


356   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE  bk.  vi 

thither  from  sojourns  in  London  form  the  subject  of  the  odd  and 
(from  Southey  downwards  to  all  good  persons)  delightful  Barnaba 
Jtinerarhitn  or  Barnabee's  Journal,  in  bilingual  doggerel,  Latin  and 
Eno-lish,  arranged  in  six-lined  stanzas  of  the  trochaic  rhythm,  which 
revive  the  true  doggerel  spirit  of  Skelton  with  a  really  marvellous 
felicity.  The  morals  are  rather  doggerel,  too,  but  they  can  be  taken 
dramatically. 

Chapman's  work,  as  a  poet  and  translator,  seems  to  belong  chiefly 
to  the  middle  period  of  his  life.  He  began  to  publish  his  Homer 
(seven  books  of  the  Iliad)  in  1598,  and  issued  the  Odyssey  in 
1 61 6.  Before  the  first  date  he  had  published  his  earliest  poems, 
the  Shadow  of  Night,  Ovid^s  Banquet  of  Sense,  and  the  continuation 
of  Marlowe's  Hero  and  Leander,  while  the  rest  of  them  were  scattered 
over  his  last  thirty  years. 

The  original  poems  of  Chapman  —  the  two  first  above  mentioned, 
the  Tears  of  Peace  addressed  to  Prince  Henry,  An  Epicede  on  the 
death  of  that  Prince,  Andromeda  Liberata  (an  either  very  awkward 
or  very  shameless  adjustment  of  the  story  to  the  divorce 
Chapman.  ^^  Frances  Howard,  the  murderess  of  Overbury,  from 
Essex,  and  her  marriage  to  Somerset),  Eugenia  (an  epicede  on 
Lord  Russell),  and  some  others  —  are  by  common  consent  among 
the  obscurest  in  English.  His  metre  is  by  no  means  so  harsh  as 
that  of  some  of  his  contemporaries  ;  but  his  phrase  is  often  extremely 
rugged,  and  his  expression,  especially  in  the  Shadow  of  Night  and 
Andromeda,  is  twisted,  carried  on,  reinvolved,  and  subjected  to  every 
kind  of  unnatural  manipulation,  so  that  the  sense  is  never  easy  to 
follow  without  extreme  and  constant  effort,  and  sometimes  escapes 
even  this.  Beauties  are  by  no  means  lacking  —  on  the  contrary,  it 
vi'ould  not  be  easy  to  open  a  page  of  Chapman  in  search  of  a  motto 
without  finding  some  striking,  though  quaintly-put,  conceit,  or  even 
some  distinctly  poetical  expression.  But  lucid  and  finished  combina- 
tion of  thought  and  expression  within  reasonable  limits  is  almost 
everywhere  to  seek. 

In  his  translations,  on  the  contrary,  these  objections  hardly  apply 
at  all.  Besides  the  Iliad,  and  Odyssey,  he  did  the  minor  works 
attributed  to  Homer,  Hesiod,  and  some  Juvenal.  But  these  latter 
pieces  are  not  equal  to  the  Odyssey ;  and  the  Odyssey,  which  is  in 
couplets,  is  not  nearly  equal  to  the  Iliad,  done  in  a  splendid  swinging 
fourteener,  better  able  than  any  other  English  metre  to  cope  with  the 
body  as  well  as  with  the  rhythm  of  the  Greek  Hexameter,  and 
managed  with  extraordinary  skill  and  success  by  the  writer.  For 
nearly  a  century  it  has  been  usual  to  quote  Keats's  sonnet  as  a 
sponsor  for  Chapman.  The  connection  is  interesting,  but  Chapman 
does  not  in  the  least  require  it.     His  translation  remains,  in  the  first 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   SCHOOLS   OF  JACOBEAN   POETRY  357 

place,  the  only  really  good  one  of  Homer  into  English  verse ;  in  the 
second  place,  the  best  translation  into  English  verse  of  any  classic, 
ancient  or  modern,  except  FitzGerald's  Omar  Khayyam. 

This  position  would  by  some  be  challenged  for  the  work  of 
Edward  Fairfax,  the  translator  of  Tasso,  whose  birth-year  is  unknown, 
but  who  died  in  1635.  He"  was  an  offshoot  of  the  great  Yorkshire 
family  of  his  name,  and  spent  his  whole  life  in  that 
county,  troubled  by  witchcraft  (see  Scott's  Demotiology), 
on  which  he  wrote  a  Discourse  (1621)  deserving  to  be  associated  with 
the  great  demonological  work  of  the  period,  Reginald  Scot's  Dis- 
covery, though  on  the  other  side.  His  version  of  the  Jerusalem 
appeared  in  1600.  It  was,  and  long  continued  to  be,  extremely 
popular,  receiving  praise  in  the  most  diverse  quarters  from  Waller  to 
Collins,  and  while,  from  its  subject  and  style,  it  was  dear  to  students 
of  romance,  being  credited  with  smoother  versification  than  the 
Augustan  ages  would  allow  to  most  work  of  the  "last  age."  It  is 
a  book  1  still  to  be  read  with  pleasure,  but,  unless  its  praises  be  taken 
warily,  with  a  little  disappointment.  Its  style  is  rather  flaccid;  the 
very  stamp  of  line  which  commended  it  to  Waller  impresses  a  touch 
of  prose ;  and  Fairfax  seldom  has  either  the  mazy  beauty  of  Spenser's 
music  or  the  panoramic  power  of  his  painting. 

Thomas  Campion,''^  whose  name  not  so  many  years  ago  would 
have  conveyed  to  but  few  readers  any  distinct  idea  of  poetic 
quality,  was  born  at  an  unknown  date,  and  though  he  was  certainly 
a  member  both  of  Cambridge  and  the  Inns  of  Court, 
frequented  both  in  unknown  times  and  circumstances. 
Towards  the  end  of  Elizabeth's  reign  he  was  a  popular  physician  in 
London,  and  connected  in  friendship  and  enmity  with  divers  men  of 
letters.  He  was  buried  at  St.  Dunstan's,  Fleet  Street,  on  ist  March 
1620.  He  wrote,  and  wrote  well,  in  Latin  as  well  as  in  English, 
but  his  importance  for  English  literature  is  of  a  double  character, 
and  the  halves  are  curiously  opposed  to  each  other.  Wc  have  from 
him,  in  the  first  place,  besides  some  masques,  certain  collections  of 
verses  for  music,^  which  contain  much  of  the  most  exquisite  rhymed 
poetry  of  the  time ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  a  formal  treatise  * 
intended  to  show,  by  precept  and  example,  that  English  poetry  ought 
to  be  unrhymed,  and  arranged  on  ancient  quantitative  models.  It  is 
not  fair,  though  it  has  sometimes  been  done,  to  regard  Campion  as  an 

'  I  use  the  edition  of  L'Esfrangc,  London,  1682. 

2 Complete  works,  ed.  Biillen  (London,  1889).  Songs  to  be  found  in  the  same 
editor's  Lyrics  from  P.lizabt'than  Song-Books,  two  series  (London,  1887-88),  and  in 
Mr.  Arbor's  luiglish  Garner. 

'^  Hook  0/  Airs,  1601 ;  Two  Books  of  .iirs  (1612?);  Third  and  Fourth  Books 
o/Airs  (1617  ?). 

■♦  Observations  on  the  .Irt  of  English  Poesy,  i6o3. 


358   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE   bk.  vi 

apostle  of  the  preposterous  hexameters,  etc.,  which  deluded  Harvey, 
and  all  but  seduced  Spenser.  He  had  seen  the  unsuitableness  of 
these  to  English  (which  as  he  acutely  observed  is  rebel  to  dactyls)  ; 
and  though  he  made  some  Sapphics,  his  own  attempts  are  chiefly  in 
very  cunningly  balanced  iambic  and  trochaic  unrhymed  measures, 
some  of  which  —  such  as  the  most  often  quoted, 

Rose-cheeked  Laura,  come  — 

are  at  least  the  equals,  if  not  the  superiors,  of  Collins's  "  Ode  to  Even- 
ino-"  in  this  unnatural  kind  of  abstinence  from  the  greatest  charm  of 
English  verse.  In  his  '-airs,"  on  the  other  hand,  he  allows  himself 
the  full  liberty  of  our  poetical  Sion,  and  with  the  very  happiest 
results,  literally  dozens  of  his  lyrics  being  among  the  most  delightful 
of  their  kind.  In  fact,  the  difficulty  is  to  find  in  the  Four  Books  of 
Airs  anything  that  is  bad. 

All  these,  however,  with  the  exception  of  Sir  John  Davies,  who 
might,  with  justice,  be  classed  in  tone,  though  not  in  language,  with 
the  Spenserians,  lie  outside  the  three  schools  which  have  been 
referred  to  above,  and  which  make  Jacobean  poetry  so  extremely 
interesting  both  in  itself  and  as  a  transition  to  Caroline.  Of  these 
we  may  take  the  Spenserian  first,  both  as  in  origin  the  oldest  and 
as  lacking  a  living  head  and  master. 

The  class  contains  some  outsiders,  anonymous  and  named,  who 
come  closest  to  Spenser  on  that  side  at  which  he  himself  touches 
the  luxuriant  style  of  such  pieces  as  Shakespeare's  first  poems. 
,„^  "  Sage  and   serious  "  as   Spenser  undoubtedly  was,  there 

Spenserians:  is  also  no  doubt  that  both  his  Italian  originals  and  his 
minor  poets.  ^^^  temper  inclined  him  to  the  highly  coloured  pictures 
of  natural  loveliness  which  are  abundant  in  the  Faerie  Queene.  One 
of  the  very  best  poems  of  this  class,  Britain's  Ida,  a  piece  describing 
the  loves  of  Venus  and  Anchises  ("  Britain's,"  because  the  legendary 
Brutus  was  son  of  Aeneas),  used  to  be  printed  among  Spenser's  own 
works,^  though  it  did  not  appear  till  long  after  his  death  (1628),  and 
is  quite  destitute  of  the  allegorical  and  ethical  purpose  which  always 
accompanied  his  most  luscious  imaginings.  It  has  more  recently, 
though  not  on  any  evidence  or  with  much  probability,  been  handed 
over  to  a  disciple  of  his,  Phineas  Fletcher,  of  whom  more  presently. 
But  it  is  best  to  take  it  as  the  work  of  an  uncertain,  though  a  very 
ingenious  and  agreeable  poet.  The  Salt>iacis  and  Hennapliroditus  of 
Francis  Beaumont,  the  dramatist,  the  Myrrha  of  Barkstead,  and 
some  other  pieces  belong  to  the  same  school. 

The   general   characteristics   of  Spenser,    however,    his   allegorical 

1  It  will  be  found  in  the  useful  one-volume  Spenser,  first  published  by  Moxon 
and  then  by  Routledge ;  also  in  the  Aldine. 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   SCHOOLS   OF  JACOBEAN   POETRY  359 

/     

fancy  on  the  one  hand,  and  his  ethical-pastoral  tendencies  on  the 
other,  with  a  certain  copious  and  fluent  diction  which  he  introduced 
into  poetry,  are  best  represented  by  a  group  of  Jacobean  poets,  two  of 
them  Cambridge  men,  two  of  tlie  older  university,  who  may  be 
mentioned  in  •  the  order  in  whicli  they  diverge  from  their  pattern, 
Giles  and  Phineas  Fletcher,  William  Browne  of  Tavistock,  and 
George  Wither. 

The  two  first  ^  belonged  to  the  family  already  noticed,  and 
were  sons  of  the  author  of  Licia.  Giles,  who,  though  he  is  said  to 
have  been  slightly  the  younger,  died  first,  was  first  known  as  a  poet, 
and  is  usually  mentioned  before  his  brother,  was  probably  ^^^  Fletchers 
born  about  1585-88.  But  it  is  not  certain  that  he  was  not 
older  than  Phineas,  and  even  probable  that  he  was,  since  he  produced 
a  poem  on  Elizabeth's  death  as  early  as  1603  at  Cambridge,  where 
he  was  a  member  of  Trinity  College.  He  took  orders,  and  died 
vicar  of  Alderton,  in  Suffolk,  in  1623.  Phineas,  who  was  educated 
at  Eton,  and  proceeded  thence  to  King's  College,  Cambridge,  is  said 
to  have  been  born  in  1582.  He  followed  his  brother's  and  father's 
profession,  and  was  for  very  many  years  parson  of  Hilgay,  in  Suffolk, 
where  he  died  at  an  uncertain  date,  perhaps  not  much  before  the 
Restoration. 

Giles  takes  his  place  in  English  poetry  in  virtue  of  a  poem,  not 
of  the  longest,  entitled  Christs  Victory  and  Triuwp/i,  in  four  books 
and  some  250  stanzas  of  curious  construction,  and  obviously  modelled 
on  the  Faerie  Qtteene.  Fletcher  has  kept  the  Alexandrine 
termination,  but  left  out  one  of  the  lines,  so  that  the 
result  is  an  octave  of  seven  decasyllabics,  and  an  Alexandrine  rhymed 
ababbccc.  The  device  is  not  in  itself  very  happy,  and  in  particular 
the  triplet  at  the  end  comes  awkwardly.  But  Giles  has  written  it 
with  such  a  glow  and  fire  of  continuous  inspiration,  with  such 
splendour  of  language  and  imagery,  and  occasionally  (indeed  very 
frequently)  with  single  lines  and  passages  of  such  force  and  beauty, 
that  few  poems  of  the  kind  by  any  but  the  very  greatest  masters  can 
be  read  with  equal  pleasure.  The  picture  and  speech  of  Justice  in 
the  first  canto  with  the  contrasted  portrait  of  Mercy ;  the  description, 
in  the  warmest  Spenserian  style,  and  with  a  really  exquisite  insertion 
of  oct()syllal)lcs  ("Love  is  the  blossom  where  there  blows"),  of  the 
temjitress  Pangloretta  in  the  second;  the  overture  of  tlie  third,  which 
deals  with  the  Crucifixion;  and  almost  the  whole  of  the  fourth,  with  its 
glowing  descant  on  Paradise,  rank  among  the  triumphs  of  the  ornate 
and  fanciful  kind  of  poetry  in  English.  The  Pre-Raphaelite  effect  of 
the   poem    is  striking.     It  constantly  reminds  us,  with  allowance  for 

1  Poems  of  both  in  Chalmers,  and  privately  printed  by   Ur.  Grosart.     Christ's 
Victory,  ed.  Brooke,  London,  11. d. 


36o   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE  bk.  VI 

the  difference  of  centuries,  of  the  work  of  the  Rossettis,  brother  and 
sister,  in  its  combination  of  vivid  and  elaborate  pictorial  effect  with 
gorgeous  word-music.  Nor  is  the  thought  inferior  to  the  expression. 
The  work  of  the  longer-lived  Phineas  is  very  much  more  volumi- 
nous, and  very  much  more  various  —  qualities  which  perhaps  inevitably 
comport  greater  inequality.     It  is  not  easy  to  say  that  this  poet  was 

actually  less  pervaded  with  poetic  spirit  than  his  brother. 

He  was,  however,  certainly  less  well  inspired  in  the 
choice  of  his  principal  subject,  The  Purple  Island^  which  is  neither 
more  nor  less  than  an  excessively  elaborate  allegory  —  unwisely 
magnified  from  one  or  two,  not  in  themselves  happiest,  sketches  of 
Spenser's  — of  the  physical  body  of  man.  As  a  vehicle  for  this  he 
arranged  a  still  further  modified  stanza,  which  retained  his  brother's 
final  triplet  with  its  concluding  Alexandrine,  but  cut  off  the  last  line 
of  the  quintet,  so  as  to  make  a  septet  of  quatrain-and-triplet  effect 
with  three  rhymes.  Individually,  the  stanza  is  even  less  successful 
than  Giles's,  while  the  poem  has  the  additional  disadvantages  of  a 
very  awkward  subject,  and  of  much  greater  length  (there  are  twelve 
cantos).  The  first  half  is  mere  physiology;  and  of  course,  though 
sometimes  extremely  ingenious,  constantly  grotesque,  sometimes 
nearly  disgusting,  and  deserving,  at  the  best,  the  praise  of  an  ill- 
judged  to7ir  de  force.  The  last  six  cantos,  which  shift  to  the  moral 
and  intellectual  qualities,  are  much  more  Spenserian  and  much 
happier.  But  even  in  the  earlier  part  an  abundance  of  really  fine 
passages  may  be  discovered,  and  in  overtures,  episodes,  and  other 
ornaments  of  his  song,  the  author  shows,  perhaps  his  sense  that 
ornaments  were  sorely  wanted,  but  certainly  his  skill  in  supplying 
them.  Besides  The  Purple  Island,  Phineas  wrote  a  masque, 
Piscatory  Eclogues,  in  which  the  following  of  Spenser  blends  with 
that  of  Sannazar,  a  curious  sacred  poem  called  TJie  Apollyofiists, 
well  known,  as  indeed  were  all  the  poems  of  both  the  Fletchers,  to 
Milton,  and  some  miscellaneous  pieces  of  divers  kinds.  Quarles  called 
him  the  "  Spenser  of  his  age " ;  and  though  the  compliment  was 
rather  commonplace  and  slightly  ambiguous,  there  was  truth  in  it. 

William  Browne,^  whose  literary  merits  have  been  rather  variously 
judged,  was  born  at  Tavistock,  sometime  about  1591,  and  seems  to 
have  been  of  a  very  respectable  family.     He  went  to  Exeter  College, 

Oxford,  but   took    no   degree    before  passing  to  the  Inns 

of  Court  (Clifford's  Inn  and  the  Temple)  in  161 1.  He 
was  twice  married,  his  first  wife  dying  when  he  was  very  young,  and 
a  considerable  time  (some  fifteen  years)  passing  before  he  married 
the  second.     Before  the  latter  date  he  returned  to  Exeter  as  tutor  to 

1  Poems  not  completely  in  Chalmers.  Completely  in  two  volumes  of  the 
"  Muses  Library,"  ed.  Goodwin,  London,  1894. 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   SCHOOLS   OF  JACOBEAN   POETRY  361 

a  young  nobleman,  and  somewhat  late  took  the  degree  of  M.A. 
After  his  second  marriage  he  lived  in  Surrey,  where  both  he  and  his 
wife  had  relations.  He  was  dead  in  November  1645,  when  probate 
was  granted  to  his  widow,  who  had  the  odd  name  of  Timothy,  short 
no  doubt  for  Timothea.  But  some  say  that  his  age,  like  his  youth,  was 
passed  in  Devon,  and  he  pretty  certainly  was  buried  at  his  birthplace. 

The  claim  which  was  recently  made  of  the  exquisite  epitaph, 
"  Sidney's  Sister,"  for  Browne  seems  without  a  sufficient  external 
foundation,  and  is  entirely  refuted  by  internal  evidence.  But  his 
reputation  did  not  need  it.  His  chief  work  is  Britannia's  Pastorals,  a 
desultory  book  in  three  divisions,  which  appeared  (its  first  part  at 
least)  in  1613;  The  Shepherd''s  Pipe,  a  pleasing  collection  of 
eclogues ;  and  The  Inner  Temple  Masque,  on  the  story  of  Circe  and 
Ulysses,  which  opens  with  some  verses  of  quite  extraordinary  beaut}-, 
the  well-known  ''  Steer  hither,  steer,"  and  includes  others  not  far 
inferior  to  them.  Besides  these,  he  has  a  fair  number  of  miscellaneous 
poems,  thoroughly  justifying  the  adjective — being  serious,  sacred, 
jocular,  elegiac,  and  almost  everything.  Browne's  extreme  variety 
is  conditioned  by  a  corresponding  inequality,  and  he  is  undoubtedly 
liable  to  a  certain  fluent  prettiness,  which  lacks  dignity,  and  some- 
times approaches  too  near  to  the  namby-pamby.  This  touch  of 
mawkishness,  as  well  as  better  things,  helps  to  bring  about  the 
singular  likeness  between  Browne  and  Keats,  which  has  been  noticed 
by  most  good  critics.  And  among  the  better  things  must  be  noted 
a  great  similarity  in  versification,  the  lines,  whether  couplets  or  other, 
being  broken  up  and  "  enjambed,"  after  the  fashion  which,  after  nearly 
two  centuries,  Leigh  Hunt  revived  and  taught  to  Keats ;  while  the 
way  of  looking  at  nature,  and  the  ornate  presentation  of  it  —  a 
presentation  less  stately  than  that  of  the  Fletchers,  but  almost  equally 
pictorial  —  give  another  point  of  contact.  Browne  is  not  nearly  so 
great  or  so  good  a  poet  as  Keats ;  he  had  the  disadvantage  of  coming 
after,  not  in  the  full  tide  of,  the  poetic  energy  of  his  time.  But  he 
has  a  large  share  of  the  special  charm  of  this  Spenserian  group,  its 
combination  of  habitual  ornateness  with  occasional  simplicity,  its 
beauty  of  image  and  phrase,  its  love  of  nature,  if  of  a  nature  "  tricked 
and  frounced  "  a  little,  its  sensuous  yet  in  no  sense  impure  passion, 
and  its  occasional  bursts  of  rare  and  elsewhere  unlieard  music. 

The  inequality,  which  is  almost  inseparable  from  the  methods  of 
this  school  of  poetry,  is  again  more  perceptible  in  George  Wither^ 

-  Only  to  be  found  completely  (if  there)  in  the  priv-ite  reprints  of  the  Spenser 
Society.  His  best  things,  I'liilarete,  Tlie  Shepherd's  Huntings  etc.,  are  in  Mr. 
Arber's  English  Garner.  Not  much  of  his  Hymns  of  the  Church  and  Hallelujah, 
reprinted  by  Mr.  1£.  Farr  in  the  "  [library  of  Old  Authors"  (London,  1856  and 
1857)1  is  of  his  best ;  and  most  of  his  later  verse  and  prose  is  rubbish. 


362   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE   bk.  vi 

than  in  Browne ;  while  unfortunately  Wither,  unhke  Browne,  continued 
to  write  verse  for  many  years  after  the  faculty  of  writing  had  left 
him.  He  was  born  near  Alresford,  in  Hampshire,  in  the 
year  1588,  and  was  educated  (but  did  not  take  his 
degree)  at  Magdalen  College,  Oxford.  Then  he  entered  an  Inn  of 
Court,  and  hung  about  London.  His  first  book,  the  satirical  Abuses 
Stript  and  IVhipt  (161 3)  procured  him,  nobody  has  ever  discovered 
why,  imprisonment  in  the  Marshalsea.  His  famous  "  Shall  I,  wasting 
in  despair"  is  said  to  date  from  this  sojourn,  and  from  the  next  decade 
till  1623  come  all,  or  almost  all,  his  really  good  poems  —  The 
Shepherd's  Hunting  (1615),  Fidelia  (1615),  Motto  (1618),  Philarete 
(1622),  and  the  Hymns  and  Songs  of  the  Chu7'ch.  At  the  time  of  the 
publication  of  the  Hymns  he  was  exactly  thirty-five.  He  lived 
to  be  nearly  eighty,  dying  in  1667;  and  he  constantly  tried  to 
"  recapture  his  first,  fine,  careless  rapture,"  but  entirely  failed  except 
perhaps  in  some  of  the  passages  of  his  Hallelujah  (1641).  As  his 
writing  became  worse  and  worse,  and  as  in  his  later  life,  and  during  the 
parliamentary  troubles,  he  became  a  Roundhead,  his  name  (generally 
spelt  Withers)  was  used  as  a  sort  of  byword  of  contempt  by  the  partisans 
of  monarchy  after  the  Restoration,  from  Dryden  downwards,  and  the 
contempt  was  echoed  from  generation  to  generation  afterwards  by 
persons  who  probably  had  never  read  a  line  of  his.  Only  when  the 
work  of  the  early  seventeenth  century  was  unearthed  for  serious 
reading  at  the  end  of  the  last  and  the  beginning  of  this,  was  it  dis- 
covered what  an  exquisite  poet  had  been  for  some  hundred  and  fifty 
years  classed  with  Bavius  and  Codrus.  Yet  it  must  be  admitted 
that  in  his  very  best  work,  which  is  to  be  found  in  Philarete^  though 
Fidelia  and  The  Shepherd''s  Hunting  run  this  close,  he  is  unequal. 
The  easy,  fluent,  Keatsian  note  of  verse  and  of  nature-painting  which 
is  observable  in  Browne  is  even  better  found  in  him ;  indeed,  if 
genuine  pastoral  sweetness  —  the  sense  of  the  country  and  of  country 
joys  —  is  anywhere  in  English  poetry,  it  is  in  Wither,  who  has  much 
besides.  But  the  very  word  fluency  suggests  the  dangers  which  this 
verse  coasts,  and  into  which  it  sometimes  falls. 

An  addition  to  the  poets  of  this  school  was  made  a  few  years  ago 
by  the  printing  for  the  first  time  of  the  works  of  William  Basse,i  who 
had  been  previously  known,  if  at  all,  by  some  often-quoted  lines 
about  Shakespeare  and  Beaumont.  Basse  seems  to 
have  lived  almost  all  his  life  in  Oxfordshire  as  an 
honourable  dependant  of  the  families  of  Wenman  of  Thame  and 
Norreys  of  Rycote.  He  may  have  been,  though  we  do  not  know  that 
he  was,  a  member  of  the  University,  as  well  as  an  inhabitant  of  the 

1  Ed.  R.  W.  Bond,  London,  1893. 


CHAP,  m  THE   SCHOOLS   OF  JACOBEAN    POETRY  363 


shire.  His  initials,  "W.  B.,"  have  led  to  some  confusion  with  Browne, 
whose  friend  he  was,  to  whose  Pastorals  he  wrote  commendatory  verses, 
and  whom  he  a  good  deal  resembles  in  his  own  poems  of  the  same  kind, 
his  Urania,  his  Polyhymnia  (only  surviving  in  fragments),  and  other 
pieces.  But  he  is  only  a  curiosity,  and  a  very  weak  poet,  though  it 
may  be  a  little  stronger  than  any  other  outsider  of  the  Browne-Wither 
group,  Christopher  Brooke,  whose  poems  have  also  been  printed. 

The  Spenserians,  however,  though  their  work  was  to  be  continued 
even  later  in  the  great,  or  at  least  large,  philosophical  poems  of  More 
and  Joseph  Beaumont,  and  though  we  shall  find  a  more  profane  echo 
of  them  in  the  most  interesting  Pharonnida  of  Chamber- 
layne,  were  in  fact  behind  their  time,  and  did  not  represent  impul"e.^ 
anything  like  its  characteristic  tastes  and  impulses.  These 
were  to  be  found  in  two  schools,  or  perhaps  in  one  with  two  very 
different  heads,  who  were  Ben  Jonson  and  John  Donne.  Both 
these  men  (we  speak  in  this  place,  of  course,  of  Jonson's  non-dramatic 
work  only)  had  an  essentially  lyric  genius.  It  may  seem  strange 
that  this  should  have  co-existed  with  the  rhetorical  and  declamatory 
tendencies  of  Jonson,  and  his  bent  to  rough  horseplay ;  with  the 
satiric  tastes,  in  singularly  rough  verse,  of  Donne,  and  his  gift  of 
grave,  stately,  and  involved  prose-writing.  But  we  have  already 
seen  that  the  whole  inspiration  of  the  Elizabethan  age  proper  tended 
towards  the  lyrical  —  especially  if  sonnets  be  included  in  lyric.  And 
as  the  Euphuist  tendency  in  phrasing,  and  the  ever-growing  thought- 
fulness,  inclining  to  melancholy  in  cast,  of  the  later  Elizabethan  and 
Jacobean  time  disposed  men  ever  more  and  more  to  conceit,  lyric 
was  also  more  and  more  the  pet  form  in  which  they  clothed  their 
thoughts.     Although    the    criticism    of    the    time    was    not    inclined 

o  o 

openly  to  admit  it,  men  of  sense  must  have  been  more  or  less  dimly 
conscious  that  a  conceit  in  twelve  cantos  like  The  Purple  Island,  even 
in  several  pages  of  enigmatic  couplets  like  The  Shadow  of  Night,  was 
somehow  overparted.  In  a  few  stanzas  of  exquisitely  tuned  lyrical 
verse  it  to  this  day  wins  favour  from  all  but  the  sternest  judges ;  it 
could  not  then  fail  to  delight  even  the  the  sternest. 

Ben  Jonson's  strictly  poetical   production  was  continued  over  the 
greater  part  of  his  literary  life,  and  perhaps  most  of  it  dates  from  the 
time  when  he  ruled  as  dictator  over  his  band  of  "sons,"  the  poets  of 
iiis  own  latest  day  and  the  next  age.     He  attempted,  out 
of  drama,  nothing  large ;  his   plays  at  this  time  and  his       poem".^ 
masques  at  that  proI)al)ly  sufficed  him,  and,  as  has  been 
pointed  out  in  the  last  chapter,  the  masques,  with  The  Sad  Shepherd,  are 
treasure-houses  of  ])oetry  —  dramatic  only  in  a  remote  and  unconnected 
fasliion,   and    constantly    delightful.     But    his    actual    poems    are    of 
sufficiently  various  kind.     Few  good  words  have  been  bestowed  upon, 


364   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN   LITERATURE  bk.  vi 

and  perhaps  even  fewer  are  deserved  by,  his  epigrams,  in  which 
unkickily  lie  set  a  fashion  followed  by  others,  especially  Herrick, 
who  did  worse  than  their  master.  Martial's  foulness-  without  his 
wit,  and  too  often  without  the  least  share  of  his  "concinnity"  of 
style ;  the  extravagant  tone  and  temper  of  a  section  of  the  playwrights 
and  satirists  of  the  last  days  of  Elizabeth ;  and  worst  of  all,  an 
affected  surliness  and  rude  hectoring  dogmatism  which  it  pleased 
Jonson  to  assume,  and  for  which  posterity  has  too  often  justly 
punished  him  by  taking  it  as  genuine  —  these  are  the  chief  character- 
istics of  the  epigrams.  The  bad  habit  of  ticket  names  —  Lord  Ignorant, 
Sir  Voluptuous  Beast,  Doctor  Empiric  —  which  disfigures  the  plays,  is 
even  more  obvious  here.  If  we  read  any  with  satisfaction,  it  is  those 
in  which  the  author  takes  a  wholly  different  tone,  as  in  the  excellent 
one  to  "  Camden,  most  reverend  head,"  in  the  charming  epitaph  on 
his  first  daughter,  and  the  exquisite  flattery  of  Lucy,  Countess  of 
Bedford,  in  the  dirges  on  Salathiel  Pavy  and  Elizabeth  L.  H. 
And  these  excepted  poems  at  once  show  us  in  Jonson  certain 
characteristics,  which  are  much  more  generally  noticeable  in  the  far 
finer  and  more  equal  collections  called  The  Forest  and  Underwoods. 
The  piece  with  which  TJie  Forest  opens  ^  is  perhaps  as  indicative  as 
any  other  of  the  manner  and  the  example  which  Jonson  was  to  set 
to  his  contemporaries  and  followers.  For  centuries  English  had  been 
striving,  often  blindly,  to  achieve  the  peculiar  clearness,  proportion, 
completeness  of  expression  which  are  characteristic  of  the  two 
classical  languages.  It  had  succeeded  in  other  things  as  great 
as  this,  perhaps  greater,  but  in  this  it  had  not  succeeded.  Now 
it  did  succeed.  The  thought  in  the  verses  quoted  is  only  a  conceit, 
and  though  a  perennially  natural  one,  yet  for  that  reason  not  even  new. 
But  it  is  expressed  perfectly,  neither  with  the  redundant  ornament 
and  imagery  of  the  school  we  have  just  left,  nor  with  the  obscure, 
though  precious  flickers,  the  carbuncle-glimmer  in  darkness,  of  that 
to  which  we  shall  shortly  come.  The  wording  and  phrasing  are 
classical,  rather  of  the  late  than  of  the  early  classics  perhaps,  but  still 
classical,  with  nothing  extravagant  in  their  richness,  nothing  starched 
or  prim  in  their  grace. 

The  quality  of  grace  has  often  been  denied  to  Jonson,  but  of  a 
surety  wrongly.  The  pieces  referred  to  above  in  the  epigrams,  this, 
the  "  Ceha"  songs,  including  the  famous  paraphrase  from  Philostratus, 
"  Drink  to  me  only,"  the  magnificent  epode  "  Not  to  know  vice  at  all 
and  keep  true  state,"  very  much  of  the  Charis  collection,  written 
when  the  poet  was  fully  fifty,  the  song  "  Oh  do  not  wanton  with  those 
eyes,"  the  elegy  in  the  In  Aleinoriam  stanza,  and  many  others,  dis- 

1  Entitled  "  Why  I  write  not  of  Love,"  and  beginning  "  Some  act  of  Love 
bound  to  rehearse." 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   SCHOOLS   OF  JACOBEAN   POETRY  365 

play  grace  in  the  very  strictest  sense,  and  the  list  might  be  largely 
extended.  Jonson  is  by  no  means  the  only  poet  who  has  thus  united 
masculine  and  feminine  characteristics,  —  indeed,  the  union  is  rather  the 
rule  than  the  exception  in  poetry,  —  but  he  is  certainly  an  instance 
of  it. 

The  influence  of  John  Donne  ^  was  even  more  potent,  though  it 
is  extremely  difficult  to  understand  the  precise  manner  in  which  it 
was  exercised.  This  very  great  and  very  puzzling  poet  was  born  in 
London  about  the  year  1573.  and  was  connected  on  his 
mother's  side  with  the  Heywoods  and  Sir  Thomas  More. 
He  appears  to  have  been  a  member  of  both  Universities  and  of 
Lincoln's  Inn.  It  is  not  certain  whether  he  was  actually  a  Roman 
Catholic  at  anytime,  but  his  family  were  of  that  faith.  He  travelled 
and  served  abroad,  and  perhaps  spent  his  fortune  in  so  doing.  On 
returning  to  England  he  became  a  member  of  the  household  of  the 
Chancellor,  Sir  Thomas  Egerton,  afterwards  Lord  Ellesmere,  and 
having  made  a  clandestine  marriage  with  Anne  More,  a  relation  of 
the  family,  was  sent  to  the  Tower,  but  soon  enlarged.  He  took  up 
his  abode  with  more  than  one  other  gentleman,  and  did  some  diplo- 
matic work.  At  last,  in  161 5,  when  he  must  have  been  over  forty, 
he  took  orders  at  the  King's  suggestion,  but  at  first  without  any  very 
lucrative  result.  His  wife  died  in  161 7.  After  some  more  diplo- 
matic work,  he  was  made  Dean  of  St.  Paul's  in  162 1,  and  died  ten 
years  later  in  1631. 

It  seems  on  the  whole  improbable  that  any  part  of  Donne's  poems, * 
except  a  very  small  one  (the  Atiatoi/iy  of  the  IVorld,  a  poem  on 
Prince  Henry,  etc.),  was  ever  printed  before  his  death,  and  the  earliest 
known  edition  of  the  larger  part  of  them  dates  from  1633.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  perfectly  certain  that  some  of  them  must  have  been 
written  nearly  forty  years  earlier,  and  it  is  clear  that  many,  if  not 
most,  were  known  to  men  of  letters  who  cared  about  poetry  during 
the  whole  of  the  last  half  of  Donne's  life  and  more.  There  is  even 
probability,  though  not  certainty,  in  the  supposition  that  a  fling  of 
Drayton's  (in  a  poem  where  he  mentions  almost  every  prominent 
poet  among  his  contemporaries  except  Donne)  at  poems  "  which  by 
transcription  daintily  must  go  Through  private  chambers,"  refers  to 
Donne.  At  any  rate,  it  is  beyond  controversy,  from  references  in 
Jonson's  Conversations,  and  from  the  poems  written  by  Carew  and 
others  on  Donne's  death,  as  well  as  from  internal  evidence,  that  he 
was  at  least  on  a  level  with  Spenser  and  Jonson  himself  as  a  master 
of  Jacobean   poetry,    while    in   some    ways    his    manner  and    matter 

1  Poems  in  Chalmers,  vol.  v.;  ed.  Grosart,  2  vols,  privately  printed,  1873; 
ed.  Chambers,  2  vols.  London,  1896. 

2  An  alleged  early  edition  of  the  S(ifire.<:  cannot  be  traced. 


366  LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE  bk.  vi 

are  even  more  characteristic  of  that  poetry  and  of  its  Caroline 
successors. 

The  Spenserians  had  made  conceit  in  a  manner  their  own  ;  but  as 
they  had  produced  no  poet  who  was  at  all  equal  in  intellectual  power  to 
their  master,  they  had  mostly  treated  it  from  the  outside,  fantastically, 
though  sometimes  very  happily,  describing  or  dressing  up  no  matter 
what  subjects  in  a  brocaded  garb  of  gorgeous  and  (when  they  could 
manage  it)  harmonious  phraseology.  Jonson  was  setting  beside  this 
loose,  florid  romanticism  a  severer  ideal  of  classical  grace,  and  was 
perfecting  lyric  phrase  ;  but  Jonson's  imagination  rarely  soared  into 
strange  or  distant  regions,  and  in  particular  his  love-poems,  though 
sometimes  warm,  are  never  metaphysically  passionate.  Donne,  on 
the  other  hand,  seems  to  have  been  born  to  combine  all  elements  of  the 
Renaissance  spirit  —  the  haunting  meditation  on  death,  the  passionate 
attention  to  love,  the  blend  of  classical  and  romantic  form.  And  he 
added  a  peculiar  mystical  charm,  the  result  of  the  taste  for  conceit 
spiritualised,  refined,  and  made  to  transcend.  This  it  is  which  we 
observe  eminently  in  his  later  prose  contemporary.  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  and  which  communicates  their  distinguishing  peculiarity, 
though  not  by  any  means  always  their  distinguishing  charm,  to  his 
sons,  the  so-called  metaphysical  poets,  many  indeed  of  whom  owe 
something  of  a  divided  allegiance  to  Jonson  and  himself,  but  who  are 
generally  nearer  to  him  in  spirit,  to  Jonson  in  form. 

The  form  of  Donne  is  indeed  the  most  puzzling  thing  about  him. 
Some  of  its  peculiarities  are  beyond  all  doubt  due  to  the  mere  fact 
that  he  never  printed  most  of  his  poems,  and  that  of  hardly  any  can 
we  be  sure  that  we  have  a  definitive  edition  from  his  own  hand. 
More  perliaps  should  be  charged  to  the  certain  fact  that  in  his  later 
life  he  repented  much  of  the  matter  of  his  earlier  poems,  and  the 
probability  that  he  abstained  with  deliberation  from  publishing  them. 
But  this  will  not  account  for  the  whole  phenomenon ;  and  the  rough- 
ness was  undoubtedly  to  some  extent  deliberate.  That  Donne  had 
any  intention  of  attempting  a  new  prosody  there  is  not  the  least 
reason  for  believing.  In  his  Satires,  where  the  roughness  is  most 
perceptible,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  imitation  of  Persius, 
which  is  so  noticeable  in  all  the  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  satirists, 
accounts  for  a  good  deal.  In  his  other  poems,  when  they  leave  the 
satire,  the  mere  metre  is  as  a  rule  correct  enough.  It  is  only  that 
the  intensity  and  fulness  of  the  thought  does  not  lend  itself  to  actually 
smooth  expression,  without  more  labour  than  the  writer  seems  to  have 
cared  to  expend  upon  it. 

This  intensity  and  this  fulness  appear  with  no  very  great,  though 
with  some,  difference  of  degree  in  the  various  divisions  of  Donne's 
work  —  the   Songs   and   Sonnets,   the   Elegies,  the  Epithalamia,  the 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   SCHOOLS   OF  JACOBEAN   POETRY  367 

Divine  Poems,  the  Verse  Letters,  the  Epicedes  and  Obsequies,  the 
Progress  of  the  Soul,  the  Anatomy  of  the  World,  and  the  Satires. 
The  last  named  are,  in  consequence  of  Pope's  rather  blundering 
patronage,  the  best  known,  but  they  are  the  least  interesting  part  of 
Donne's  work,  displaying  the  conventionality  and  exaggerated  in- 
dignation of  the  whole  class  to  which  they  belong.  The  Elegies  are 
most  remarkable  for  the  undisciplined  exuberance  of  feeling  to  which 
Donne,  outspoken  as  were  many  of  the  writers  of  his  day,  gave  more 
unhesitating  voice  than  almost  any  of  them.  The  Verse  Letters  are 
full  of  autobiographic  interest,  and  in  some  of  the  more  elaborate 
pieces,  the  "  Storm "  and  "  Calm,"  which  rejoiced  Ben  Jonson,  very 
remarkable  exercises  in  elaboration.  The  Epicedes,  Obsequies,  etc., 
are  notable  examples  of  the  special  ability  of  the  time  in  these  things. 
The  Progress  of  the  Soul,  which  seems  early,  is  a  singular  poem,  a 
cross  between  The  Purple  Island  and  The  Shadow  of  Night,  deeply 
shot  with  Donne's  own  peculiarities,  but  not  exhibiting  them  in  the 
most  amiable  and  profitable  form.  We  are  thus  left  with  the  Songs 
and  Sonnets,  and  the  Anatomy  of  the  World,  which,  though  the  latter, 
in  its  two  ''anniversaries,"  is  certainly  much  later  than  most  of  the 
former,  and  serves  to  some  extent  as  a  pendant  and  palinode,  yet. 
complete  each  other  in  the  most  remarkable  fashion.  The  Songs' 
exhibit  Donne's  quintessenced,  melancholy,  passionate  imagination 
as  applied,  chiefly  in  youth,  to  Love;  the  Anniversaries,  the  same 
imagination  as  applied  later  to  Death,  the  ostensible  text  being  the 
untimely  death  of  Mistress  Elizabeth  Drury,  but  the  real  subject 
being  the  riddle  of  the  painful  earth  as  embodied  in  the  death  of  the 
body.  The  Songs  are,  of  course,  in  different  lyrical  forms,  and  the 
Anniversaries  are  in  couplets.  But  both  agree  in  the  unique  clangour 
of  their  poetic  sound,  and  in  the  extraordinary  character  of  the 
thoughts  which  find  utterance  in  verse,  now  exquisitely  melodious, 
now  complicated  and  contorted  almost  beyond  ready  comprehension 
in  rhyme  or  sense,  but  never  really  harsh,  and  always  possessing,  in 
actual  presence  or  near  suggestion,  a  poetical  quality  which  no 
English  poet  has  ever  surpassed.  It  is  from  these  poems  that  the 
famous  epithet  "  metaphysical "  (which  Jonson  not  too  happily,  and 
with  a  great  confusion  between  Donne  and  Cowley,  applied  to  the 
whole  school)  is  derived ;  and  as  applied  to  Donne  it  is  not  in- 
appropriate. For,  behind  every  image,  every  ostensible  thought  of 
his,  there  are  vistas  and  backgrounds  of  otlier  thoughts  dimly  vanish- 
ing, with  glimmers  in  them  here  and  there,  into  the  depths  of  the 
final  enigmas  of  life  and  soul.  Passion  and  meditation,  tlie  two 
avenues  into  this  region  of  doubt  and  dread,  are  tried  by  Donne  in 
the  two  sections  respectively,  and  of  each  he  has  the  key.  Nor,  as 
he  walks  in  them  with  eager  or   solemn  tread,  are  light   and   music 


568  LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE  bk.  vi 

wanting,  the  light  the  most  unearthly  that  ever  played  round  a  poet's 
head,  the  music  not  the  least  heavenly  that  he  ever  cauglit  and 
transmitted  to  his  readers.  If  this  language  seem  more  highflown 
than  is  generally  used  in  this  book  or  than  is  appropriate  to  it,  the 
e.xcuse  must  be  that  every  reader  of  Donne  is  either  an  adept  or  an 
outsider  born,  and  that  it  is  impossible  for  the  former  to  speak  in 
words  understanded  of  the  latter. 


CHAPTER  IV 

JACOBEAN  PROSE  —  SECULAR 

Bacon— His  life  — His  writings  — His  style  — His  use  of  figures  — His  rhetorical 
quality  —  Jonson's  prose  —  The  Discoveries  —  Their  essay-nature — Protean 
appearances  of  essay  —  Overbiiry's  Characters  —  The  Character  generally  — 
Burton  —  The  Anatomy  —  His  "melancholy"  —  His  style  —  Selden  —  The 
Authorised  Version  —  Minors 

The  central  figure  in  prose  of  the  entire  Jacobean  period  is  un- 
doubtedly Francis  Bacon. i  He  holds  this  position  a  little  in  spite 
of  himself;  for  it  was  his  own  opinion,  apparently  deliberate  and 
persistent,  that  English  was  an  untrustworthy  make- 
shift, likely  to  play  tricks  to  any  book  written  in  it,  and 
that  the  only  secure  medium  for  posterity  was  Latin.  And  he  also 
holds  it  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  had  more  than  reached  middle 
life  at  the  date  of  the  King's  accession,  and  that  his  one  contribution 
of  unquestioned  importance  to  English  literature,  as  distinguished 
from  English  science  and  philosophy,  was  first  published  long  before 
that  time.  For  the  really  characteristic  editions  of  the  Essays  — 
those  which  are  not  shorthand  bundles  of  aphorisms,  but  works  of 
prose  art  —  date  much  later,  and  the  whole  complexion  of  Bacon's 
mind  and  of  his  matured  style  has  the  cast  of  Jacobean  thought  and 
manner. 

He  was  born  in  January  1561,  the  son  of  Sir  Nicholas  Bacon, 
Lord  Keeper  under  Elizabeth,  and  of  Anne  Cooke,  whose  sister 
married  Lord  Burleigh.     His  elder  brother,  Anthony,  a  man  of  weak 

health,    who    died    in    middle    life,    having    talents    and       „.  ,.. 

,  ,  ,  ,  1-11  His  life. 

knowing   Montaigne,    has    been   thought    not   unlikely   to 

have  suggested  the  Essay  to  his  junior.     Francis  was  sent  first,  at 

the  age  of  twelve,  to  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  then,  when  he  was 

1  The  editions  of  Bacon,  both  complete  and  partial,  are  extremely  numerous, 
those  of  the  Essays,  the  work  which  here  chiefly  concerns  us,  especially  so.  Of 
thf-se  latter  may  he  singled  out  the  "  Harmony  "  of  the  various  issues  by  Mr.  Arber 
in  his  Reprints,  and  the  excellent  annotated  library  edition  by  the  late  Rev.  S.  H. 
Reynolds  (Oxford,  1890). 

2B  369 


370   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN   LITERATURE   bk.  vi 

fifteen,  to  Gray's  Inn,  and  spent  three  years,  till  1579,  at  Paris  in  the 
suite  of  Sir  Amyas  Paulet.  He  was  called  to  the  Bar  in  1582,  and 
became  a  bencher  of  his  Inn  in  1586.  Having  his  fortune  to  make, 
he  had  already  entered  Parliament  as  member  for  Melcombe  Regis 
in  1584,  sitting  afterwards  for  Taunton  and  Middlesex.  He  had 
early  been  rather  a  favourite  with  the  Queen,  but  he  probably  did 
not  ingratiate  himself  further  with  her  by  elaborating  arguments 
for  toleration  and  comprehension  in  ecclesiastical  matters,  and  in 
1593  he  actually  took  the  Opposition  side  in  the  House.  He  had 
become  the  friend  of  Essex,  but  the  favourite,  either  owing  to  Bacon's 

(want   of  courtiership    or    to   secret    opposition    from    Burleigh,   who 
seems  (or  at  least  was  thought  by  his  nephew)  to  have  been  jealous 
of  him,  could  not  do  much,  though  he   gave    Bacon    a  very  valuable 
present   of  land.      After   Essex's   disgrace,   Bacon   acted  as   counsel 
against  him  in  each  of  the  trials,  for  misconduct  in  Ireland  and  for 
rebellion.     But  this   baseness,  which,  after   much    dust    of  argument, 
is  now  practically  admitted,  did  him  very  little  good,  and  it  was  not 
;ill  after  the  accession  of  James  that  he  received  any  solid  proofs  of 
■oyal  favour.     He  was  knighted,   received   a   small   pension,   and   in 
1607  became    Solicitor-General.     This   post    he   held   six   years,  and 
became  Attorney-General  in  1613,  a  privy  councillor  some  years  later, 
and  in    161 7  Lord   Keeper.     Next  year  (all  these  latter  preferments 
came  to  him  from  the  favour  of  Buckingham)   he  obtained  the  still 
higher  dignity  of  Chancellor  and  a  peerage  as  Baron  Verulam.     He 
was  afterwards  created  Viscount  St.    Albans,   but  was   never,  as   he 
was  once  commonly,  and  still  is   sometimes,  called,  "Lord  Bacon." 
He  held  the  Chancellorship  for  more  than  three  years,  and  then  fell 
a  victim  to  the  jealousy  of  the  Commons,  the  enmity  of  Sir  Edward 
Coke,  the  desertion  of  Buckingham,  and,  it  must  be  added,  his  own 
malpractices.     He  was  accused,  and  practically  pleaded  guilty  to  the 
charge,  of  taking  gifts  from  suitors,  or  at  least  allowing  his  servants 
to  take  them,  and  the  Peers  sentenced  him  to  a  fine  of  ^40,000,  im- 
prisonment, and  exile  from  court.     The  fine  was  remitted,  and  he  was 
not  long  kept  in  prison,  but  his  banishment  was  maintained,  and  he 
lived  thenceforward  chiefly  at  his  seat  of  Gorhambury.     He    caught 
cold  in   March    1626  and  died  at  Lord  Arundel's  house  near   High- 
gate.     His  character  does  not   much  concern  us,  but  there    is   little 
doubt  that,  though  personally  good-natured,  he  had  in  a  rather  eminent 
degree   all   the   bad   qualities   of    Renaissance   politicians    except   de- 
bauchery, and  perhaps  vindictiveness.     He  was  profuse  and  greedy, 
ostentatious  and  mean,  a  born  intriguer  and  tuft-hunter,  and  though 
it  is  probably  a  mistake  to  represent  him  as  completely  sympathising 
with  the  Machiavelian  doctrine  of  ihe  right  of  the  brave,  bold,  and 
.cunning  man  to  attain   his   ends    by  any  means,  he   had   much    too 


CHAP.  IV  JACOBEAN   PROSE  — SECULAR  371 

strong  a  tinge  of  this  doctrine.  Nor  can  it  be  said  that,  except 
scientific  enthusiasm  and  a  certain  patriotism,  he  displays  many  of 
the  nobler  sentiments. 

The  other  vexed  question,  of  the  precise  nature  and  amount  of 
his  philosophical  acquirements,  concerns  us,  if  possible,  even  less, 
and  we  have  to  deal  with  him  only  as  a  great  English  prose-writer. 
In  this  capacity  he  published,  in  1597,  his  first  small 
batch  of  very  succinct  Essays  (a  work  increased  by  suc- 
cessive instalments  to  fifty-eight  of  a  much  more  elaborate  character 
in  1625);  the  Advancement  of  Learning  in  1605;  and  in  the  last 
years  of  his  life,  after  his  disgrace,  the  History  of  Henry  F//.,  The 
New  Atlantis,  and  some  Apophthegms,  besides  some  other  chiefly 
minor  works.  His  philosophical  and  scientific  treatises  were  almost 
all  written  in  Latin,  in  which  language  he  even  published  an  en- 
larged edition  of  the  Advancement  under  the  title  of  De  Augmentis 
Scientiarnm. 

It  is  at  once  true  of  Bacon  that  no  man  has  a  more  distinct  style 
than  he  has,  and  that  no  man's  style  is  more  characteristic  of  its 
age  than  his.  It  has,  indeed,  been  attempted  to  show  that  he  had 
more  than  one  style  ;  but  this  does  not  come  to  much 
more  than  saying  that'  he  wrote  on  a  considerable  number 
of  different  subjects,  and  that,  like  a  reasonable  man,  he  varied  his 
expression  to  suit  them.  Always  when  he  is  most  himself — in  the 
Essays  as  well  as  in  the  Advancement  of  Learning,  in  the  Henry 
V/I.  as  well  as  in  any  other  English  work  —  we  come  sooner  or  later 
on  certain  manners  which  are  almost  unmistakable,  and  which, 
though  in  part  possessed  in  common  with  other  men  of  the  time, 
are  in  part  quite  idiosyncratic.  All  Jacobean  authors,  and  Bacon 
among  them,  interlard  their  English  with  scraps  of  Latin,  and  con- 
stantly endeavour  to  play  in  their  English  context  on  the  Latin  uses 
of  words.  All  aim  first  of  all  at  what  is  called  pregnancy,  and  attain 
that  pregnancy  by  a  free  indulgence  in  conceit.  Few,  despite  the 
stateliness  which  they  aff"ect,  have  any  objection  to  those  "jests  and 
clinches"  which  even  Jonson  seems  to  have  tliought  of  as  interfering 
with  the  "noble  censoriousncss  "  of  Bacon  himself.  In  all  a  certain 
de.sultoriness  of  detail,  illustration,  and  the  like  —  as  if  the  writer  had 
so  full  a  mind  and  commonplace-book  that  he  could  not  help  empty- 
ing botli  almost  at  random  —  is  combined  with  a  pretty  close  faculty  of 
argument,  derived  from  the  still  prevailing  familiarity  with  scholastic 
logic. 

But  Bacon,  in  addition  to  these  characteristics,  which  he  shares 
with  others,  has  plenty  of  liis  own.  His  sentences,  indeed,  do  not 
attain  to  that  extraordinary  music  wliich  is  seen  in  some  of  Brooke 
and   Donne,  which  is   not   wanting  in  Burton,  which  is  the  glory  of 


1 


372   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE   bk.  vi 

Sir  Thomas  Browne,  the  saving  grace  of  Milton's  best  prose,  and  the 
almost  over-lavished  and  sometimes  frittered  away  charm  of  Jeremy 
Taylor.  He  had  begun,  as  we  see  in  the  earliest  form  of  the  Essays, 
with  a  very  curt,  stenographic,  sharply  antithetic  form ;  and  though 
he  suppled  and  relaxed  this  afterwards,  he  never  quite  attained  the 
full,  languorous  grace  of  Donne  or  Browne.  But  he  became  gorgeous 
enough  later,  the  glitter  of  his  antithesis  being  saved  from  any  tinsel 
or  "snip-snap"  effect  by  the  fulness  of  his  thought,  and  his  main 
purport  being  by  degrees  set  off  with  elaborate  paraphernalia  of 
ornament  and  imagery.  In  the  successive  versions  of  the  Essays  we 
see  the  almost  skeleton  forms  of  the  earliest  filling  out,  taking  on 
trappings,  acquiring  flesh  and  colour  and  complexion  in  the  later, 
while  in  some  of  the  latest,  the  well-known  ones  on  Building  and  on 
Gardens  especially,  the  singular  interest  in  all  sorts  of  minute  material 
facts  which  distinguishes  him  comes  in  with  a  curiously  happy  effect. 
Both  the  pieces  just  mentioned  are  much  more  like  description  of 
scenery  in  the  most  elaborate  romance  than  like  ideal  suggestions 
for  practical  carrying  out,  drawn  up  by  a  grave  lawyer,  statesman, 
and  philosopher. 

No  point  in  Bacon's  literary  manner  is  more  characteristic,  both 
of  his  age  and  of  himself,  than  his  tendency  to  figure.  Such  a 
sentence  as  this  in  the  Advancemetii,  "Nay,  further,  in  general  and 

in  sum,  certain  it  is  that  Veritas  and  Bo  nit  as  differ  but  as 
figure."      the  sea!  and  the  print ;  for  truth  points  goodness  ;  and  they 

be  but  the  clouds  of  error  which  descend  in  the  storms 
of  passions  and  perturbations,"  —  would  show  itself  to  any  person 
of  experience  as  almost  certainly  written  between  1580  and  1660  in 
the  first  place,  while  in  the  second  it  would  at  least  suggest  itself  to 
such  a  person  as  being  most  probably  Bacon's.  Although  all  the 
world  in  his  day  was  searching  for  tropes  and  comparisons  and 
conceits,  the  minds  of  few  were  so  fertile  as  his ;  and  it  is  not  un- 
worthy notice  that  even  the  apparently  bold,  even  startling,  change  of 
metaphor  from  the  "seal"  to  the  "cloud"  is  in  reality  a  much  more 
legitimate  change  than  it  seems. 

It  will  stand  to  reason  that  such  a  style  is  displayed  to  the  best 
possible  advantage  by  bold  and  richly-coloured  surveys  of  science  in 
general,  like  the  Advancement,  or  by  handlings  of  special  points, 
„.    ^      .    ,  like    the    Essays.      Whether    Bacon   was   really   <^  deep," 

His  rhetorical      vu  •        i  i     ,  •  i  ,        ,  ,  , 

quality.       either   m    knowledge   or   m    thought,  has   been    disputed; 

but  he  was  certainly  one  of  the  greatest  rhetoricians,  in 

the  full   and  varied  sense  of  rhetoric,  that   ever   lived.      His   know- 

j£dg£^eep  _or  not,  was-Jieii--SLide,  ever  ready  to  his  hand  for  pur- 

poses  more  often  perhaps  of  djvagat]mi   than  of  penetration.      His 

command  of  phrase  was  extraordinary.^    No  one  knows  better  than 


CHAP.  IV  JACOBEAN   PROSE  — SECULAR  373 

he  either  how  to  leave  a  single  word  to  produce  all  its  effect  by 
using  it  in  some  slightly  uncommon  sense,  and  setting  the  wits  at 
work  to  discern  and  adjust  this ;  or  how  to  unfold  all  manner  of 
applications  and  connotations,  to  open  all  inlets  of  side-view  and 
perspective.  That  he  dazzles,  amuses,  half-delusively  suggests,  stim- 
ulates, provokes,  lures  on,  much  more  than  he  proves,  edifies, 
instructs,  satisfies,  is  indeed  perfectly  true.  But  the  one  class  of  per- 
formances is  at  least  as  suitable  for  literary  exhibition  as  the  other, 
and  Bacon  goes  through  the  exhibition  with  a  gusto  and  an  effect 
which  can  hardly  be  too  much  admired.  Fertile  in  debate  as  almost 
all  his  qualities  have  proved,  there  is  at  least  one  of  them  about 
which  there  can  be  little  difference  of  opinion,  and  that  is  his  in- 
tense literacy  faculty.  It  was  entirely  devoted  to  and  displayed  in 
prose  —  Hewrote  very  Httle  verse,  and  that  little  is  nothing  out  of 
the  way.  ^But  in  prose  rhetoric  —  in  the  usP)  tl-i^t-  ig  tn  f^^y^  of  Ian- . 
guage  to  dazzle  and  persuade,  not  to  convmcc; — he  has  few  rivals  and 
no  supenors^In  Khglisli.  His  matter  is  sometimes  not  very  great, 
arrd—jrhnest-ahvays  seems  better  than  it  is,  but  this  very  facf  is  the  ~ 
greatest  glory  of  his  manner. . 

In  those  characters  of  style  which,  not  to  the  utter  exclusion  of 
chronological  order,  but  with  a  certain  prerogative  right  over  it, 
determine  the  arrangement  of  literary  history,  three  writers  hold 
with  Bacon  in  Jacobean  prose  the  place  which  we  have  assigned  to 
Donne,  to  Jonson,  and  to  Spenser  after  his  death  in  Jacobean  verse. 
Of  these  Donne  and  Jonson  again  appear,  a  duplication  of  itself 
sufficient  to  prove  the  liigh  and  too  long  ignored  position  of  these 
writers  in  English  literature;  the  fourth  is  Robert  Burton.  But 
Donne,  for  sufficient  reasons,  will  be  kept  to  the  next  chapter.  We 
shall  deal  with  Jonson  and  with  Burton  here. 

The  independence  and  the  importance  of  Ben's  position  are 
shown,  among  other  things,  by  the  fact  that,  while  in  the  general 
history  of  English  prose  he  makes'  a  distinct  advance,  he  appears 
among  the  writers  of  his  own  time  as  isolated,  as,  indeed, 

....  „,  f  r         1  1  Jonson's  prose. 

almost  reactionary.  1  he  gorgeousness  of  Jacobean  phrase, 
the  involution  of  Jacobean  thought,  tlie  tricks  of  both  which  al- 
most approach  the  heraldic  sin  of  "colour  upon  colour,"  do  not 
appear  in  him;  he  is  of  his  time  chiefly,  if  not  only,  by  his  learning 
and  by  the  compression  and_pregnancy  of  his  styrerin  which  latter_ 
poTITTs  lie" approaches  and  sometimes  almost  excels  Bacon  in  his 
rt^est-serried  and  least  ornate  moments^  Unfortunately,  •  the  amounF 
of^fonlTon'.^  prose  that  we  have  is  by  no  means  large,  some  having 
certainly,  and  much  proljably,  perished  (with  verse  as  well)  in  a  fire 
which  destroyed  the  contents  of  his  study.  Besides  prefaces,  dedica- 
tions, and  the  like,  wc  have  only  an  /:;/!^//s/i   Grammar^  valuable,  but' 


374   J-ATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE   bk.  vi 

of  course  not  for  points  of  style,  and  the  invaluable  collection  of  notes, 
short  essays,  and  fiensecs  which,  never  having  been  published  in 
his  lifetime,  goes  by  the  alternative  titles  of  Sylva,  Expiorata,  Timber, 
or  Discoveries  made  upon  Men  and  Matter  —  the  most  usual,  and 
perhaps  the  best,  appellation  being  simply  l^iiumOML- 

These  notes,  171  in  number,  each  titled  with  a  short  Latin  head- 
ing, and  varying  in  length  from  three  or  four  lines  to  the  bulk 
of  a  good  short  essay,  liiavemuch  superficial  and  some  rea2j:esem- 

blance  to  the  work  of  Bacon,  whose  intimate  and,_as  far 
Vis^vertes.   ^^  '^^  ""^'^^  i"  ^^^  nature,  admiring  friend  Ben  was.     But  a 

minuter  examination  shows  that,  except  the  compressed 
and  pregnant  tendency  mentioned  above,  there  are  few  points  of  real 
likeness,  and  that  Ben  belongs  to  an  entirely  different  school  from 
that  of  the  Chancellor.  Tj}e_iicense  of  quip  and  jest  is  absfinjt ;  the 
coruscating  metaphors,  more  brilliant  perhaps  than  luminous,  but 
brilliant  enough,  are  absent  likewise ;  the  volleying  antithesis,  though 
present,  is  more  heavily  shotted  and  less  often  blank  cartridge ;  the 
unusual,  and  intentionally  unusual,  employment  of  Latin  or  Latinised 
terms  is  less  for.jirnament  and  mora,  for  use.  In  short,  Ben  Jonson, 
allowing  for  his  age  and  circumstances,  belongs  to  the  plainj_jiot 
the  ornate,  section  of  prose-writers ;  he  is  at  daggers  drawn  with 
Euphuism  in  the  larger  as  well  as  in  the  smaller  sense.  Yet  he  does 
not  revert  to  or  imitate  that  kind  of  plainness  which  Ascham  set  in 
order,  and  which  Hooker,  by  sheer  genius  for  proportion  and  harmony, 
made  more  elegant  than  ornateness  itself.  I  He  advances  upon  it ; 
we  find  in  him  distinct  shadows  before,  echoes  in  anticipation  of,  the 
plain  style  as  it  was  to  be  reformed  by  Dryden,  and  to  continue  till 
the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  with  sentences  of  moderate 
length,  symmetrically  balanced,  deriving  little  appeal  from  abundance 
of  antithetic  adjectives,  but  with  the  antithesis  promoting,  not  obscur- 
ing, character  and  directness.  I  Not,  of  course,  that  Jonson  wholly 
escapes  the  figurative  passion  01  the  time.  When  he  speaks  of  man 
"making  a  little  winter  love  in  a  dark  corner,"  we  hear  the  contem- 
porary and  the  friend  of  Shakespeare  and  Bacon.  In  such  a  sentence 
as  "In  being  able  to  counsel  others  a  man  must  be  furnished  with  a 
universal  store  in  himself  to  the  knowledge  of  all  Nature ;  that  is  the 
matter  of  seed-plot ;  there  are  the  seats  of  all  argument  and  inven- 
tion," we  have  the  mixed  style ;  the  first  half  might  have  been 
written  by  the  other  Johnson,  or  by  any  eighteenth-century  writer  of 
the  higher  class ;  the  second  brings  us  back  to  the  fanciful  and 
dreamy  seventeenth.  But  often  for  whole  sentences,  and  not  very 
seldom  for  whole  passages,  the  nervous,  uncoloured,  to  some  extent 
sterilised,  fashion  of  the  prose  of  1660-1800  appears  with  hardly  a 
touch  of  archaism  about  it.'     And  we  must  remember  that  Jonsdn's 


CHAP.  IV  JACOBEAN   PROSE  — SECULAR  375 

influence  continued  mighty  for  at  least  two  generations  after  his 
death ;  that  it  was  very  strong  with  Dryden  himself,  the  literary 
prophet  not  merely  of  the  second  of  these  generations,  but  of  the 
whole  eighteenth  century. 

Moreover,  the  matter  of  these  Discoveries,  as  well  as  the  apho- 
ristic or  axiomatic  form  of  much  of  them,  was  such  as  was  likely  to 
impress  in  their  style  on  the  more  thoughtful  readers,  those  who 
were  actual  or  possible  writers  themselves.  They  indeed 
illustrate  (though  they  do  not  bear  the  name  and  contain  essay-nature, 
one  direct  gibe '  at  the  form)  the  growing  attraction  and 
importance  of  the  essay,  which  Bacon  alone  had  as  yet  adopted  by  its 
own  title,  but  which,  as  we  shall  see  both  in  this  chapter  and  in  others, 
was,  either  under  its  own  name  or  under  others,  gradually  to  absorb  a 
greater  and  greater  share  of  the  attention  of  prose-writers  and  prose- 
readers.  The  farrago  of  the  book  is  of  the  most  miscellaneous 
character.  Ethical  remarks  are,  of  course,  numerous, — the  seven- 
teenth century  was  nothing  if  not  ethical, — -but  they  are  found  side  by 
side  with  a  body  of  discourses  upon  rhetoric,  with  valuable  passages 
of  criticism  on  individual  writers,  —  Spenser,  Shakespeare,  Bacon, 
Montaigne,  and  of  course  the  ancients,  —  with  a  remarkable  tractate 
in  little  on  education,  and  with  notes  on  arts,  politics,  history. 
Indeed,  Ben  is  the  essayist  whom  he  affects  to  slight,  and  his  adoption 
of  the  plainer  style  may  without  too  much  fancifulness  be  taken  as  a 
sort  of  pointing  of  the  vane  in  the  direction  almost  of  Addison,  cer- 
tainly of  Dryden. 

The  temptation  of  the  essay,  though  under  another  name,  shows 
itself  as  strongly,  and  with  not  less  literary  influence,  though  with  far 
less  literary  accomplishment,  in  the  famous  Characters  of  Sir  Thomas 
Overbury.^      Their    author    was    a    man    oy    no    means       Protean 
specially    estimable     or     specially     amiable,    but     recom-    appearances 
mended  in  the  first  place  by  his  performance  in  a  kind      °  ^^^^y- 
which  was  of  growing  popularity,  in  the  second  by  his  miserable  end. 
He  was  born  of  a  respectable  family  in  Warwickshire  in   1581,  went 
to   Queen's    College,    Oxford,    in    1595,   took   his    Bachelor's    degree, 
and   passed   to   the   Middle    Temple.      He    travelled,   and   .seems   to 
have  been  a  prolixe  of  Robert  Cecil,  afterwards  Lord  Salisbury,  but 
unluckily  for  himself  became  connected  later  witli  the  favourite  Carr, 
afterwards     Earl    of    Somerset.      He    was    knighted    in    1608,    and 

1  "  Such  {i.e.  desultory  and  ill-digested]  are  all  the  essayists,  even  their  master 
Montaigne." 

2  Works,  ed.  Rimbault  (London,  1856).  The  late  Mr.  H.  Morley  published 
in  the  "  Carisbrooke  Library  "  a  very  interesting  collection  of  Character-  Writers  of 
the  Seventeenth  Century,  including  Overbury,  Earle,  Butler,  and  much  minor 
matter. 


376   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE  bk.  vi 


attained   a   very   great    reputation   for  ability.      But   he    set    himself 
against    his    patron's    marriage    with    Lady    Frances     Howard,    the 
divorced  Countess  of  Essex,  one  of  the  worst  women  of  whom  history 
gives  record ;  and  having,  as  it  seems,  also  contrived  to  offend  Anne  of 
Denmark,  was  sent  in  May  1613  to  the  Tower,  nominally  for  refus- 
ing an  ambassadorship.      For  about  four   months   attempts,  equally 
bungling    and    remorseless,   were    made    to    poison    him,   and    after 
suffering  horrible  tortures  from  them  he  is  said  to  have  been  finished 
by  vitriol.     The  matter  came  to  light  some  three  years  afterwards,  and 
though  the  chief  criminals,  Carr  and  his  wife,  escaped  with  imprison- 
ment, divers  under-strappers,  including  the  Lieutenant  of  the  Tower 
and  Mrs.  Anne  Turner,  famous  for  her  yellow  starched  ruffs,  were 
executed,   Bacon  conducting  the  prosecution.      But  a  great  deal  re- 
mained   unexplained,   and    suspicion,   which    has    never    been   quite 
removed  or  at  all  confirmed,  attached  to  the  King's  physician.  Dr. 
(afterwards  Sir)  Theodore  Mayerne,  and  to  the  King  himself. 
/    This,  however,  is  matter  of  history,  not  matter  of  literature,  and  it 
As  only  mentioned  here  because  Overbury's  singular  promotion  first, 
/  and  his  horrible  and  apparently  mysterious  fate  afterwards,  no  doubt 
/   helped    the   reputation  of  his  works.     Yet   intriguing,  braggart,  and 
I    insolent  as  he  seems  to   have  been,  he  must  have  had  that  art  to 
I    divine  the  tendencies  of  the   time  which  frequently  belongs  to  men 
\  of  the   world.     His    Observations  on   the  Low    Coiuntries    (1609)    is 
*Tr  fair  ordinary  State  paper  of  the  old-fashioned  kind ;    his    Wife,  a 
poem  in  sixains,  seems  to  have  acquired   interest  from  the  probably 
false    notion   that  it   was  written   to   discourage  Carr  from  marrying 
Lady  Frances  ;    his  Crumbs  fallen  from  King  James'' s  Table  purport 
to  be,  and  probably  are,  'mere  reports  of  the  utterances  of  the  wisest 
fool  in  Christendom.     They  are  chiefly  interesting  because  they  con- 
tain the  crude  matter  of  Rochester's  saying  on  the  King's  grandson : 
"  Some  men  never  speak  a  wise  word,  yet  do  wisely ;  and  some,  on 
the  other  side,  never  do  a  wise  deed  and  yet  speak  wisely."     But  he 
would  now  be  entirely  forgotten  if  it  were  not  for  his  Characters. 

They  were  not  —  indeed,  none  of  his  works  seem  to  have  been  — 
printed  during  his  lifetime,  and  from  the  first  they  bear  ascription  to 
"  Sir  Thomas  Overbury  and  his  friends^''  while  in  successive  impres- 
sions  from    1614    they   were    increased   in    number   from 
CharacUrs.   twenty-one  to  a  hundred,  including   divers  specimens  of 
the    old    "  News    from    this    or   that    place "   which    had 
been    common    in    the    Elizabethan    pamphlet.      The   most    famous 
pieces    tliat    are   at   least    probably   Overbury's    own   are   the   "Milk 
Maid,"   constantly  quoted  in  anthologies,  the  ''Affectate   Traveller," 
and    the   "Mere    Fellow    of    a    College."     With    the    limitations   to 
be    observed    of    the     Character    generally,    they    are    very    closely 


CHAP.  IV  JACOBEAN   PROSE  — SECULAR  377 


connected  with  the  pamphlet  ah'eady  noticed,  and  were  continued 
'  throughout  this  reign  and  later.  But  they  have  some  characteristics 
which,  when  we  compare  them  with  Earle  and  other  followers  (see  next 
Book),  seem  likely  to  be  Overbury's  own  —  a  sharp  observation 
expressed  with  antithetical  conceit,  a  hard,  presumptuous,  unamiable 
wit,  and  a  general  superciliousness  which  accounts  in  part  for  Over- 
bury's  fate. 

The  introduction  of  the  Character,  however,  is  a  very  important 
thing.  It  came,  of  course,  from  Theophrastus.  and  during  the  whole 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  in  France  as  well  as  in  England,  indeed 
all  over  Europe,  continued  to  be  an  exceedingly  favourite  ,j.^^ 
form  of  the  essay,  which  was  in  so  many  ways  over-  Character 
running  literature.  "  Hmnours "  in  prose  de/ks  lettres  senera  y. 
as  well  as  in  drama  were  the  fashion  of  the  time,  and  the  very  staple 
and  substance  of  the  Character  is  a  "humour"  in  the  seventeenth- 
century  sense.  The  advantage  of  the  style  was  that  it  at  least 
invited,  and,  as  we  shall  see  in  Earle's  case,  successfully,  to  accurate 
siudy  and  artistic  reproduction  of  its  sufeject ;  the  disadvantage  that 
-it  lent  itself,  to  hardening  of  types  —  An  Amorist,  A  Braggadochio,  A 
Pedant,  and  hundreds  more  —  to  dressing  them  up  simply  out  of  the 
writers  own  head,  without  any  real  induction  from  individuals,  and 
also  to  certain  conventionalities  of  expression./^ In  Overbury  partic- 
ularly the  forcing  of  Euphuist  imagery  to  enliven  the  phrase,  and 
the  abuse  of  antithesis  to  give  it  point  and  "snap,"  are  unmistakable, 
and  to  readers  not  of  the  time  excessively  tedious.  The  only  thing 
to  be  said  is  that  these  excesses  in  one  direction  or  another  are 
peculiar  to  no  time,  and  that  from  each,  bad  as  it  is  in  itself, 
ingredients  of  universal  style  have  been  picked  up.  The  antithetic 
_and  pointed  cliaracter  helped  to  crisp  style,  to  save  it  from  languor 
and  complexity,  as  well  as  constantly  to  invite  the  writer  to  study 
from  the  life. 

More  generally  recognised  than  these,  and  perhaps  equally 
significant  to  the  general  tendencies  of  the  time,  but  with  less  direct 
influence  on    tlie   form,  though    he   had    enormous    influence    on  the 

matter,  of  English   prose,  is   Robert   Burton.     We  do  not 

1  iri-,  .,,  .  Burton. 

know  as  much  of  this  author  as  might  be  expected, 
seeing  that  he  was  not  of  the  elusive  race  of  London  Bohemians,  but 
resident  in  a  great  University  during  almost  the  whole  of  his  life,  and 
that  his  work  was  at  once,  and  with  men  of  letters  enduringly,  i)opuiar. 
He  was  born  in  Leicestershire  of  a  good  family  in  1577,  and  after 
education  at  tlie  grammar  sclioois  of  Nuneaton  and  Sutton  Coldfield, 
went  to  Brasenose  College,  Oxford,  in  1593.  After  six  years  he  was 
elected  to  a  studentship  at  Christ  Church,  which  he  held  till  his  death 
in  1641,  as  well  as  tlic  livings  uf  St.  Thomas  in  the  University  town, 


5/S   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE   BK.  vi 


and  of  Segrave  in  Leicestershire.  He  appears  never  to  have  resided 
out  of  Oxford  after  his  entrance  at  Brasenose,  so  that  he  had  some- 
thing like  fifty  years  of  uninterrupted  study  to  provide  him  with  the 
extraordinary  learning  that  appears  everywhere  in  his  great  and  only 
work,  The  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,^  first  published  in  1621,  and 
much  altered  and  increased  in  successive  editions  during  the  last 
twenty  years  of  his  life.  His  death  has  sometimes  been  attributed 
to  suicide,  but  on  merely  fanciful  grounds,  and  without  any  direct 
evidence  to  that  effect. 

The  Anatomy  of  Melancholy  has  sometimes  been  thought  to  have 
been  suggested  by  a  book  called  The  A  fiat  0  my  of  Httmours,-  w<!ni\.Q.n 
by  one  Simeon  Grahame,  and  published  at  Edinburgh  in  1609. 
Examination  of  this,  however,  shows  absolutely  no 
A^^omy.  similarity  of  style,  thought,  or  treatment,  Grahame's 
book  being  in  most  respects  similar  to  the  Elizabethan 
pamphlet  in  a  sort  of  rambling  railing  at  actual  or  supposed  vice  and 
folly,  with  free  quotation  in  verse  and  prose.  The  title  may  to  a 
careless  observer  seem  more  suggestive,  but  the  fact  is  that  the  term 
"  anatomy "'  (as  it  needs  no  more  than  two  such  well-known  examples 
as  Lyly's  Anatomy  of  IVit  and  Stubbes's  Anatomy  of  Abuses  to 
show)  had  been  a  bookmaker's  catchword  for  more  than  a  generation 
before  Burton  wrote.  Indeed,  there  are  very  few  books  in  literature 
more  original  than  his,  in  that  best  sort  of  originality  which,  exhibit- 
ing certain  general  features  of  time  and  race,  stamps  these  with  an 
individual  and  unmistakable  expression. 

The  two  featureswhich  are  in  a  sense  common  to  Burton  and  to 
^11  the  men  of  his  tmTe~are"Tirs~tearning  and  his  melancholx-  The 
former,  in  prose  and  verse,  in  matter  ostensibly  serious  and  matter 
ostensibly  light,  has  been  already  sufficiently  shown  to  be  the  Jacobean 
characteristic.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  any  age  since,  and 
it  is  certain  that  no  modern  age  before,  has  had  so  much  solid 
reading  ;  for  the  range  of  mediaeval  possibilities  in  this  respect  was  very 
much  narrower,  and  if  modern  reading  has  still  further  widened,  the 
widening  is,  it  may  be  suspected,  more  than  made  up  by  scrappiness 
and  want  of  depth.  "  Democritus  Junior,"  the  nom  de  guerre  which 
Burton  chose,  has,  in  the  enormous  and  most  carefully  arranged 
treatise  which  he  has  devoted  nominally  to  Melancholy  and  its  cure, 
but  really  to  the  life  and  thought  of  man,  amassed  such  an  extraor- 
dinary amount  of  reading  that  probably  no  follower  of  his  has  ever 
tracked  him  completely  through  the  maze  of  canonists,  physicians, 
historians  of  the  Middle  Age  and  Early  Renaissance,  not  to  mention 

1  Constantly  reprinted,  but  never  thoroughly  edited.     There  is  no  handsomer 
or  better  form  than  that  of  Shilleto  and  Bullen  (3  vols.  London,  1893). 

2  Reprinted  for  the  Bannatyne  Club  (Edinburgh,  1830). 


CHAP.  IV  JACOBEAN   PROSE  — SECULAR  379 

almost  the  whole  of  the  classics  and  a  very  considerable  number  of 
his  own  contemporaries.  He  shows  his  learning,  not  by  mere  refer- 
ences, though  of  these,  both  looser  and  exacter,  he  is  singularly 
profuse,  but  by  a  unique  tissue  of  actual  citation,  or  paraphrase,  or 
both  combined,  which  he  does  not  lay  upon  his  own  canvas  in  the 
ordinary  fashion  of  quoting,  but  weaves  and  infuses  into  it  in  the 
strangest  and  subtlest  manner. 

Nor  is  his  "  melancholy "  itself  much  less  a  characteristic. 
There  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  it  was,  despite  Ben  Jonson's 
e-Kcellent  anticipatory  raillery  in  Every  Man  in  his  Humour^  affected, 
and  even  that  raillery  itself  shows  that  it  was  a  popular 
symptom,  thought  worthy  of  affectation  by  fools,  in  the  cholyf"^"' 
wise  men  of  the  time.  It  is  by  no  means  wanting  in 
Ben  himself;  it  is  the  special  mark  of  Donne,  perhaps  the  most 
gifted  man  of  letters  next  to  Shakespeare  whom  we  notice  in  this 
Book,  and  of  Browne,  the  equal  of  the  most  gifted  that  we  shall  have 
to  notice  in  the  next.  Even  in  Bacon,  though  kept  back  by  his 
sanguine  philosophical  hopes,  his  personal  ambitions,  and  his  touch  of 
Philistinism,  it  is  not  far  behind  the  foreground,  and  it  is  evident  in 
his  master,  and  the  master  of  many  others  at  this  time  —  Montaigne. 
It  was,  in  fact,  the  natural  reaction  following  upon  the  high  and 
fantastic  hopes  of  the  earlier  Renaissance,  and  ushering  in  the 
prosaic  and  slightly  vulgar  limitation  to  low  aims  of  the  late  seven- 
teenth and  most  of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  Burton  it  shows 
itself  not  so  much  in  the  sense  of  the  unattainable  infinity  of  passion 
which  we  find  in  Donne,  of  the  high  feeling  of  mystery  and  altitudo 
that  we  find  in  Browne,  as  in  a  sort  of  quiet  but  intense  taediutn 
i;itae  —  a  wandering  of  the  soul  from  Dan  to  Beersheba  through  all 
employments,  desires,  pleasures,  and  a  finding  them  barren  except  for 
study,  of  which  in  turn  the  laedinm  is  not  altogether  obscurely 
hinted.  And  it  is  almost  unnecessary  to  add  that  in  Burton,  as  in  all 
the  greatest  men,  except  Milton,  of  the  entire  period  from  1580  to 
1660,  there  is  a  very  strong  dash  of  humour  —  humour  of  a  peculiar 
meditative  sort,  remote  alike  from  grinning  and  from  gnashing  of 
teeth,  though  very  slightly  sardonic  in  its  extreme  quietness  and 
apparent  calm. 

With  writers  of  this  kind,  and  it  may  be  added  pretty  generally 
of  this  time,  it  is  difficult  to  keep  strictly  to  those  considerations  of 
form  and  expression  which  the  history  of  literature  proper  demands, 
so  subtle  is  the  connection  between  their  temper  and  its  ^.  ^  ^^ 
utterance.  But  if  it  were  possible  to  abstract  Burton's 
merely  formal  characteristics,  they  would  still  be  of  the  most  interest- 
ing character.  To  accommodate  the  wide  purpose,  indicate  the 
voluminous  citation  and  allusion,  and  infuse  the  subtle  spirit  already 


3So   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND   JACOBEAN  LITERATURE   bk.  vi 


described  might  seem  almost  impossible,  yet  it  is  done  with  wonder- 
ful success  and  with  such  charm  that  those  who  have  once  acquired, 
or  who  naturally  possess,  the  taste  for  Burton's  style  find  enjoy- 
ment in  it  almost  greater  than  that  given  by  any  other  writer  except 
Sir  Thomas  Browne  himself.  Its  sentences  are  frequently  of  a 
length  daring  even  for  that  age;  and  the  clauses,  largely  consisting 
of  the  illustrative  quotations  or  paraphrases  above  referred  to,  are 
strung  together  with  a  still  more  audacious  looseness,  the  effect  being 
not  unfrequently  that  of  a  man  thinking  aloud  without  taking  the 
trouble  to  insert  the  ordinary  copulas  and  syntactical  mortar.  Yet 
Burton  is  never  obscure,  and  when  he  has  no  need  of  a  long  sentence 
he  can  \\  rite  a  short  one  as  nervous,  as  terse,  as  distinctly  articulated 
as  anything  of  Jonson's  own. 

Like  Burton,  and  even  more  than  Burton,  John  Selden  outlived 
the  reign  of  James ;  but  his  characteristics  are  rather  Jacobean  than 
Caroline,  and  his  most  noteworthy  work  was  written  well  before  the 
accession  of  Charles.  He  was  born  in  1584,  the  son  of 
a  Sussex  yeoman,  was  educated  at  Chichester  and  Oxford, 
and  became  a  famous  "black-letter  lawyer"  in  the  Temple.  His 
political  life  did  not  begin  till  the  next  reign,  and  does  not  greatly  con- 
cern us ;  it  is  enough  to  say  that  he  was  one  of  those  respectable  but 
not  very  statesmanlike  persons  who  undermined  the  royal  authority 
till  they  saw  it  begin  to  totter,  and  then  were  aghast  at  the  tottering 
and  tried  in  vain  to  prop  it  up.  In  1614  he  had  published  his  famous 
treatise  on  Titles  of  Honour,  and  in  1618  his  History  of  Tithes  —  two 
works  of  extraordinary  learning  but  somewhat  cumbrous  in  style. 
He  is  now,  except  as  a  writer  for  reference,  not  reading,  remembered 
almost  entirely  by  his  Table  Talk^  collected  by  his  secretary  and 
published  (1689)  long  after  his  death  in  1654.  This  book  not 
merely  contains  a  great  deal  of  practical  though  slightly  Philistine 
wisdom,  and  a  certain  amount  of  sharp  aphoristic  wit,  but  also  exhibits 
the  same  difference,  when  compared  with  Selden's  published  work,  as 
that  existing  between  the  writings  and  the  sayings  of  Johnson,  to  whom, 
indeed,  though  on  the  other  side  in  political  and  ecclesiastical  beliefs, 
Selden  bore  much  resemblance.  It  is  curious  too  to  compare  the 
book  with  Ben  Jonson's  Discoveries  and  to  see  how  in  each  the  Essay- 
tendency  displays  itself,  many  of  the  sections  in  the  Table  Talk  being, 
in  fact,  essays  in  little. 

Selden  was  no  literary  critic,  and  his  remarks  on  the  Authorised 
Version  of  the  Bible '(161 1)  show  an  extraordinary  insensibility  to  the 
merits  of  that  mighty  book.  That  it  i^  {jlP  g'-»-'*^pgfc  mnnnmpnt.  by  Jat 
nf  Jnmbfnn  prftii*^  thrrp  _;;;ir  be  very  little  doubt,  and   the   objection 

1  Ed.  S.  H.  Reynolds.  Oxford,  1893. 


CHAP.  IV  JACOBEAN   PROSE  — SECULAR  381 


^ich  Seidell  himself  made,  and  which  has  been  rather  iiawisely 
ecKoed  since,  —  that  it  does  not  directly  represent  the  speeck_»t- its 
own  or  any  time^  —  is  entirely  fallacious^  No  good  prose 
styTT  ever  does  represent,  except  in  such  forms  as  ised  Ve"r'sion' 
letter-writing  and  the  dialogue  in  plays  and  novels,  the 
spoken  language  of  its  time,  but  only  a  certain  general  literary  form, 
coloured  and  shaped  not  too  much  by  contemporary  practice.  The 
extraordinary  merits  of  the  Authorised  Version  are  probably  due  to 
the  fact  that  its  authors,  with  almost  more  than  merely  human  good 
sense  of  purpose  and  felicity  of  result,  allowed  the  literary  excellences 
of  the  texts  from  which'  th'ey  worked  —  Hebrew,  Greek,  and  Latin  — 
and  those  of  the  earlier  versions  into  English  from  that  called 
Wyclirs  to  the  Bishop's  Bible,  to  filter  through  their  own  sieve  and 
g^^uire  a  moderate,  bul_Qnly^j.  moderate^  tincture_pf  the  filter  itself 
in  passing..  No  doubt  the  constant  repetition,  universal  till  recently 
and  pretty  general  fortunately  still,  of  the  text  in  the  ears  of  each 
generation  has  had  much  to  do  with  its  prerogative  authority,  and 
still  more  with  the  fact  that  it  still  hardly  seems  archaic.  But  the 
unanimous  opinion  of  the  best  critics  from  generation  to  generation, 
and  still  more  the  utter  shipwreck  of  the  elaborately  foolish  attempt 
to  revise  it  some  years  ago,  are  evidences  of  intrinsic  goodness  which 
will  certainly  be  confirmed  by  every  one  who,  with  large  knowledge 
of  English  at  diflferent  peK^ods,  examines  it  impartially  now.  There 
ifijno  better  English  anywhere  than  the  English  of  the  Bible,  and  one 
^f  its  great  merits  as  English  is  its  retention  of  the  ''  blend  "  character 
of  all  the  truest  English  products. 

Certain  minor  writers  of  James's  reign  have  at  this  time  or  that 
acquired  admission  to  literary  history,  nor  is  it  perhaps  necessary  to 
oust  them.  The  chief  historian  of  the  reign,  next  to  Knolles,  was  Sir 
John  Wayward,  a  lawyer,  who  was  born  in  1564  at  Felix- 
stowe, went  to  Pembroke  College,  Cambridge,  died  two 
years  after  the  accession  of  Charles,  and  wrote  a  History  of  the  First 
Year  of  Henry  /K,  a  History  of  Edward  V/.,  and  other  historical 
and  some  theological  work.  Samuel  Purchas  (1577-1626)  continued 
the  work  of  Richard  Hakluyt  (i 533-1616),  the  great  collector  and 
redactor  of  Elizabethan  voyage  and  travel,  as  editor  and  populariser 
of  geography  with  less,  but  still  considerable,  charm  of  writing;  and 
.Sir  Henry  VVotton,  the  author  of  some  famous  and  charming  poems, 
was  a  good  letter-writer  and  produced  rather  numerous  but  seldom 
singly  important  prose  tractates  on  a  wide  variety  of  subjects. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  GOLDEN  AGE  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PULPIT  —  I 

Great  pulpit  oratory  necessarily  late  —  Function  of  sermons,  1600-1800  —  Andrewes 

—  Ussher  —  Hall  —  Donne 

That  the  title  of  this  chapter  belongs  of  right  to  the  seventeenth 
century  nobody  but  a  paradoxer  is  ever  likely  to  dispute.  Even  the 
eighteenth,  which  exaggerated  the  tendency  of  almost  every  century 

to  look  down  on  its  immediate  predecessor,  had  not  much 
*^'oratSry^''  doubt  about  this.  Nor  will  those  who  have  followed 
necessarily     the  history  here  given  of  English  literature,  and  especially 

of  English  prose,  be  surprised  either  that  the  particular 
development  was  so  late  or  that  it  came  when  it  did.  In  the  first 
place,  it  is  impossible  that  any,  and  especially  that  pulpit,  oratory 
should  be  early,  because  it  requires  the  previous  development  of  a 
varied  prose  style.  Moreover,  the  tradition  of  the  Mediseval  and  early 
Renaissance  Church,  which  made  vernacular  preaching  distinctly  a 
concio  ad  vulgus,  and  encouraged  the  preacher  to  descend  even  to 
horseplay  to  make  himself  intelligible  and  popular,  was  not  very 
favourable  to  the  creation  of  a  pulpit  style  at  once  flexible  and 
dignified.  The  Reformation  brought  little  improvement  at  first,  for 
if  the  audience  were  learned  it  encouraged  a  mere  tissue  of  scholastic 
and  erudite  citation  and  argument,  if  it  were  unlearned  there  was  an 
inducement  to  the  rude  and  often  blasphemous  railing  which  disgraced 
both  sides.  Before  Hooker  there  is  hardly  an  English  preacher 
whose  work  is  of  the  first  class  as  literature.  We  must  go  back  to 
Latimer,  and  earlier  still  to  Fisher,  before  we  find  any  with  such 
pretensions ;  and  Latimer  is  too  homely,  Fisher  too  formal,  and  both 
too  archaic  to  have  them  admitted  except  by  allowance. 

Hooker,  however,  who  did  so  much  for  English,  was  too  much 
occupied  in  writing,  and  during  the  greater  part  of  his  priesthood 
had  too  uneducated  audiences,  to  leave  many  sermons ;  and  the  great 
tradition  of  the  English  pulpit  and  of  controversial  and  other  English 
divinity  of  the  best  literary  kind  begins  later.     The  amount  of  really 

382 


CHAP.  V    THE   GOLDEN   AGE   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PULPIT  — I    383 

noteworthy  work  of  this  kind  composed  for  more  than  a  century  is 
enormous.  During  this  century,  and  even  during  much  of  the  next, 
sermons  were  extremely   popular,  and   indeed  discharged    ,, 

-'.^^'  *=>  Function  of 

one  part  of  the  function  of  the  modern  newspaper,  as  sermons, 
the  playhouse  did  others.  They  were  also  as  a  rule  '  ^^°°' 
much  longer  than  modern  discourses  in  England,  and  they  were  far 
more  used  for  reading  than  they  have  been  for  nearly  a  century.  In 
fact,  it  may  almost  be  said  that  the  printed  sermon,  for  some  two 
hundred  years,  represented  the  whole  modern  furnishings  of  the  cir- 
culating library  to  most  women  who  had  either  education  or  character, 
and  a  large  part  of  it  to  many  men,  even  men  of  the  world. 

We  must  therefore,  from  the  beginning,  proceed  by  selection ; 
and  it  so  happens  that  in  this  particular  department  selection  is  less 
injurious  than  in  any  other,  at  any  time  save  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
subject-matter  of  sermons,  though  admitting  the  widest  individuality 
of  particular  handling,  must  always  be  within  certain  limits  the  same ; 
and  in  hardly  any  kind  of  writing  do  famous  and  popular  models 
tend  to  reproduce  themselves  so  faithfully.  From  Hooker  and 
Andrewes  to  Newman,  the  reader  or  hearer  who  knows  the  styles 
of  the  leaders  knows  those  attempted,  though  no  doubt  often  clumsily, 
by  hundreds  of  followers,  and  except  for  special  purposes  he  may 
therefore  neglect  these  latter.  In  the  present  chapter  we  shall 
take  as  representatives  Andrewes,  Ussher,  Hall,  and  Donne.  The 
second  division  of  the  subject,  to  be  taken  up  in  the  next  Book,  will 
be  more  populous. 

Lancelot  Andrewes  ^  was  born  at  Barking  in  Essex  in  1555,  and 
was  educated  at  Merchant  Taylors'  School  and  Pembroke  College, 
Cambridge,  of  which  he  became  Master.  He  was  from  the  first 
much  patronised,  and  successively  became  prebendary 
of  St.  Paul's  and  Westminster,  Dean  of  the  last-named 
cathedral  under  Elizabeth,  and  Bishop  of  Chichester,  Ely,  and  Win- 
chester under  James.  He  was  very  prominent  at  the  Hampton 
Court  Conference  and  in  the  translation  of  the  Bible,  and  though, 
like  most  prelates  of  the  time,  he  perhaps  dabbled  more  in  court 
intrigues  (especially  in  that  bolgia  of  crime  the  divorce  and  re- 
marriage of  Lady  Frances  Howard)  than  might  be  desired,  he  has 
never  been  justly  judged  a  sycophant.  He  died  in  1626.  Of  his 
learning  and  of  the  strange  fervency  and  intense  eloquence  of  his 
Private  Devotions  there  have  never  been  two  opinions ;  his  Sermons 
have  excited  more  dispute.     The  charge  against  him  is  said  to  have 

1  The  standard  edition  of  Andrewes  is  that  in  the  Library  of  Anglo-Catholic 
Theology,  Oxford,  1841-54.  The  Greek  and  Latin  Devotions  have  been  frequently 
translated  and  given  separately,  most  recently  by  Dr.  A.  Whyte  (Edinburgh, 
1896). 


384   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN   LITERATURE  bk.  vr 

been  put  early  by  "a  Scotch  nobleman,"  when  the  bishop  preached  in 
Holyrood  Chapel.  "  He  rather  plays  with  his  subject  than  preaches 
on  it."  The  criticism  was  by  no  means  unfounded,  though  it  would 
apply  to  nearly  the  whole  of  the  preachers  of  Andrewes's  time,  except 
Hooker  himself,  in  England.  Perhaps  it  may  be  put  better  by 
saying  that  the  sometimes  far-fetched  and  romantic  symbolism  and 
imagery  wliich  in  Donne  among  the  earlier,  in  Taylor  among  the 
later,  preachere  of  the  school  produce  such  miraculous  effects,  are 
in  Andrewes  crude  and  not  finally  transformed  by  art.  No  doubt 
his  immense  learning,  in  which  he  excelled  almost  every  one  of  that 
learned  time  except  Ussher,  aggravated  the  evil. 

James  Usher  (or  rather  Ussher)  himself  was  more  a  writer  than 
a  preacher,  the  most  erudite  of  an  erudite  time,  and  one  of  the  most 
voluminous  authors  of  a  time  when  most  authors  were  voluminous. 
But  he  cannot  be  omitted  here,  and  he  escapes  the 
blame  not  quite  unjustly  passed  upon  Andrewes  by  never 
attempting  flights  or  rhetoric  at  all.  He  did  not  wish  his  sermons 
to  be  published,  though  they  were ;  his  great  chronological  and 
historical  works,  which  gained  him  a  practically  enduring  fame, 
are  mainly  in  Latin.  In  English  he  wrote  chiefly  on  Celtic  Antiquities, 
especially  those  of  an  ecclesiastical  complexion,  as  well  as  on  the 
burning  questions  of  the  time  —  the  Protestant-Papist  controversy, 
divine  right,  and  the  like.  His  style,  like  that  of  so  many  men  of 
his  time,  is  largely  conditioned  by  his  method  of  argument,  which 
consists,  though  by  no  means  wholly  yet  very  mainly,  in  appeals  to 
authority  and  citations  from  the  inexhaustible  store  of  his  vast 
reading.  Only  the  idiosyncrasy  of  a  Burton  can  infuse  writing  of  this 
kind  with  any  particular  tincture  of  style.  But  Ussher  is  always 
plain  and  clear.  Neither  his  temper  nor  his  immediate  purpose 
inclined  him  to  any  superfluity  of  ornament,  and  when  he  gets  free 
from  citation  and  has  a  paragraph  or  two  to  write,  as  the  common 
phrase  is,  "  out  of  his  own  head,"  he  rather  exemplifies  the  Ascham- 
Hooker  tradition  than  the  more  conceited  manner  of  his  own  day. 
He  was  born  in  Dublin  in  1581,  and  was  nephew  of  Stanyhurst,  the 
eccentric  translator  of  Virgil.  He  was  one  of  the  first  alumni  of 
Trinity  College,  Dublin,  became  Fellow,  and  gave  himself  up  to 
.stud)',  becoming  Professor  of  Divinity  in  his  University  in  1607, 
Bishop  of  Meath  in  1620,  and  Bishop  of  Armagh  in  1625.  When 
Ireland  became  convulsed  by  the  Rebellion,  he  went  to  England, 
and  was  for  some  time  preacher  at  Lincoln's  Inn.  Though  a  steady 
Royalist,  he  was  not  molested  by  the  Parliament  or  by  Cromwell,  and 
died  quietly  at  Reigate  in  1656. 

With  Bishop  Hall  ^  we  get  into  a  higher  sphere  of  literary 
1  Works,  ed.  Wynter,  lo  vols.  Oxford,  1863. 


CHAP.  V     THE   GOLDEN   AGE   OF  THE   ENGLISH    PULPIT  — I    385 

accomplishment.  His  verse  was  entirely  of  the  previous  or  strictly 
Elizabethan  period,  while  his  prose  was  entirely  of  this  or  the 
next.  This  early  verse  was  purely  secular ;  but  the  suc- 
ceeding prose  was  by  no  means  purely  theological, 
though  its  most  noteworthy  division  of  the  secular  kind,  the 
Cliaracters  of  Virtues  and  Vices,  seems  to  have  been  composed 
(1608)  with  a  view  to  use  in  sermons.  These  Characters  precede 
Overbury's  in  point  of  time,  and  though  they  never  became  so 
popular,  excel  them  in  simplicity,  being  often  quite  as  pointed,  and 
as  a  rule  not  nearly  so  contorted  and  fantastic.  Hall's  subsequent 
writings  during  his  long,  busy,  and  (till  the  evil  days  of  rebel- 
lion) prosperous  life,  were  extremely  multifarious  —  sermons,  medita- 
tions, autobiographical  pieces,  controversial  tracts  (such  as  those, 
for  instance,  which  brought  upon  him  Milton's  clumsy  invective), 
expository  matter.  In  his  sermons  and  casuistical  work  he  par- 
tic  ilarly  affects  a  plain  but  energetic  style  of  attack  on  the 
consciences  and  hearts  of  his  hearers ;  and  this  element  of  direct- 
ness is  also  generally  prominent  in  his  politico-ecclesiastical  polemic. 
In  his  meditations  he  is  more  flowery  and  figurative,  as  is  reasonable 
enough.  But  at  no  time  can  he  be  said  to  share  to  the  full  the 
tendencies  of  his  age  in  this  particular  direction,  being  too  much  of 
a  fighter  when  he  is  not  a  mere  meditative  moralist.  Perhaps  also 
he  may  exemplify  the  rule  to  which  his  enemy  Milton  is  one  of  the 
not  many  exceptions,  and  the  great  writer  whom  we  are  shortly  to 
mention  another,  that  those  who  write  both  poetry  and  prose  usually 
write  the  latter  with  some  restraint,  while  the  very  ornate  or  fantastic 
prose  writers  are  chiefly  those  who  cannot  express  themselves  in 
verse. 

This,  however,  as  has  just  been  hinted,  is  by  no  means  the  case 
with  our  last  and  greatest  exemplar.  Few  are  more  of  a  piece  in 
poetry  and  prose  than  Donne, ^  and  much  of  what  has  been  said  of 
his  verse  will  apply  equally  to  his  prose.  This  consists  of  a 
large  body  —  some  two  hundred  —  of  Sermons,  a  consider- 
able number  of  Letters,  a  short  and  curious  tractate  to  prove  that 
in  certain  circumstances  suicide  may  not  be  a  sin,  some  Essays  in 
Divinity,  some  Devotions,  and  a  few  miscellaneous  treatises.  All  his 
work,  however,  even  in  prose,  whatsoever  it  be  called,  essay,  sermon, 
letter,  or  what  not,  is  again  strikingly  like  itself  and  strikingly  unlike 
anything  else,  being,  like  the  verse,  saturated  and  pervaded  by 
Donne's  ])eculiar  melancholy.  The  expression  of  this  seems  to  be  as 
easy  for  him  in  prose  as  in  verse,  or,  to  speak  more  justly  and  accu- 

1  Ed.  Alford,  6  vols.  1859.  Unfortunately  not  at  all  a  good  edition  and 
not  complete.  Dr.  Jessopp's  little  edition  of  the  Essays  can  sometimes  be 
picked  up. 

2C     . 


386   LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE   bk.  vi 

rately,  he  succeeds  in  elaborating  a  prose  style  just  as  suitable  for  it 
as  is  his  style  in  verse.  He  is  clearer  in  prose  than  in  verse  except 
(curiously  enough)  in  his  Letters,  which  often  display  almost  as  much 
metaphysical  conceit  as  the  most  recondite  passages  of  his  poetry. 
But  he  has  the  three  great  characteristics  of  Jacobean  writing  —  the 
learning,  the  profundity,  and  the  fantastic  imagination.  And  the 
profundity  is  here  not  merely  real,  but  of  a  depth  rarely  surpassed  in 
English,  while  the  fantastic  imagination  becomes  something  more 
than  merely  fantastic.  The  "kingship"  which  Carew  ascribed  to 
Donne  is  at  least  as  noticeable  in  his  prose  as  in  his  verse,  and 
though  the  realm  over  which  he  rules  is  rather  a  Kingdom  of  Night 
than  of  Day,  a  place  of  strangely  lit  gloom  rather  than  of  mere  sun- 
light, it  is  a  kingdom  of  wonderful  richness  and  variety.  It  may  be 
questioned  whether  Donne's  very  best  passages  are  exceeded,  even 
whether  they  are  equalled,  by  any  English  prose-writer  in  the  com- 
bination of  fulness  and  rarity  of  meaning  with  exquisite  perfection  of 
sound  and  charm  of  style.  In  these  latter  points  he  is  at  least  the 
equal  of  Jeremy  Taylor  at  his  best,  and  though  Jeremy  Taylor  is  no 
shallow  thinker,  his  thought  is  a  mere  pool  to  the  oceanic  depth  and 
breadth  of  Donne's.  There  is  a  certain  quality  of  magnificence,  too, 
in  Donne  beside  which  the  best  things  of  Taylor  are  apt  to  suggest 
the  merely  pretty.  Unlike  most  of  his  contemporaries,  Donne  knew 
when  to  let  a  great  thing  alone ;  and  few  of  them,  for  instance,  would 
have  been  content  to  let  such  a  phrase  as  the  likening  of  the  coming 
of  God  to  the  soul  "as  the  sun  at  noon  to  illustrate  all  shadows,  as 
the  sheaves  in  harvest  to  fill  all  penuries,"  without  frittering  away 
its  massive  and  complete  effect  into  subdivisions  and  added  epithets, 
into  appendices  and  fringes  of  thought  and  expression. 

Moreover  he,  as  Hooker  in  his  very  different  style  had  had  be- 
fore him,  but  as  hardly  any  one  else,  had  the  sense  of  the  paragraph 
—  of  the  crescendo  and  diminuendo  of  cadence  required  to  wind  it 
safely  and  melodiously  from  start  to  finish.  His  sentences  are 
sometimes  too  long,  they  are  too  often  made  to  do  the  work  of 
the  paragraph  itself;  but  this  is  often  more  a  matter  of  punctuation 
than  of  real  structural  arrangement.  And  whether  they  be  called 
sentences  or  be  called  paragraphs,  there  lingers  round  each  of  them 
the  glimmer  of  an  unearthly  light  and  the  notes  of  a  more  than 
earthly  music. 


INTERCHAPTER  VI 

It  has  been  frequently  pointed  out  that  the  connection  of  the  present 
Book  with  the  last  and  next  is  of  a  kind  which  will  not  be  repeated, 
and  which  has  not  been  earlier  found  between  the  successive  divisions 
of  this  work.  All  three  are  wholly  busied  with  what  is  usually  and 
rightly,  from  one  point  of  view,  called  Elizabethan  Literature.  All 
three  are  mainly  busied  with  the  productions  of  a  not  extraordinarily 
long  lifetime — 1580  to  1660;  while  such  a  lifetime  as  that  of 
Fontenelle  would  have  taken  a  man  from  Wyatt's  days  almost  to  the 
publication  of  the  Hespertdes,  from  that  of  Euphucs  to  the  death 
of  Milton,  or  from  the  birth  of  Shakespeare  to  the  Restoration.  Yet 
the  separation  into  three,  besides  avoiding  cumbrousness  and  con- 
fusion of  arrangement  in  other  ways,  enables  us  to  bring  out  the 
three  divisions  of  rise,  of  culmination,  and  if  not  exactly  of  decadence, 
yet  of  a  long  and  gorgeous  sunset,  in  a  very  satisfactory  fashion. 

There  can  be  no  real  difficulty  in  according  to  our  present  stage 
the  title  of  culmination.  We  have  indeed  lost  two  or  three,  but 
only  two  or  three,  of  the  very  greatest  names  of  the  whole  period. 
To  the  reign  of  James  (though  no  thanks  to  James  himself)  belong 
the  greatest  work  of  Shakespeare,  almost  the  whole  work  of  Bacon, 
the  great  bulk  of  the  more  accomplished  work  of  the  minor  drama- 
tists, a  volume  of  exquisite  non-dramatic  poetry,  and  a  body  of  most 
interesting,  if  still  partly  inorganic,  prose. 

It  is  no  doubt  in  the  department  of  pure  poetry  that  the  period, 
partly  by  accident,  partly  not,  contrasts  least  favourably  both  with  its 
predecessor  and  its  successor.  That  Spenser  is  dead  at  its  begin- 
ning, and  Milton  a  boy  at  its  close,  is  itself  not  wholly  accidental. 
For  Spenser,  thougli  he  could  have  added  to  the  volume  of  our 
delight,  would  probably  have  given  us  something  new  in  kind,  had  the 
Irish  rebels  allowed  him  to  reach  his  seventy  years  in  peace;  and 
Milton  would  not  have  been  quite  Milton  without  the  Jacobean 
period  itself  bdiind  him.  We  have  seen  what  the  character  of  that 
period  was  in  poetry,  and  how  Spenser's  own  influence,  with  Donne's 
and  Jonson's,  was  at  work   in   it,  shaping  and  preparing  the  forces, 

387 


1 


388  LATER  ELIZABETHAN  AND  JACOBEAN  LITERATURE  bk. 

accumulating  the  matter,  which  were  to  result  on  the  one  side  in  the 
massive  structure  of  Milton,  and  on  the  other  in  the  exquisite  filagree 
of  the  Caroline  lyrists.  But  we  can  here  better  perceive  in  the  work 
of  the  three  themselves,  as  in  that  of  their  followers,  the  special 
Jacobean  profundity,  its  weight  of  thought,  and  its  slight  consequent 
weariness.  The  "bloomy  flush"  of  the  Elizabethan  period  proper 
has  fled ;  the  conceit  remains,  but  it  is  graver,  less  childlike ;  the 
play  of  words  continues,  but  it  is  changing  into  the  play  of  thought, 
sometimes  hardly  to  be  called  play,  so  laborious  and  Cyclopean  is  it. 

It  follows  that  the  actual  poetry  of  the  reign,  that  which  exclu- 
sively or  especially  belongs  to  it,  is  somewhat  less  charming  than  that 
of  the  poets  who  owe  more  direct  allegiance  to  Ehzabeth  or  to  Charles. 
Yet  the  best  of  the  songs  of  the  dramatists  date  from  this  time ;  the 
masques  of  Ben  Jonson  and  others  contain,  in  the  good  old  phrase, 
" poetry  enough  for  anything";  we  cannot  find  out  of  Spenser  and 
Rossetti  more  gorgeous  things  than  the  best  passages  of  the  Fletchers ; 
anywhere  perhaps  sweeter  things  than  the  best  trifles  of  Ben,  of  John 
Fletcher,  of  Wither,  of  Browne ;  anywhere  at  all  such  mysterious 
melody  as  that  of  Donne.  Yet,  since  we  find  most  of  those  who  are 
thus  gifted  dating  back  from  Elizabeth  or  persevering  to  Charles,  we 
may  be  justified  in  reserving  for  the  middle  stage,  here  as  elsewhere, 
he  special  qualities  of  weight  and  thought. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  at  all  that  this  place  is  the  proper  one 
for  its  prose.  As  we  have  seen.  Euphuism  in  the  large  sense, 
ornateness,  gorgeousness,  horror  of  the  obvious,  has  altogether  the 
upper  hand  as  compared  with  succinctness,  directness,  appeal  only 
to  power  of  matter  and  proportion  of  arrangement.  Yet  Ben  Jonson 
relies  very  mainly  on  these  last,  and  no  one,  not  even  Bacon,  succeeds 
in  manipulating  the  dictionary  like  an  organ  after  the  fashion  of  the 
great  Caroline  writers,  unless  indeed  it  be  Donne,  to  whom  here  as 
elsewhere  the  universal  monarchy  of  wit  is  subject.  But  the  prose 
of  James's  reign,  putting  aside  the  half-accidental  magnificence  of 
the  Authorised  Version,  must  rest  its  claims  on  the  fantastic  and 
splendid,  but  not  fully  organised,  form  of  BaCfln-anxL^urton,  on  the 
weighty  and  sTerling  mattgf  ot  both  tTiese  and'si  Jonson.  

In  neither  case  had  a  perfection  ot  "style  been  reached.  The 
author  of  the  Essays  and  the  author  of  the  Anatomy  have  discarded 
the  more  childish  things  of  Euphuism ;  but  they  have  not  quite 
attained  the  full  perfecting  of  its  best  things  that  Browne  and  Taylor 
were  to  show.  Ben  Jonson  has  recoiled  from  this  same  Euphuism 
("always  using  the  term  as  a  sign  and  symbol  rather  than  as  a  limited 
designation),  and  has  sometimes  achieved  a  plain  style  almost  perfect 
in  its  way.  But  he  had  been  busied  with  other  things,  and  was 
perhaps    not    equipped    with   sufficient   versatility   to    "make    a    prose 


VI  INTERCH AFTER  VI  389 

writer  absolutely  of  the  first  class.  The  others,  except  Donne,  who 
did  but  transprose  his  verse  and  trans-hallow  his  profanities,  are 
minors. 

Yet  in  both  directions  the  period,  especially  for  so  brief  a  one, 
did  more  than  its  fair  share  in  the  mere  furthering  of  style,  in  doing 
its  stage  on  that  circular  but  always  interesting  journey.  And  in 
point  of  kio^as  distinguished  from  style  that  establishment  of  the 
Essay,  in  morelbrms  than  oiiS^  vvhiLii  we  have  seen  was  a  matteT  of 
the  very  greatest  importance,  that  development  of  the  sermon  which 
we  have  also  seen,  a  thing  of  importance  hardly  lesser.  The  optiscle 
as  opposed  to  the  opus  inagniim  was  thus,  in  matters  sacred  and  in 
matters  profane,  promoted  to  distinct  literary  rank ;  and  in  each  case 
literature  was  carried  from  the  study  into  other  apartments  of  the 
house,  if  not  even  into  the  street. 

But  undoubtedly  the  very  greatest  accomplishment  of  the  time 
was  its  accomplishment  in  drama.  After  making  every  reasonable 
allowance  for  the  obscurity  which  rests  on  so  many  of  the  exact  dates 
of  the  Elizabethan  theatre,  we  can  be  fairly  certain  that  the  larger 
number  of  its  consummate  examples  date  from  the  first  quarter  of  the 
seventeenth  century  —  most  of  the  best  work  of  Shakespeare,  all,  with 
one  exception  at  each  end,  of  the  best  work  of  Jonson,  all  the  work 
of  Beaumont,  of  Fletcher,  and  probably  most  of  the  best  work  of  all 
the  rest  save  Shirley,  belong  to  it.  Moreover,  in  what  follows  there 
is  little  or  nothing  new.  The  effects  which  have  been  achieved  with 
such  gigantic  expenditure  of  genius,  if  not  exactly  of  criticism,  first 
by  the  University  Wits  and  Shakespeare  in  his  initial  period,  then 
by  Shakespeare  and  his  great  contemporaries  in  this  special  time, 
are  merely  repeated,  weakened,  and  at  last  frittered  away.  It  would 
hardly  be  rash  to  say  that  of  the  really  great  plays  included  in  the 
general  list  of  the  Elizabethan  drama,  not  merely  four  out  of  five  or 
nine  out  of  ten,  but  nineteen  out  of  twenty  belong  to  this  time.  Yet 
we  need,  in  this  special  place  of  summary,  say  less  of  it  than  we  have 
said  of  the  Elizabethans  proper,  and  still  less  than  we  must  say  when, 
after  the  next  Book,  we  sum  up  the  whole  great  epoch  of  which  it . 
forms  a  part.  For  the  centre  of  any  period  partakes  necessarily 
more  of  the  characters  of  the  two  ends  than  they  do  of  it.  In  so  far 
as  the  Jacobean  age  deserv-es  a  description  of  qualities  to  itself,  that 
description  must  Ije  what  has  been  more  than  once  given.  Qepth 
'"\'\  \Yfig'^t  irr'tir  iiT—it-ni  thpy_ji£j^p;ir  in  none  other;  yet  does  it 
not  lack  finish  and  grace. 


BOOK   VII 

CAROLINE  LITERATURE 
CHAPTER    I 

BLANK  VERSE  AND  THE  NEW  COUPLET 

The  central  period  of  English  prosody —  Distribution  of  Caroline  poetry  —  Milton 
—  His  life  —  The  earlier  poems —  Comiis  —  The  blank  verse — Lycidas  —  Son- 
nets—  The  longer  poems  —  Their  blank  verse  —  Their  matter — Milton's  place 
in  English  prosody  —  Cowley  —  His  couplets  —  The  lyrics  —  The  Pindarics  — 
Denham  —  Waller  —  The  "  reform  of  our  numbers  " 

We  have  traced  the  gradual  growth  of  prosody,  which  is  the 
distinguishing  feature  of  poetry,  steadily  onwards  from  the  first 
appearance  of  English  as  a  blend  of  Teutonic,  Romance,  and  other 
elements ;  and  we  have  seen  how,  after  the  strange  and 
not  yet  accounted  for  changes  in  the  fifteenth  century,  period  o? 
a  fresh  start  was  made  about  the  middle  of  the  third  English 
quarter  of  the  sixteenth.  After  this,  for  some  fifty  years, 
almost  every  style  of  poetry  was  tried.  But  one  style  —  not  of  poetry 
proper  but  of  the  mixed  kind  called  drama  —  had  more  effect  than  all 
the  others  put  together,  by  adjusting  metre  to  the  exigencies,  not  of 
mere  recitative,  not  of  formal  music,  but  of  spoken  language  in  every 
relation  and  circumstance  of  life,  comic  and  tragic,  impassioned  and 
ordinary.  This  great  period  in  drama  was  ih  1625  nearing  its  close, 
but  its  work  was  already  done.  And  while,  on  the  one  hand,  the  pecul- 
iar influence  of  Jacobean  thought  and  style  in  general,  and  of  the  three 
great  poets  in  particular,  resulted  in  a  continuance  of  poetry  difter- 
entiated  from  the  Elizabethan  only  by  an  increased  tendency  to  the 
metaphysical  in  tone  and  the  lyrical  in  form,  the  dramatic  current 
mixing  with  that  of  genera!  poetry  produced  two  things  which  were 
practically  new  —  the  use  cf  blank  verse  for  non-dramatic  purposes  in 
37» 


392  CAROLINE  LITERATURE  Book  vii 


original  poetry,  and  the  altered  form  of  the  couplet,  which  between 
them,  gradually  ousting  in  great  part  lyrics  and  the  stanza,  were  to 
dominate  English  verse  for  nearly  a  century  and  a  half. 

We  can   hardly  do   better   than    treat   the   poetry   of  the   period 
under  these  two  heads,  but  we  shall  have  to  deal  with  them  differ- 
ently.     The   poets   who  are  mainly  distinguished  for   their  work  in 
„.    .,     .       blank  verse  or  couplet,  with  Milton  at  their  head,  show 

Distribution  ,      ,.~  ^      '^       ,     .       .  ,.  i         i     , 

of  Caroline  such  differences  from  their  immediate  successors,  headed 
poctT-  i^y  Dryden,  that,  save  as  far  as  Milton  is  himself  con- 
cerned, we  shall  have  ceased  dealing  with  them  at  the  accession  of 
the  second  Charles.  But,  with  some  special  and  striking  changes  of 
tone,  the  poets,  partly  "  metaphysical "  in  subject  and  mainly  lyrical  in 
form,  persevere  long  beyond  that  date,  and  even,  with  Sedley  and  a 
few  others,  bevond  Charles  the  Second's  death  and  into  the  next 
century.  We  shall,  therefore,  in  this  and  the  next  chapter,  cover  un- 
equal spaces  of  ground ;  but  the  chronological  inequality  will  be 
more  than  compensated  by  the  logical  exactitude  which  will  be 
obtained,  even  though  some  of  those  with  whom  we  shall  deal  belong 
in  a  manner  to  both  divisions.  Milton  is  at  once  an  exquisite, 
though  too  little  copious,  poet  of  the  school  of  Jonson  and  of  Spenser 
(never  quite  of  Donne)  and  an  innovator  in  pure  poetry  who  has 
none  but  dramatic  masters.  Cowley  never  entirely  knows  whether 
he  is  a  metaphysical  Pindaric,  or  a  lyrist,  or  a  common-sense 
coupleteer.  Chamberlayne,  to  take  still  a  different  class,  writes  ex- 
clusively (or  almost  so)  in  couplets,  but  his  couplets  are  not  in  the 
least  of  the  new  kind.  We  shall  class  them  all  according  to  the 
division  to  which  each,  either  in  the  bulk  of  his  work  or  in  its  main 
tone  and  temper,  belongs,  always  noting  when  they  cross  the  boun- 
dary line.  But  keeping  the  boundary  itself  will  enable  us,  in  a 
manner  which  could  not  be  so  well  otherwise  done  without  endless 
confusion  and  repetition,  proviso  and  warning,  to  indicate  the  falling 
line  and  the  mounting  in  English  poetry  during  the  last  three-quarters 
of  the  seventeenth  century. 

John  Milton,^  who  though  his  position  as  the  greatest  or  not  the 
greatest  of  English  non-dramatic  poets  is  open  to  question,  occupies 
unquestionably  the  greatest  place  among  such  poets  as  an  influence 
and  model,  was  a  Londoner  by  birth,  and  was  born  in 
Bread  Street  on  gth  December  1608;  but  his  family 
belonged  to  Oxfordshire.  His  father,  a  money-scrivener  (a  profession 
now  extinct,  or  rather  absorbed,  but  then  a  cross  between  banking  and 
law),  resembled  his  son  in  combining  Puritan  sympathies  in  religion 
with  strong  literary  and  artistic  tastes.     The  only  other  member  of 

1  Editions  innumerable,  but   the   larger   (3   vols.  London,   1890)  and  smaller 
("  Globe  ")  of  Professor  Masson  stand  before  all  others. 


CHAP.  I  BLANK   VERSE  AND   THE  NEW   COUPLET  393 

the  family  who  is  remembered  was  the  poet's  younger  brother 
Christopher,  afterwards  Sir  Christopher,  who  became  a  judge  and 
was  a  very  strong  RoyaHst.  Milton  entered  St.  Paul's 
School  in  1620,  and  went  thence  five  years  later  to 
Chrisfs  College,  Cambridge,  where  his  personal  beauty  and  cor- 
rect moral  character  were  observed,  but  where  his  insubordinate 
and  unaccommodating  temper  seems  to  have  got  him  into  trouble 
with  the  authorities.  He  was  once  rusticated,  but  took  his  degrees 
in  due  time,  becoming  M.A.  in  1632,  at  the  end  of  the  usual  seven 
years.  His  fa':her  had  bought  a  property  at  Horton  in  Buckingham- 
shire, and  there  Milton  remained  in  unmolested  and  unprofessional 
study  for  six  years,  during  which  he  produced  most  (some  is  even 
earlier)  of  his  early  verse,  and  displayed,  as  some  think,  nearly  his 
highest  poetical  genius,  if  not  his  full  poetical  power.  The  indulgence 
of  his  father  next  allowed  him  a  tour  abroad,  and  leaving  England  at 
the  beginning  of  1638,  he  spent  the  great  part  of  two  years  chiefly 
in  Italy.  When  he  came  home  he  settled  in  Aldersgate  Street,  and, 
having  the  full  Renaissance  interest  in  education,  acted  as  school- 
master or  tutor  to  his  nephews  and  others. 

During  the  twenty  years  of  civil  commotion  he  wrote,  except  a 
few  sonnets,  no  poetry,  but  was  fertile  in  controversial  prose,  which 
will  be  dealt  with  in  another  chapter.  He  married  in  1643  ;  the  un- 
lucky bride's  name  was  Mary  Powell,  of  a  good  Cavalier  family  in 
Oxfordshire,  with  which  Milton  had  been  long  intimate ;  but  the 
marriage  was  extremely  ill-assorted,  and  in  a  few  weeks  his  wife  left 
him  and  went  to  her  parents.  This  desertion  Milton  construed  into 
a  reason  for  divorce,  and  argued  this  point  out  in  several  tracts,  which 
naturally  caused  a  good  deal  of  scandal.  She  returned  in  1645  •^^'^ 
died  in  1652,  leaving  him  three  daughters,  whose  relations  with  him 
were  not  more  happy  than  their  mother's.  Meanwhile  his  tract- 
writing,  now  devoted  to  purely  political  matters,  and  especially  the 
defence  of  the  execution  of  the  King,  procured  him  the  post,  under 
the  Commonwealth,  of  Secretary  of  Foreign  Tongues,  that  is  to  say, 
for  diplomatic  correspondence  in  Latin.  He  lost  his  eyesight  in  the 
same  year  in  which  his  first  wife  died,  and  married  a  second  in  1656, 
but  she,  the  "late  espoused  saint  "  of  his  sonnet,  died  also  in  1658.  At 
the  Restoration  he  hid  himself,  but  was  not  molested,  and  settled  near 
Bunliill  Fields.  He  married  a  third  time  in  1663,  this  time  more 
successfully  in  comfort  and  permanence.  The  publication  of  his 
great  epic  (see  below)  followed  at  no  great  interval,  and  he  died  on 
November  1674,  and  was  buried  at  St.  Giles's,  Cripplegate. 

Milton's  character  was  not  amiable,  and  its  harshness  was  no 
doubt  accentuated,  both  in  life  and  letters,  by  his  singular  want  of 
humour;  but  it  only  concerns  us  in  so  far  as  it  affects  his  writings. 


594 


CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 


These,   as   has    been    seen,   fall   under   three    unusually   well-marked 
periods:    the  first  including  all  the  early_poems  up  to  Ly  a  das ;  the^ 
"""second^  feTtile   in    prosepBut   yfeTaing  "no    poetry   except 
"^poems!"    most  of  the  Sounets ;  the  thirds-giving  the  two  Paradises 
arid  Samson  Agonistes.     We   must   say  something  about 
each  of  these  periods  and  its  reslJlts   before   endeavouring  to  touch 
briefly  the  whole  question  of  Milton's  place  as  a  poet.     His  precocity 
has  sometimes  been  admired,  but  this  doubtful  gift  was    not  in  any 
very    great   measure   his.      The    few    poems   which  we   have   dating 
earlier  than  his  coming  of  age  are  scarcely  better  than  a  very  large 
quantity  of  minor  verse.      The  first   unmistakable  signs  were  shown 
by  the  great _<9^g  on  the  NathuhiJ  1620) .      About  this  there  can  be 
no  doubt  whatever,  except  in  the  minds  of  those  who  so  dishke  what 
is  called  florid  poetry  that  they  are  blinded  by  the  flowers.      Both 
in   the   stanza-prelude,   and   still   more   when   the   actually  lyric  part 
begins,  the  n6te  to  ears  that  can  hear  is  as  *liew  as  it  is  exquisite. 
Even  Spenser  had  not  written'like  it;   even  Spenser  had  not  written 
anything  more  individual  and  more  delightful  in  word-music ;    while, 
if  we  compare  it  with  what  had  been  done  or  could  be  done  by  the 
best  poets  then  alive,  —  Drayton,  Chapman,  Jonson,  Donne,  Wither, 
.the    Fletchers,  etc.,  —  we   shall  find  a   note   of  witchery  which    only 
[Donne  could  have  surpassed,  while  the  soft  harmony  of  the  motion 
lis   altogether   different   from    Donne's   less   mellifluous   touch.      The 
Ode  on  the  Nativity,  as  the  herald's  cry  of  a  new  great  poet,  is  a  test 
of  the  reader's  power  to  appreciate  poetry.      It  is  perhaps  sufiicient 
proof  of  Dr.  Johnson's  initial  disabilities  as  a  critic  of  seventeenth- 
century  verse   that   he   does    not   so   much  as  mention  it.      For  the 
famous  pair,  f  Allegro  and  //  Penseroso,  no  one  has  ever  had  any- 
thing but  praise,  though  some  have  hinted  that  "  Penseroso  "  is  not 
very  choice   Italian.      Even    Dr.   Johnson    could    feel  their   universal 
charm,  nor  is   there  much  need  of  commenting  on  what  is  matter  of 
universal  knowledge  and  universal  consent.     But  it  is  worth  while  to 
note   that   even   at   this   early   time   Milton   displayed  his   wonderful 
science  of  versificafion  in  the  handling  of  the  octosyllable,  catalectic 
and  full,  and  also  his  complete  command  of  whatever  expression  he 
needs.     He  has  little  of  the  conceit  of  his  contemporaries,  but  he  has 
almost   more   than    their  average   learning,   and   yet   he   manages   to 
treat  it  as  lightly  as  possible.      These  same  characteristics  are  notice 
able   in   the   few   other  \short  pieces   which    we  have  from  this  time, 
especially  the  exquisite  fragments  of  the   Arcades.      But   before   the 
poet  took  leave  of  the'muses  for  a  less  delightful  mistress,  he  was  to 
produce  two  substantive  poems,  Comus  and  Lycidas,  either  of  which, 
but  especially  the  former,  would  have  settled'THS  (|tiestion  of  his  place 
in  poetry.      Comus  was  written  in  1634  ^  ^  masque  to  be  presented 


CHAP.  I  BLANK   VERSE   AND  THE   NEW   COUPLET  395 

(with  music  by  Lawes)  at  Ludlow  Castle  before,  and  by  the  children 
of.  Lord  Bridgewater,  President  of  Wales ;  Lycidas  not  till  just  before 
Milton's  departure  for  Italy,  and  nominally  to  celebrate  the  death  of 
Edward  King,  a  Cambridge  contemporary  and  friend.  The  last  is 
deeply  tinged  with  the  coming  blackness  of  political  and  ecclesiastical 
faction ;  the  first  is  almost  free  from  it,  though  not  quite  so  free  as 
L Allegro  and  //  Penseroso.  But  both  are  of  the  very  first  order  of 
poetry. 

Cofnus  (not  so  called  by  Milton),  though  avowedly  a  masque, 
lies  between  that  kind  and  the  lyrical  dramas  of  Jonson  and  Fletcher, 
of  whom  Milton  was  a  diligent  student.  The  scenery  and  decora- 
tions are  of  much  less  account  in  it  than  in  the  masque 

11  ,1  11  •  Comus. 

proper,  and  the  story,  though  not  very  elaborate,  is  more 
solidly  and  substantively  dramatic.  The  argument,  suggested  partly 
by  the  Odyssey,  partly  by  Peek's  Old  Wives''  Tale,  is  extremely 
simple.  Two  brothers  and  their  sister,  wandering  in  a  wood 
haunted  by  Comus,  Circe's  son  and  imitator,  part  from  her  in 
search  of  a  guide  and  shelter.  She  falls,  bewitched  by  art  but  pro- 
tected by  her  virtue  from  any  real  harm,  into  the  enchanter's  power, 
till  he  is  driven  off  by  her  brothers  and  an  attendant  spirit  (half 
Mentor  and  half  Ariel),  and  the  charm  is  reversed  by  Sabrina,  the 
river-nymph  of  the  Severn.  But  on  this  slight  and  little  "  incidented" 
jtheme,  while  treating  even  the  characters  symbolically  and  typically 
irather  than  as  individuals.  Milton  has  contrived  to  broider  the  most 
lexquisite  tissue  of  poetry,  both  in  blank  verse  and  in  lyric  measures. 
INothing  quite  like  the  former  had  yet  been  seen.  The  author  is  much 
tinder  the  influence  of  that  later  form  of  the  playwrights' 
blank  verse  which  admits  the  redundant  syllable  very  verse." 
frequently,  and  he  has  boldly  borrowed  the  system  of 
trisyllabic  equivalence,  which  in  them  was  certainly  to  a  great  extent, 
and  may  be  suspected  to  have  been  almost  wholly,  based  on  the  mere 
necessities  of  conversation.  His  own  verse  tirades,  or  passages  which 
.are  only  in  form  dialogue,  are  really  independent  pieces  of  poetry. 
By  these  means  and  others  he  also  elaborates  that  ^^ verse  paragraph'^ 
the  introduction  of  which  was  to  be  perhaps  his  greatest  contribution 
to  the  English  Ars  Poetica.  The  redundant  syllable  is  indeed  rather 
abused,  and  it  is  in  this,  and  perhaps  in  this  only,  that  Comus  is 
inferior  to  Paradise  Lost.  But  it  is  difficult  to  use  the  word  inferior 
in  any  connection  with  such  incomparable  work  as  the  Spirit's  overture 
and  description  of  his  discovery  of  the  Lady's  danger,  her  soliloquy 
before  she  meets  Comus,  the  Elder  Brother's  fine  if  rather  declamatory 
praise  of  chastity  (saturated  with  memories  of  Marlowe's  versification 
and  homoeotelcitta^,  the  argument  of  Comus  and  the  Lady,  and  the 
poet's   account  of   Sabrina.       But    the  lyric    parts    (which    Sir    Henry 


396  CAROLINE  LITERATURE  book  vii 

Wotton  in  a  letter  to  the  author  justly  called  ipsa  niollities)  are  cer- 
tainly not  inferior,  and  the  last  hundred  and  fifty  lines  repeat  the 
success  of  L? Allegro  and  its  fellow  in  metrical  effect,  with  more 
variety  and  an  even  higher  and  more  airy  strain. 

Nor  do  the  graver  cast  and  the  more  disputable  material 
of  Lycidas  injure,  save  to  very  unhappily  constituted  persons,  its 
poetical  effect.  Its  two_Jiuniir£d-Iiaea--are'aTranged  on  a  decasyHabic 
basis  which  is  never  exceeded,  thouglLJt  is  allowed, 
■^"  '^^'  sornewhatrrrrTTTe  principle  of  a  choric  od€^to-4e&ee«d  to 
ights,  and  even  To  sixes?  Furllier;Though  the  piece  rhymes  through- 
ouT'^savefor  a  few  lines  left  "in  the  air,"  and  yet,  by  a  perfect 
miracle  of  art,  contributing  to  the  music  as  their  sound  floats  un- 
answered), the  rjiynifia  nrr  ranged  -aeither  regularly  in  couplets  nor 
retrularly  in  stanzas,  though,  for  instance,  the  close  isZaZmm^lete 
o^^s^fft^  abababci.  The  whole  has  an  extremely  cunning  system,  not 
stnjfrtiTc  but  symphonic7  so  that  the  mu"Srev  though  never  broken,  is 
never  complete  m  any  yecliun"^ill  the  wholeTias'  closed.  As  an  elegy 
trenvmg  Irom  ihe  AlexaiiSriafiPSTCTiTa'nTcIiool,  Lycidas  has  in  its  turn 
served  as  model  to  other  English  dirges  of  the  first  interest,  espe- 
cially Adonais  and  Thyrsis',  but  it  exceeds  both  in  variety  and  uni- 
formity of  merit,  though  it  is  not  the  equal  of  Adonais  in  loftiness  of 
thought  and  in  the  poetical  quality  of  certain  passages.  Vjo  English 
poem  exhibits  a  more  exquisite  harmony  and  variety  of  numbers,  or 
a  more  extraordinary  science  of  rhyme,  while  very  few  of  anything 
like  the  same  length  have  a  greater  number  of  signal  phrases  memo- 
rable for  thought  or  music  or  both.  \  Indeed,  except  the  untimely 
speech  of  St.  Peter,  which  is  at  the  very  best  a  vigorous  piece  of 
satiric  verse,  there  is  not  a  passage  and  hardly  a  line  which  is  not^ 
mere  and  ^heer  poetry.  The  poem,  moreovei,'7dds  10  liie  knowledge 
-ofmilton's^j(5WLi»»in  several  minor  ways,  especially  in  regard  to  his 
extraordinary  skill  in  the  use  of  names.  Something  of  this  had  been 
seen  before,  but  not  to  the  extent  of  the  wonderful  triplet  — 

Sleep'st  by  the  fable  of  Bellerus  old, 

Where  the  great  vision  of  the  guarded  mount 

Looks  towards  Namancos  and  Bayona's  hold. 

We  care  nothing  about  Bellerus  or  Namancos  or  Bayona  as  persons 
or  places,  but  we  feel,  we  know,  that  as  words  they  are  right  and 
indispensable.  And  the  passage  also  exhibits  two  other  main  devices 
of  Milton's,  the  putting  of  the  adjective,  especially  a  monosyllabic 
adjective,  after  the  noun,  and  the  cunning  interchange  of  syllables  in 
adjective  and  substantive  by  pairs. i 

1   \  "  Great  vision,"  adj.  =  i  syll.,  subs.  =  2. 
<  "  Guarded  mount,"  adj.  =  2  syll.,  subs.  =  i. 


CHAP.  I  BLANK   VERSE  AND   THE  NEW   COUPLET  397 

The    batch    of    sonnets    which   forms   a   bridge   over   the   twenty 
middle  years  of  Milton's  life  has  varied  interest.     They  are  very  few 
in    number;    they   do    not,    even   with    those   in    Italian, 
which    fall   out   of  our   purview,    reach    the    end    of    the 
second  dozen.     The  history  of  their  reputation  is  strange,  for  even  after 
making  every  possible  allowance  for  the  "  point  of  view  "  and  for  the 
depreciation  of  the  sonnet  as  a  trifling  thing,  we  cannot  now  under- 
stand the  contempt  with  which  the  eighteenth  century  regarded  them 
as   not   even   good   of    their    kind.     They    are    historically   of    great 
importance,  because  they  mark  that  return  from  the  true  .Lnglish  or 
"Shakespearian   lorm   ot   thp   fipnnpt   tn   thf  P^tr-irr^i^ior.  nii7'^el  wliicli 
has    beei\  generally,  though  not  universally,  observed  since.     This,  it 
must    be    repeated,    tnougn    a    perfectly    legitimate    consequence    of 
Milton's  devotion  to  Italian,  was  in  no  sense  a  change  from  corrupt 
to  pure.     The    one   kind   of  quatorzain  is  from    every  point  of  view 
exactly  as  legitimate  as  the  other,  which  was  itself  only  the  survivor 
of  divers    Italian   kinds.     Yet   again  Milton's  sonnets  are  interesting 
because  they  are  almost   the  first  instance  of  perception,  on  the  part 
of  an  English  poet,  of  the  unmatched  suitableness  of  the  sonnet  form 
for  the  purposes  of  "  occasional "  poetry.     Before  Milton  the  sonnet 
had  been  very  generally  written  in  sequences,  and  almost  invariably 
devoted  to  the  subject  of  love  —  a  subject  for  which  it  is  no  doubt 
supremely    but    by    no    means    exclusively    suited.     Since    his    day, 
though,  it  has  received  further  extensions,  especially  the  topographical 
(the  discovery  of  which  is  the  great  glory  of  Bowles),  and  the  descrip- 
tive-pictorial,  where     Rossetti     reigns     almost    alone.     But   Milton's 
innovation,  or  rather  extension,  invited  not  only  these  but  almost  all 
others  of  whatsoever  kind,  as  will  be  seen  from  their  subjects  —  The 
Nightingale,    His    own   Twenty-third   Year,    The    Imminent   Cavalier 
Attack  on  London,  To  a  Virtuous  Young  Lady,  To  Lady  Margaret 
Ley,  three  political-controversial   (one  of  them  a  twenty-lined  ^"tail" 
sonnet),     To    Lavves    the   Musician,    On    Mrs.    Catharine   Thomson, 
to  Fairfax,   Cromwell,  and  Vane,   On  the  Massacre  in  Piedmont,  On 
his    Blindness,  To   his  friends    Lawrence   and    Skinner,   and    On    his 
Deceased    Second    Wife.     Thus   we    have    love,    meditation,   ethical 
compliment,  epicede,  polemic,  and,  in  the  most  miscellaneous  sense, 
"occasional"  verse,  all  exemplified  in  this  little  handful. 

They  are  far  from  being  of  equal  value,  and  the  extreme  badness 
of  some  may,  though  it  never  should,  have  caused  the  depreciation 
of  others.  The  divorce  and  political  sonnets,  for  instance,  simply 
display  ill-temper  and  pique,  trying  to  masquerade  as  banter  in 
doggerel  verse.  Yet  even  here  Milton's  irrepressible  talent  for 
melodious    and    majestic    phrase   will    break    out,  as    in    the   line  — 

Which  after  held  the  sun  and  moon  in  fee, 


398  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 


and  almost  everywhere  else  the  good  gifts  predominate  altogether,  or 
very  nearly  so.  Even  the  very  early  and  comparatively  common- 
place "Nightingale"!  is  full  of  them.  The  stately  cadence  of  the 
" Three-and-twentieth  Year"  hides,  as  is  not  always  the  case,  the 
^.^^u^T^T'^p.^^r.oc.o  tn  tn1rr  himself  very  seriously  indeed.  "The 
Assault "  is  a  pair  to  it ;  the  personal  sonnets  to  or  on  others  suit 
themselves  to  the  dominant  of  comment  or  praise,  or  whatever  it  may 
be,  with  marvellous  art ;  and  the  two  finest  of  all^thej^assacre  " 
■.agnnet  and  the  "Blindness,"  develop  the  form '"TJlT'The  side  of 
grandeur  in  a  way  whicill  has  never  been  excelled,  and,  even  in  the 
abundant  and  sometimes  consummate  sonnet-practice  of  the  present 
century,  very  seldom  equalled. 

With  respect  to  the  three  great  poems  of  his  last  fifteen  years,  it 
is  noticeable  as  to  their  matter  that  we  have  from  his  own  hand 
a  long  list  of  subjects  for   poems,   of  which  the  majority  are   taken 

from    the    sacred    history   and    the    rest   from    the    early 
^JoimT"    chronicles  of  Britain,    both  South  and  North;    secondly, 

as  to  the  form  of  Samson  Agonistes,  that  all  these  sub- 
jects appear  to  have  been  originally  intended  as  tragedies  in  the 
Senecan  form.  We  may  reasonably  connect  this  scheme  with  that 
curious  dislike  of  rhyme  and  of  modern  poetical  forms  generally 
which  made  the  admirer  of  Shakespeare  and .  the  author  of  the 
exquisite  rhymed  early  poems  endeavour  to  reverse  the  course  of  the 
English  genius  both  in  respect  of  rhyme  and  in  respect  of  dramatic 
arrangement.  As  for  Paradise  Lost,  the  subject,  as  we  should 
expect,  had  already,  independently  of  the  Miracle  plays,  been  treated 
dramatically,  and  the  fact  is  proper  to  be  taken  notice  of  by  those  who 
busy  themselves  with  the  subject  of  Milton's  alleged  indebtedness  to 
other  writers.  What  is  proper  to  be  said  here  on  that  subject  may 
here  be  said  very  briefly.  Milton  has  borrowed  from  these  supposed 
originals  nothing  that  makes  him  Milton ;  and  the  things  that  he 
may  perhaps  have  borrowed  are  unimportant.  It  was,  however, 
certain  beforehand  that  so  vast  a  subject  as  the  Fall  of  Man,  partic- 
ularly as  it  would  present  itself  to  one  equally  enamoured  of  theo- 
logical disquisition  and  stocked  with  profane  learning,  could  not 
possibly  be  handled  within  the  compass  of  an  antique  drama  or  even 
a  trilogy.  We  do  not  know  with  any  precision  when  the  existing 
poem  was  begun,  but  it  can  hardly  have  been  before  1656;  and 
we  do  practically  know  that  it  was  finished  in  about  seven  years 
from  that  time,  though  perhaps  fear  of  bringing  himself  prominently 
before  the  public,  and  certainly  the  interruptions  to  all  business 
caused  by  the  plague   in    1665    and   the   fire   in    1666,   hindered   the 

1  Interesting,  as  noted  before,  in  connection  with  the  Chaucerian  or  pseudo- 
Chaucerian  Cuckoo  and  Nightingale. 


CHAP.  I  BLANK   VERSE   AND   THE  NEW   COUPLET  399 


publication.  The  continuation,  or  Paradise  Regained,  is  said,  though 
only  on  the  authority  of  the  person  who  derives  credit  from  the 
truth  of  the  story,  to  have  been  suggested  by  Ellwood,  a  Quaker, 
and,  like  many  of  the  original  Quakers,  a  person  of  some  abiUty 
and  originaHty.  It  is  not  known  whether  any  reason  besides  the 
fellow-feeling  of  blindness  made  Milton  select  Samson  from  the  large 
number  of  similar  subjects  which  he  had  earlier  thought  of.  But  the 
community  of  situation  is  sufficient  reason. 

The  exclusive  use  of  blank  verse  in  the  epics,  and  the  predomi- 
nance of  it  iinne  piay,  come  directly  irom  thU   Liai-L  dgainol  rhymr 
just  referred  to^  vdHeh  is  itselt  not  original  in  MTTTtJii,  but,  as  Ira's  been 
shown  amply  already,  a  common  idol   (in   the   Baconian 
sense)  of  the  Renaissance,  a  fallacy  derived  from  an,  in  the        verse!" 
main  reasonable,  admiration  of  the  ancients.     Milton  had 
too  good  an  ear  to  attempt  the  miserable  sapphics  and   hexameters 
of  the  generation  before,  but  his  very  ear  suggested  to  him  that  he 
could,  merely    by   variety   of  cadence   and   arrangement,   supply   the 
want  of  rhyme  itself,  the  objections  to  which,  in  narrative  as  well  as  in 
dramatic  verse,  were,  as  we  can  see  from  Dryden's  Essay  of  Dramatic 
Poesy  (written,  if  not  published,  before  Pjxradise  Lost  appeared),  very 
much  in  the  air  at  the  time.     For  his  own  particular  purpose,  there 
is   no  doubt   that    blank   verse   exceptionally  well   suited   his   serried  _ 
argument.     Yi is  spacious  description,  his  fiery  and  enero-etjr  nnrntivr 
cAUlfl  not,  ITIce  th^Tneandering  tapestry  work  ot  Spenser  or  the  cloud- 
and-sky  pageantry"""or~51feTley,  Jiare  endured   a  regular  confinement, 
eveft-irrsuch  comparatively  roomy  bounds  as  those  of  the  Spenserian, 
much   less   in   any   smaller  stanza.      The   couplet   would    have    per- 
petually teased  and  cramped  him.     He  needed  and  he  achieved  the 
large  and  Infinitely  varjpfl  frppdnm  of  thp_ verse  paragraph  which  onl^ 
bl3j»lf^groo"Tnio*VB;-and  which  he  him.self  could  punctuate  and  vary 
in  cadence  till  it  acquires  almost  the  beauty_and  the  proportion  oif  tKe 
starr^ntselt.      We~cahirot," "tTierefof e,"  regret    thaT  he    made    these 
experiments  i^Dut  it  is  entirely   illegitimate   to    conclude   from   them 
that   rhyme   is   a    superfluity    in    non-dramatic,   as   it    certainly   is   in 
dramatic,  verse.     A  man  may  paint  supremely  with  one  finger,  but  he 
will  do  best  to  us'e  the  five  that  nature  has  given  him. 

Considerable  difference  of  structure  is  noticeable  in  the  deca- 
syllaljic  verse  of  the  three  poems,  even  independently  of  those 
general  characteristics  of  Miltonic  verse  which  had  best  be  noticed 
togetlicr  and  presently.  In  Paradise  Lost  the  tendency,  which  has 
been  noticed  in  Co?ntis,  to  indulge  too  much  in  the  redundant  syllable 
is.  on  the  whole,  corrected.  But  the  practice  of  etijaiitbe merit,  or 
running  on  from  one  line  to  tlie  other,  is  extended  to  tlie  fullest 
dramatic   license,  and   forms  indeed    the   chief  instrument   (with  the 


400  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 

variety  of  phrase  which  is  contingent  upon  it)  in  the  architecture  of 
the  verse  paragraph.  In  Paradise  Regained  redundancy  makes  its 
appearance  again  ;  and  in  Samsoti  Agonistes  —  perhaps  deliberately,  the 
dramatic  form  inviting  it,  perhaps  as  a  mere  consequence  of  an  uncon- 
scious tendency  —  it  becomes  very  prominent  indeed.  There  is  a 
dilTerence.  too,  in  phrase.  The  stately  yet  seldom  over-gorgeous 
or  over-stiff  Miltonic  diction  reaches  its  acme  in  Paradise  Lost;  and, 
if  a  little  less  sweet  and  graceful  than  in  the  early  poems,  is  still 
more  accomplished,  still  more  "inevitable,"  still  more  suited  to  con- 
vince all  good  judges  that  it  cannot  be  better  done  at  the  time,  for  the 
purpose,  and  in  the  context.  In  the  best  passages  of  Paradise 
Regained  there  is  no  falling  off  in  this  respect ;  but  elsewhere  there 
is,  and  the  absence  of  splendour  and  succulence  in  the  diction,  joined 
to  the  occasional  relaxation  of  the  verse,  makes  that  danger  of  the 
prosaic,  which  waits  so  constantly  on  blank  verse,  sometimes  seem  too 
imminent  here.  The  process  continues  furtlier  in  Samson,  where  the 
great  pathos  and  greater  dignity  of  the  action  cannot  hinder  the  blank- 
verse  parts  from  being  at  once  too  dry  and  too  loose.  But  here  the 
choruses  come  to  the  rescue  with  their  despised  auxiliary  rhyme  and 
their  exceeding  beauty,  while  even  their  unrhymed  Pindaric  sections, 
though  perhaps  confessing  a  relaxing  grasp  of  the  paragraph- 
symphony,  serve  to  vary  the  effect. 

The  substance  of  the  three   needs  no  praise,   little  account,  and 

only  a  hint  that,  though  never  below,  it  is  sometimes  either  above  or 

outside   the   most   appropriate    themes   of  verse.     Light  treatment  is 

rarely   called   for,   and    is    never  successfully  given.     But 

matter.       ^'''^    mere   narrative   is,    in    Paradise    Lost    at    any  jate. 


lanng-^^  -^yit^  o^^f.-i.c^^iijj«n.-Tr  d^iii  •  thQ^personal  touches, 
in  reference  chiefly  to  the  blindness,  both  here  and  in  Sa/nson,  giv£. 
pathos  without  impertinence ;  the  shorter,  poetical  jewels  are  innumer- 
"STSle;  andeveimT?TWT^er  passS^ges,  many,  il  not  most, '  of  "vvTiTch 
could  stand  almost  as  substantive  poems,  would  make  a  most 
formidable  list.  In  blank  verse  out  of  drama  we  have  few  things 
that  can  approach,  and  nothing  that  excels,  the  picture  of  Pandemoniurn_ 
and  its  inhabitants;  the  scene  with  Sin  _and  Death.:  the^Journey 
through  Chao^ ;  the  address  Jjf  ^ ''g^''t  -^^  ^'-"^  beginning  of  Book  III.; 
Satan's  vision  of  the  Sin  and  his  speech  on  Niphates ;  the  description 
of  paradise ;  the  discovery  by  Ithuriel  and  the  subsequent  debate ; 
parts  of  the  story  of  Raphael ;  the  Temptation ;  the  change  of  nature 
thereafter ;  and  the  riot  of  names  in  the  description  of  the  view  from 
the  topmost  mount  of  Paradise.  All  these  are  in  Paradise  L^ost,  and 
the  sequel  adds,  though  fewer  and  farther  between,  the  great  confes- 
sion of  Satan,  "'Tis  true  I  am  that  spirit  unfortunate";  the  dream  of 
Christ,  and  the  morning   scene  after   it,   with   its    traces   of  Milton's 


CHAP.  I  BLANK   VERSE   AND   THE  NEW   COUPLET  401 

reading  in  romance ;  the  second  prospect  from  tlie  mount ;  the  views 
of  Rome  and  Athens ;  the  storm ;  and,  above  all,  the  final  moment 
on  the  golden  spire  of  the  Temple.  Yet  perhaps  it  is  not  in  passages 
that  Milton's  greatness  appears  so  decidedly  as  in  the  great  achieve- 
ment and  attainment  of  the  general  scheme  of  his  poems  on  the  one 
land,  and  the  marvellous  perfection  of  the  single  line  and  phrase  on' 
ihe  other. 

The  extreme  importance  of  Milton  in  English  poetry  has  been 
already  referred  to,  but  must  be  now  somewhat  more  fully,  though 
still  briefly,  dwelt  upon.  He  represents  —  and  almost  exhausts  — 
the  fourth  great  influence  in  English  prosody.  We  have  ^^^f^n's  place 
already  seen  how  Chaucer  gathered  together  and  put,  in  English 
with  an  immense  contribution  6i  Ris  own,  the  results  ^'^°^°  ^' 
of  the  struggles  of  Middle  English  towards  such  a  prosody,  and 
how  his  example,  followed  blindly  and  with  a  tongue  as  stammer- 
ing as  the  eyes  were  dim,  lasted  for  more  than  a  century,  till  the 
changes  of  the  language  put  it  for  the  moment  aside ;  how  Spenser, 
partly  returning  to  it,  partly  gathering  up  de  novo  thelT!STTtm#lhe 
experiments  of  his  immediate  forerunners  and  the  general  influences 
of  the  Renaissance,  gave  poetry  a  fresh  start;  and,  lastly,  how  the 
dramatists,  and  especially  Shakespeare,  supj^led  and^aliogk  out  the 
texture  of  the  decasyllabic  line,  varied  its  cadence,  stocked  it  (on 
the  principles  of  equivalence  "Or  slur)  with  a  great  number  of  new 
foot-combinations,  while  the  lyric  and  stanza  poetry  of  the  fifty  years 
between  the  Calendar  and  Milton's  "  Three-and-twentieth  Year" 
sonnet  almost  exhausted  the  possibilities  of  less  uniform  verse. 

At  the  time  which  we  have  reached,  as  we  have  seen  already,  and 
shall  see  still  more,  the  stream  of  original  poetic  thought  was  slacken- 
ing ;  even  the  lyric  composition,  though  almost  more  exquisite  than 
ever,  was  dwindling  in  range,  height,  and  strength,  and  tending  to 
an  exquisite  prettiness  rather  than  to  passion  or  splendour;  and, 
above  all,  the  extreme  laxity  of  structure  into  which  the  drama  had 
degenerated  was  either  rendering  verse  (as  in  the  drama  itself)  mere 
hobbling  prose,  or  by  reaction  was  creating  the  sharply  separated 
couplet,  a  form  admirable  for  the  lower  varieties  of  poetry,  not  so 
admirable  for  the  higher. 

Just  at  this  time  came  Milton,  a  poet  with  an  exquisite  ear  and 
extraordinary  science  of  form,  great  learning  in  his  own  and  other 
languages,  and  a  predilection  for  the  special  form  of  non-dramatic 
blank  verse  which,  managed  as  he  manages  it,  at  once  counteracts  the 
effect  of  the  sharp  snip-snap  couplet  and  of  the  wandering,  involved, 
labyrinthine  stanza.  He  tightened  up  the  metre  without  unduly 
constricting  it;  he  refined  the  expression  without  making  it  jejune. 
And  in  particular  his  need  of  an  extremely  varied    line  to  construct 


402  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vil 


jhis  paragraphs  and  supply  the  want  of  rhyme-music,  made  him^ 
[without  adopting  the  sheer  abandonment  of  the  late  dramatic  verse, 
resort  to  every  artifice  of  metrical  distribution  to  avoid  monotony. 
'  So  intricate  and  constant  is  this  artifice  that  some  have  even 
imagined  the  invention  by  him  of  a  "  new  prosody "  not  reducible  to 
ordinary  laws,  or  have  resorted  to  the  supposition  of  extrametrical 
syllables.  As  to  this  last,  it  can  only  be  said  that  the  existence  of 
an  extrametrical  syllable  anywhere  but  at  the  beginning  or  end  of 
a  line  proves  the  imcompetence  of  the  poet.  Extrametrical  syllables 
are  the  "  epicycles  "  of  criticism.  It  is  true  that  there  are  a  very  few 
lines  in  iMilton  where  no  more  than  nine  syllables  can  be  made  out  by 
any  artifice ;  and  we  must  here  suppose,  either  that  he  has  followed 
VirgiPs  example  in  leaving  these  lines  designedly  incomplete,  or  else 
that  he  has,  with  rather  doubtful  judgment,  borrowed  from  some 
other  metres  the  license  of  making  the  initial  foot  monosyllabic,  with 
strong  stress  and  pause  to  serve  for  the  missing  half.  It  is  tme  also 
that,  probably  seduced  by  his  affection  for  Italian  (in  which  language 
the'  prevailing  cadence  is  always  trochaic  rather  than  iambic),  he  has 
substituted  the  trochee  rather  more  freely  than  altogether  suits  the 
genius  of  English.  But,  with  these  two  provisos,  every  line  of  his  can 
be  scanned  with  perfect  strictness  as  an  iambic  of  five  feet  in  which 
the  following  feet  are  admissible,  strictly  speaking,  in  aiiy  place — 
iambus,  trochee,  anapaest,  dactyl,  and  tribrach  —  while  a  redundant 
syllable  is  allowed  in  the  last.  With  such  precision,  and  on  the 
whole  sucli  judgment,  did  he  apply  these  principles,  that  in  a  certain 
sense  English  prosody  up  to  the  present  time  has  gone  no  farther. 
Very  many  new  metrical  combinations  have,  of  course,  been  invented, 
and  the  eighteenth  century  for  a  long  time  discarded,  or  used  very 
gingerly,  his  licenses  of  equivalence  and  pause.  But  he  practically 
put  English  prosody  on  the  footing  which  it  has  maintained  ever 
since ;  and,  except  in  the  few  and  always  unsuccessful  cases  where 
poets  have  deliberately  set  themselves  to  attempt  a  new  prosody, 
every  poet  from  Dryden  to  Mr.  Swinburne  can  be  accounted  for  on 
the  system  applicable  to  him.  His  pattern  of  blank  verse,  admirable 
as  a  variation,  is  not  a  complete  substitute  for  couplet  or  stanza  ;  his 
vocabulary,  at  least  in  his  later  poems,  may  be  objected  to  as  un- 
necessarily stiiT  and  loaded.  But  his  prosody  in  the  strict  sense  is 
exhaustive.  No  one  up  to  his  time  (though  Shakespeare  had 
practically  included  everything)  had  deliberately  and  formally  sys- 
tematised  all  things;  no  one  since  his  time  has  added  anything 
^new  in    principle. 

The    position    now   for    two    centuries    assigned    to    Milton    was 
during   his   lifetime   held   by   Abraham   Cowley. i     This    poet,   whose 
1  In  Chalmers.     More  completely  in  Dr.  Grosart's  "  Chertsey  Worthies," 


CHAP.  I  BLANK   VERSE   AND  THE   NEW   COUPLET  403 


popularity,  extraordinarily  high  and  extraordinarily  brief,  was  not 
quite  so  unreasonable  as  his  loss  of  it,  was  a  Londoner  born  ten 
years  after  Milton,  in  1618.  He  went  to  Westminster,  ^^^^^ 
and  thence  to  Cambridge.  He  certainly  wrote  verse,  °^^^" 
and  good  verse,  very  early,  for  some  of  it  was  published  when  he  was 
fifteen;  but  whether  his  reading  and  emulation  of  Spenser  really 
enabled  him  to  produce  some  of  these  poems  at  ten  years  old  must 
be  left  to  the  reader.  He  had  but  just  taken  his  Master's  degree 
in  1643  when  Cambridge  fell  into  the  power  of  the  Parliamentarians 
and  he  was  ejected,  went  to  Oxford,  where  he  stayed  for  two  years, 
and  then  going  with  Henrietta  Maria  to  Paris,  became  her  secretary. 
After  some  ten  years'  stay  abroad,  in  1656  he  returned  to  England, 
and  was  arrested,  but  received  his  liberty  on  condition  of  some  in- 
definite compliances  which  are  vaguely  and  differently  related.  He 
returned  to  France  till  the  Restoration,  and  was  then,  like  many 
other  Royalists,  disappointed  in  hopes  which  Charles  II.  was 
perhaps  not  too  careful  to  satisfy,  but  which  he  certainly  could  not 
in  all  cases  have  satisfied  if  he  would.  Nor  was  it  very  long  before 
a  beneficial  lease  of  the  Queen's  lands  gave  him  competence,  if  not 
affluence.  He  retired,  however,  in  some  dudgeon  to  Chertsey,  and 
died  there  —  not  finding  the  country  quite  the  poet's  paradise  —  in 
July  1667. 

Cowley's  remarkable  prose  may  be  for  the  present  put  aside. 
In  his  verse  he  is  not  merely  a  most  curious  bridge  of  communica- 
tion between  the  couplet  poets,  the  "  school  of  good-sense,"  and  the 
metaphysicals,  but  almost  more  than  Waller,  and  much  more  than 
Dcnham,  the  pair  who  usually  go  with  him,  a  bridge  between  one 
whole  period  of  poetry  and  another.  He  wrote  in  youth  a  play 
called  The  Gtiardian,  which  he  did  not  then  intend  for  the  stage, 
but  after  the  Restoration  altered  and  acted  as  Cutter  of  Coleman 
Street.  But  this  requires  no  special  notice.  His  purely  poetical 
works,  which  are  by  no  means  so  easily  to  be  distinguished  by  mere 
chronological  order  as  might  be  thought  likely,  fall  pretty  easily  into 
three  classes  when  judged  from  the  point  of  view  of  form  —  namely, 
couplet  verse,  lyrics  and  stanza  poems  of  various  kinds,  and 
Pindarics. 

Of  the  couplet  verse  the  most  important  piece  in  size,  as  indeed 
it  is  of  the  whole,  is  the  curious  sacred  epic  of  the  Davideis,  much 
of  which  was  written  at  Cambridge,  though  it  was  continued  (it  never 
was  completed)  later.  Four  books  exist ;  yet  even  this  j^.  ^^^  ^^^^ 
manageable  length,  assisted  by  Cowley's  immense  popu- 
larity, never  made  it  generally  read.  There  are  unquestionably  fine 
things  in  it  —  from  the  opening  picture  of  Hell,  earlier  by  much  than 
that  of  Milton,  through  the  sketch  of  the  Priests' College,  a  favourite 


404  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 

theme  with  the  author,  and  worked  out  by  him  also  in  prose,  to 
David's  account  of  Saul  and  of  Jonathan.  And  the  passages  of 
length  are  as  a  rule  inferior  to  the  single  lines  and  couplets,  which 
are  sometimes  wonderfully  fine.  But  the  miscarriage  of  the  piece  as 
a  whole  may  be  accounted  for  many  times  over.  It  is  true,  as 
Johnson  urges,  that  the  story,  being  merely  begun,  has  no  time  to 
justify  itself,  that  its  amplification  of  familiar  Scripture  is  felt  as 
impertinent,  and  that  the  decorations  exhibit  the  fatal  fault  of  the 
"  metaphysicals  "  almost  in  the  worst  degree.  But  there  is  more  than 
this.  The  very  accomplishment  of  the  couplets  now  and  then 
jars  with  the  phraseology  and  imagery,  as  would  not  have  been  the 
case  in  stanza  or  blank  verse ;  and,  little  story  as  the  poet  gives 
himself  room  to  tell,  he  interferes  with  the  interest  even  of  what  little 
there  is  by  constant  divagation.  The  book  is  a  museum  of  poetic 
fragments  tastelessly  cemented  together,  not  an  organic  whole. 

In  his  other  couplet  pieces,  from  quite  early  things  to  the  trans- 
lations intercalated  in  the  Essays,  Cowley  shows  much  better,  or  at 
any  rate  is  much  more  accessible,  as  a  pioneer  in  the  path.  The 
piece  upon  the  "  Happy  Birth  of  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  "  in  1640, 
though  sometimes  "  enjambed,"  shows  on  the  whole  a  great  preference 
for,  and  a  pretty  complete  command  of,  the  authentic,  balanced,  self- 
contained  couplet  with  the  cracker  of  rhyme  at  the  tail  of  it.  We 
only  want  weight  to  give  us  Dryden,  and  polish  to  give  us  Pope :  the 
form  is  there  already. 

In  his  stanza-poems  and  lyrics  proper  Cowley  shows  the  retro- 
spective side  of  his  poetic  Janus-head,  though  it  is  observable  that 
even  in  Constantia  and  Philettis,  one  of  the  earliest  of  the  Juvenilia, 
the  concluding  couplets  of  the  sizain  "  snap "  as  they 
would  not  have  done  in  Daniel  or  in  Drayton.  The 
lyrics  are  often  quite  Jonsonian,  while  sometimes  they  have  a  light- 
ness which  Ben  rarely  achieved,  and  which  is  chiefly  proper  to  his 
"sons,"  of  whom  Cowley  was  born  just  too  late  to  be  one.  The 
famous  Chronicle,  his  best-known  thing,  is  the  very  best  of  poetic 
froth ;  while  the  Anacreontics  are  often  equal  to  Ben,  and  some- 
times not  very  far  below  Milton.  One  is  frequently  inclined  to  give 
Cowley  a  really  high  place,  when  something — his  shallowness  or  his 
frigid  wit,  or  a  certain  "  shadow  before  "  of  eighteenth-century  prose 
—  interferes,  especially  in  his  once  adored  Mistress. 

Undoubtedly,  however,  Cowley's  Pindarics  are  the  most  peculiar 

efforts  of  his  talent,  and  those  which,  upon  his  own  time,  produced 

most  of  the   effect  of  genius.     They  are  little   read    now,  and   there 

The/'/«-      can    be    no    doubt    that    both    their    structure    and    the 

darics.  presumed  necessity  of  imitating  Pindar's  style  of  obscure 
conceit    encouraged    the    metaphysical    manner    very    treacherously. 


CHAP.  I  BLANK   VERSE  AND   THE   NEW   COUPLET  405 

But  they  would  be  interesting  to  us  even  were  they  far  worse  than 
they  are  intrinsically,  because  to  the  historian  of  literature  nothing  can 
ever  be  uninteresting  which  has,  for  a  long  time,  supplied  an  obvious 
literary  demand  on  the  part  of  readers  and  provided  employment  for 
great  writers.  To  Cowley  we  owe  —  in  that  sense  of  obligation  which 
always  presupposes  remembrance,  that  the  debt  would  have  been  due 
to  another  if  this  man  had  not  been  in  ca§e  to  lend  —  the  really 
magnificent  odes  of  Dryden,  Gray,  and  Collins  pretty  directly ;  in- 
directly that  still  greater  one  of  Wordsworth  which  is  almost  his 
solitary  claim  to  have  reached  the  highest  summits  of  poetry ;  and 
many  great  things  of  Shelley  and  Tennyson,  not  to  mention  lesser 
men.  And  the  eager  adoption  of  the  form,  which  for  more  than  half 
a  century  produced  libraries  full  of  unreadable  Pindarics  (the  most 
interesting  and  nearly  the  most  hopeless  examples  being  those  of  no 
less  a  man  than  Swift),  shows  us  what  the  time  wanted,  how  it 
was  sick  of  the  regular  stanza,  how  blank  verse  was  still  a  little  too 
bold  for  it,  while  it  had  not  yet  settled  down  or  become  satisfied  with 
the  regular  tick  of  the  couplet-clock.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  the 
things  themselves  are  not  contemptible.  "  Life  and  Fame,"  "  Life," 
the  "  Ode  to  Mr.  Hobbes,"  and  others  are,  or  at  least  contain,  very 
fine  things ;  and  the  chief  drawback  of  the  whole  is  that  descent  to 
colloquial  abbreviations  ("I'm,"  etc.)  which  was  due  partly  to  the 
slow  vulgarising  of  popular  taste  on  such  points  which  we  shall  have 
to  record,  partly  to  the  still  prevailing  dread  of  slur  and  trisyllabic 
equivalence.  On  the  whole,  no  doubt,  Rochester  was  right  when  he 
said  ("profanely,"  as  Dryden  very  properly  adds)  that  "Cowley 
was  not  of  God,  and  so  he  could  not  stand."  But  the  special  reason 
of  his  fall  was  that  he  never  could  make  up  his  mind  whether  to 
stand  with  the  old  age  or  with  the  new,  with  the  couplet  or  with  the 
wilder  verse,  with  mystical  fantasy  or  clear  common  sense,  with 
lawless  splendour  or  jejune  decency. 

One  splendid  passage  —  which,  by  the  way,  did  not  appear  in 
the  first  edition  of  the  poem.  Cooper'' s  Hill,  that  contains  it  —  has 
preserved  to  Sir  John  Denham  ^  a  little  of  the  very  disproportionate 
reputation  which  he  earned  during  his  life,  thanks 
chiefly  to  his  younger  contemporary  Dryden's  generous 
eulogy  of  it.  He  was  born  in  Dul^lin,  and  of  Irish  parentage  on  his 
mother's  side,  in  1615;  had  at  Oxford  and  Lincoln's  Inn  a  reputa- 
tion for  idleness  and  extravagance,  especially  in  gambling ;  obtained 
some  fame  in  1641  by  The  Sop/iy,  and  published  Cooper^s  Hill  soon 
afterwards ;  lived  chiefly  at  Oxford  during  the  war,  and  chiefly  in 
P'rance  after  it ;    was  knighted   at   the   Restoration,  and   received   a 

1  In  Chalmers. 


4o6  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 

valuable  place,  the  surveyorship  of  the  king's  buildings ;  was  unlucky 
in  marriage,  became  disordered  in  mind,  and  died  on  loth  April 
1668. 

Few,  except  for  studious  curiosity,  are  ever  likely  again  to  read 
Denham  through,  or  even  any  considerable  part  of  his  not  extensive 
work.  The  Sophy  is  a  feeble  tragedy ;  Cooper's  Hill,  putting  aside 
the  patch 

Oh  !  could  I  flow  like  thee 

and  a  few  other  fine  lines,  is  chiefly  a  creditable,  and  tolerably  though 
not  very  early,  exercise  in  the  new  kind  of  couplet.  A  verse  para- 
phrase of  the  Second  Aeneid  adopts  the  older  and  looser  "  enjambed  " 
form  of  the  same  measure ;  indeed,  this  enjambment  is  common  in 
Denham,  and  is  found  in  Cooper's  Hill  itself.  Prudence,  Justice,  Old 
Age  (of  all  odd  things  a  verse  handling  of  the  De  Senecti/te),  The 
Progress  of  Learning,  are  preludes  to  the  eighteenth-century  concert 
of  couplet  tunes  on  things  not  tunable.  The  smaller  poems,  with 
occasional  flashes,  such  as  the  happy  transformation  (for  translation 
it  is  not)  of  Martial's  JVon  ego  sum  Curius  nee  Nutna  nee  Titius  into 

I  pretend  not  to  the  wise  ones 
To  the  grave  or  the  precise  ones, 

and  a  few  pieces  of  some  nobility  like  the  elegy  on  Cowley  and  the 
attack  on  Love  in  favour  of  Friendship,  are  apt  to  oscillate  between 
the  tastelessly  fantastical  and  the  merely  gross.  Moreover,  Denham 
is  an  eminent  sinner  in  the  small  matters  of  grammar,  rhyme,  and 
measure  which  disgrace  so  many  writers  in  the  middle  and  later  part 
of  the  seventeenth  century  and  are  obviously  due  not  to  any  imper- 
fect condition  of  the  language,  but  to  sheer  carelessness  and  a  down- 
at-heel  fashion  of  literature.  He  has  occupied  the  place  between 
Cowley  and  Waller  as  the  "  three  reformers  of  our  numbers  "  so  long, 
that  he  has  established  a  title  to  it  by  prescription ;  and  as  it  has  long 
been  understood  what  this  "  reform  of  numbers  "  meant,  there  is  the 
less  reason  for  turning  him  out.  But  he  is  much  less  of  a  poet  than 
Cowley,  while  it  is  an  injustice  to  couple  his  slatternly  muse  with  the 
neat  and  graceful,  if  not  radiantly  lovely  or  bewitching,  muse  of 
Edmund  Waller. ^ 

This  curious  person,  whose  actual  poetical  achievements  were 
helped  by  accidents  of  all  kinds,  including  social  position,  wealth,  long 
life,  and  the  fact  that  the  greatest  English  writer  of  his  latest  days 

Waller        ^^^^  ^  "^^^  °^  singular  modesty  and  generosity  towards 

his  contemporaries,  was  born  in   Hertfordshire,  but  of  a 

family  connected  by  property  with  the  neighbouring  county  of  Bucks, 

1  In  Chalmers,  and  recently  in  "  The  Muses'  Library." 


CHAP.  I  BLANK    VERSE   AND   THE  NEW  COUPLET  407 

and  by  extraction  with  Kent,  on  3rd  Marcli,  1605.  He  succeeded  as 
a  mere  child  to  a  very  large  fortune,  was  educated  at  Eton  and 
King's  College,  Cambridge,  and  early  introduced  to  court. 

This  was  an  age  of  precocity,  but  Waller's  was  certainly  very  re- 
markable, for  he  was  not  eighteen  when  he  wrote  his  poem  on  Prince 
Charles's  escape  from  shipwreck  at  Santander ;  and  there  is  no  doubt 
that  the  cast  of  the  couplets  in  which  it  is  written  is  unlike  anything 
before  except  mere  scraps  and  fragments,  and  almost  exactly  like 
what  was  to  prevail  for  an  entire  century,  and,  with  Pope's  refinements, 
for  nearly  two.  When  we  remember  that  the  time  of  his  writing 
such  couplets  as 

With  the  sweet  sound  of  this  harmonious  lay 
About  the  keel  delighted  dolphins  play 

was  the  year  of  the  publication  of  the  first  folio  of  Shakespeare,  that 
it  was  seven  years  only  after  his  death  and  seven  more  before  the 
birth  of  Dryden,  that  Milton  was  a  boy  at  school,  that  Drayton, 
Jonson,  Chapman  were  alive  and  to  be  so  for  many  years  more,  that 
Fletcher  was  not  dead  and  Cowley  a  child  of  five  years  old,  the  thing 
is  certainly  surprising  enough. 

Waller  was  to  live  sixty-four  years  longer,  nor  was  his  life  unevent- 
ful. He  increased  his  wealth  by  marrying  a  city  heiress,  who  died 
very  soon,  and  is  said  only  in  his  widower  state  to  have  begun  to 
court  Lady  Dorothy  Sidney,  —  '•  Sacharissa,"  —  who  would  not  have  him. 
'•Amoret"  is  said  by  a  less  confident  tradition  to  have  been  Lady 
Sophia  Murray.  He  actually  married  a  lady  of  less  distinguished 
position,  by  whom  he  had  many  children.  His  fortune  naturally 
opened  Parliament  to  him,  but  his  political  career  was  not  fortunate 
or  creditable.  In  the  Short  Parliament  he  was  an  active  member  of 
the  Opposition.  In  the  Long,  though  he  was  a  relation  of  Hampden, 
he  became  somewhat  less  antagonistic  to  the  court,  and  though  he 
continued  to  sit  after  the  final  breach,  was  in  a  m?inntr  persona  gm/a 
to  Charles,  with  whom  he  was  sent  to  negotiate.  Had  what  is 
known  as  Waller's  Plot  —  for  the  details  of  whicli  we  must  refer  to 
history  —  succeeded,  or  had  he  shown  more  fortitude  at  its  failure. 
Waller's  name  might  have  been  at  least  as  favourably  known  in 
historical  as  in  poetical  records.  Unluckily,  on  the  plot's  discovery 
and  his  own  arrest  he  confessed  everything  in  regard  to  himself, 
informed  against  others,  urged  them  to  do  the  like,  was  at  least  part 
cause  of  the  execution  of  his  own  brother-in-law  Tomkyns,  and 
himself  escaped  with  life,  exile,  a  fine  of  ten  thousand  pounds,  and  a 
hopelessly  damaged  reputation,  which  was  not  much  mended  l)y  his 
making  his  peace  with  Cromwell,  his  kinsman  and  the  subject  of  one 
of  his  best  poems.     As    he  had  wit  and  wealth   he  was  welcome  at 


4o8  •  CAROLINE   LITERATURE 


BOOK  VII 


Whitehall  after  the  Restoration,  sat  in  several  Parliaments,  and  only 
missed  the  Provostship  of  Eton  (for  which  he  asked)  because  he  was 
ineligible  as  a  layman.  He  survived  Charles  IL,  is  said  to  have 
given  his  infatuated  successor  good  advice,  and  died  in  1687. 

Waller,  as  his  own  age  would  have  said,  wrote  poetry  like  a 
gentleman ;  that  is  to  say,  he  neither  published  often  nor  attempted 
anything  of  great  magnitude,  but  his  very  early  beginnings  and  his 
very  long  life  enabled  him  to  put  together  a  considerable  poetical 
baggage.  We  have  noticed  his  first  couplet  poem ;  it  was  followed 
by  others,  of  which  the  chief  are  that  on  the  Duke  of  Buckingham's 
death,  which  is  quite  in  Dryden's  earlier  manner  forty  years  later ;  a 
batch  of  complimentary  poems  to  persons  of  the  court  of  Charles  I. 
from  the  Queen  downward ;  another,  written  at  Penshurst  and  full  of 
the  "  Sacharissa  "  affair ;  the  Battle  of  the  Summer  Islands  (Waller's 
longest  poem  except  the  later  Divine  Love,  and  like  it  remarkable 
for  the  extreme  shortness  of  the  cantos,  which  contain  only  a  few 
score  lines  each)  ;  and  the  Instructions  to  a  Painter,  on  the  fighting 
at  sea  in  1665.  The  panegyric  on  the  Protector  is  in  the  quatrain, 
being  written  at  the  time  when  Gondibert  {vide  infra)  had  made  that 
form  fashionable,  but  the  quatrains  are  merely  pairs  of  couplets,  and 
are  not  the  equal  of  Dryden's  somewhat  later  "heroic  stanzas"  on 
Cromwell's  death,  still  less  of  Annus  Mirabilis. 

Of  the  smaller  lyrics,  which,  like  his  "reform  of  our  numbers," 
made  Waller's  reputation  with  his  own  time,  one,  "Go.  Lovely  Rose,"  is 
universally  known,  and  with  the  almost  equally  popular  "  On  a  Girdle  " 
forms  an  almost  sufficient  sample  for  judgment.  As  was  said  above, 
Waller's  muse  always  presents  herself  in  irreproachable  condition,  not 
a  curl  out  of  place,  not  a  spot  or  crease  on  her  dress,  the  colours 
chosen  with  sufficient  taste,  tlie  arrangement  made  with  sufficient 
skill.  ■  Only,  some  critics  think  her  features  insignificant  and  her  ex- 
pression quite  devoid  of  air  and  fire.  Once  or  twice,  indeed,  the 
spirit  of  lyric  verse  and  of  intense  though  fantastic  poetry  which  was 
still  abroad  does  descend  on  Waller,  as  in  the  famous  comparison 
between  Sacharissa  and  Amoret  ("  Sacharissa's  beauty's  wine,"  etc.), 
and  better  still  in  the  really  magnificent  image  (proving  the  truth  of 
its  own  sentiment,  for  it  seems  to  occur  in  his  last  work)  — 

The  soul's  dark  cottage,  battered  and  decayed, 

Lets  in  new  light  through  chinks  that  time  hath  made. 

Not  often  was  Waller  so  happily  metaphysical. 

As  something  general  was  said  of  Milton's  influence  on  the  course 
of  poetry,  so  we  must  also  consider  briefly  the  influence  of  these  his 
contemporaries  in  a  direction  different  indeed  from  his,  but  so  far  to 
be  connected  with  it  that  they  too  were  innovating,  and  were  innovat- 


CHAP.  I  BLANK   VERSE   AND   THE  NEW   COUPLET  409 

ing  in  directions   to   be   followed   afar   and   freely   by   their   poetical 
successors. 

A  good  deal  has  been  written  on  the  exact  origin  of  this  change  in 
poetry  from  varied  and  rather  loose  measures  to  the  tight,  neat,  heroic 
couplet  —  French  influence  being  the  point  most  hotly  contested.     It  is 
undeniable  that  the  court  of  Henry  IV.  did  exercise  certain         j,^^ 
influences   on  that  of  James  I.,  and    that   in  the  former,     "reform of 
under   Malherbe   and    Balzac    respectively,    the    tide   was  """^ ""™  "^' 
turning  from  ornate  and  fantastic  standards  of  verse  and  prose  to  more 
correct  and  more  frigid  models.     But  the  phenomenon  is  much  more 
one  of  coincidence  than  of  imitation,  though  it  is  impossible  to  deny 
that  the  change  had  begun  and  been  very  conspicuous  in  France  long 
before  the  earliest   experiments  of  Waller.     That  poet,  according  to 
his  own  account,  found  his  chief  predecessor  in  Fairfax  (see  p.  357, 
afite)  ;  more  recently  an  ancestor  has  been  found  for  him  in  George 
Sandys,^  his  senior  at  least.     To  insist,  however,  too  curiously  or  too 
peremptorily  on  either  connection  would  be  only  to  vary  the  mistake 
in  regard  to   French    influence.     In    most  cases  literary  changes  are 
not  initiated  by  any  one  person,  or  even  by  any  one  country.     They 
are  in  the  air.  the  wind  scatters  the  seeds  of  them,  and  they  spring  up 
more  or  less  simultaneously,  and  even  with  a  certain  appearance  of 
spontaneity.     Only   later,  when  some  very  commanding  genius  gives 
them  a  home,  as  here  in  the  case  of  Dryden,  does  deliberate  imita- 
tion play  a  large  part  in  their  diffusion. 

Generally,  the  preference  for  and  practice  of  the  couplet  may  be 
said  to  be  only  one  more  instance  of  the  eternal  "  see-saw,"  of  that 
alternation  between  the  plain  and  the  ornate,  between  the  vast  and 
vague  and  the  cabined  and  correct,  which  pervades  the  whole  his- 
tory of  literature  in  verse  and  in  prose  alike.  In  particular,  the 
couplet  accommodated  itself  better  to  the  special  poetical  desires 
of  the  age,  and  still  more  to  those  which  were  coming  to  its  successor. 
The  time  was  ceasing  (without  complete  knowledge  that  it  ceased)  to 
care  for  passionate  and  romantic  narrative.  Its  love-poetry,  though 
still  retaining  an  exquisite  sweetness,  was  sinking  towards  gallantry 
and  badinage.  Its  leaning  in  didactic  verse  was  shifting  from  the 
metaphysical  and  theological  to  the  scientific  and  merely  ethical.  It 
was  acquiring  a  strong  craving  for  satire  —  political  and  other.  Above 
all,  it  was  becoming  gradually  less  dreamy  and  more  businesslike, 
while    its    critical    tendencies    in    the    lower   sense   were    also   being 

1  Sandys  (1577-1643),  a  traveller  and  a  translator,  who  wrote  good  prose  as 
well  as  verse,  published  rather  late,  translations  of  Ovid  (1632),  paraphrases  of  the 
Scriptures  (1636  and  later),  a  tragedy,  Christ's  Passion,  etc.  (cd.  Hooper,  2  vols. 
London,  1872).  Sandys  uses  various  metres,  but  has  a  distinct  and  early  com- 
mand of  the  couplet. 


4IO  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 

awakened.  For  all  these  purposes  the  stanza,  the  sonnet,  and  the 
other  forms  dearest  to  the  Elizabethans  and  Jacobeans  proper  were 
extremely  ill-suited.  They  all  demanded  oratorical  point,  clean 
hitting,  and  mathematical  arrangement,  for  which  the  couplet  was  as 
well  suited  as  the  others  were  unapt.  And  though,  even  after  nearly 
a  century,  it  is  difficult  to  get  our  ears  to  accept  the  fact,  there  is  no 
doubt  that  to  those  surfeited  with  other  sounds  the  sharp  rattle,  the 
regular  tick,  as  it  may  be  called,  of  this  couplet  was  a  grateful  and 
agreeable  change.  We  still  have  to  make  a  positive  effort  to  under- 
stand what  four  or  five  generations  meant  by  saying  that  Waller  had 
invented  and  Dryden  perfected  "harmony"  and  "smoothness  of 
numbers."  Mere  study  will  indeed  show  us  that  the  couplet  had 
already  acquired  over  these  generations  such  a  mastery  that  when 
they  talked  thus  they  were  really  thinking  of  the  couplet  itself  only ; 
and  no  doubt  the  couplets  of  Waller,  still  more  of  Dryden,  are  vastly 
smoother  and  more  harmonious  than  those  of  Drayton  or  Daniel.  As 
for  other  metres,  one  reason  why  the  eighteenth  century  was  unjust  is 
simply  that  it  was  ignorant.  Except  a  few  antiquarian  students  like 
Oldys  in  the  first  half  and  Warton  in  the  second,  very  few  men  indeed 
in  all  probability  had  ever  opened  Christ's  Victory  or  Philarefe,  the 
songs  of  Campion  or  the  sonnets  of  his  contemporaries.  Good  wits 
who  read  Spenser  did  like  him ;  though  it  is  clear,  even  from  their 
imitations,  that  they  had  lost  the  key  to  his  true  music,  that  it  was  in 
more  senses  than  one  out  of  time  to  them.  Great  harm  has  been 
done  in  literary  'history,  and  much  labour  wasted,  by  refusing  to 
accept  facts  of  this  kind,  and  persevering  in  a  fruitless  and  too  often 
misleading  attempt  to  get  behind  them,  to  account  for  them.  Simple 
acceptance,  not  from  pusillanimity  or  laziness,  but  in  a  wise  passive- 
ness,  is  the  best  attitude,  and  nowhere  more  so  than  here. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE  METAPHYSICALS  —  THE  LYRIC   POETS  —  THE 

MISCELLANISTS,    ETC. 

Meaning  of  the  term  "metaphysical"  —  Crashaw  —  George  Herbert  —  Vaughan 
—  Herrick  —  Carevv  —  Randolph  —  Habington  —  Cartwright  —  Corbet  —  Suck- 
ling—  Lovelace — Cleveland  and  others  —  Marvell  —  Bishop  King — Sher- 
burne, Godolphin,  Stanley,  Cotton,  Brome  —  Quarles,  More,  Beaumont  — 
Davenant  —  Chamberlayne—  Miscellanies 

It  may  seem  unreasonable  to  have  noticed  the  two  most  famous  and 
characteristic  of  the  school  of  poets  whom  Johnson  dubbed  meta- 
physical—  namely,  Donne  and  Cowley  —  before  devoting  any  special 
explanation  to  that  word  and  to  the  thing  which  it  was  intended  to 
denote;  but  there  are  good  reasons  for  the  postponement.  In  the 
first  place,  Donne  is  anterior  by  nearly  a  whole  generation  to  those 
who  are  usually  classed  with  him ;  he  was  some  forty  years  older 
than  Cowley,  and  it  is  probable  that  he  wrote  next  to  none  of  his 
characteristic  work  after  Cowley  was  born.  The  lumping  of  the 
two  together,  and  of  both  with  others,  has  led  to  the  most  grotesque 
blunders,  such  as  that  which  Wordsworth  makes  in  representing 
Donne's  style  as  a  decadence  and  reaction  from  that  of  men  who 
were  actually  younger  than  himself.  In  the  second  place,  Cowley, 
though  undoubtedly  one  of  the  chiefs  of  the  school  that  Johnson 
meant  to  portray,  is,  as  has  been  seen,  but  half  a  metaphysical,  and 
has  a  common-sense  face  as  well  as  a  fantastic  one. 

The  very  term  "  metaphysical  "  has  been  quarrelled  with,  and  not 
quite  unjustly,  but  there  is  also  some  justice  in  itself.     We  must   not 
understand  "  metaphysical"  here  in  its  strict  philosophical  sense,  nor 
in  that  of  Shakespeare's   "metaphysical   aid"    (that   is    to     Mciningof 
say,  "supernatural"),   nor,  of  course,    in    that   accidental  " mc't.iphy'si- 
one  which  is  said  to  have  originated  the  actual  word.     But         '••>'•" 
it  is  not  inappropriately  used  for  the  habit,  common   to  this  school  of 
poets,   of  always   seeking  to  express  something  after,  something  be- 
hind, the  simple,  obvious  first  sense  and  suggestion  of  a  subject. 

411 


412  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 

Johnson  has  indeed  not  made  so  much  of  his  term  as  he  might ; 
for  he  himself  only  attributes  to  his  "  metaphysicals,"  as  their  differ- 
entia, learning,  with  a   kind  of  misplaced  wit,  and  the  desire  to   say 
something  that  had  never  been  said  before.     The  metaphysical  Caroline 
school  had  all   these   things,   but   these  things  were   not  peculiar  to 
them.     The    Euphuists,  in  fact,  had  had  them  all.     But  until  them- 
selves the  quest  after  the  remote,  the  search  for  the  after-sense,  for 
contingent   and   secondary  suggestion,  had    been  less  marked.     The 
Elizabethan    "conceit"    is   very    near   it;  you    may   find  the    meta- 
physical spirit  (as  indeed  what  may  you  not?)  in  Shakespeare.     But 
between  1630  and    1660,   with   a   certain   belated   set  of  appearances 
later    still,    this    metaphysical  tendency    employed  almost  all  poetry 
except  that  of  Milton,   whose  intensity  melted  and  transformed  this 
as  other  peculiarities.     Butler  is  a  metaphysical  humourist,  Chamber- 
layne  a   metaphysical    romance-writer,    Herbert  and    Vaughan    meta- 
physicals    in    spiritual    poetry,    Herrick   and   Carew,    with    all   their 
minor  train,  metaphysical  amorists  of  the  decorative  kind.     Crashaw 
is  perhaps  the  chief  metaphysical,  the  type  of  the  whole  class ;  Cleve- 
land, Flatman,  Wild,  and  others    belated    and   feeble  laggards  in  the 
style.     And  this  style  is  so  much  interwoven  with  the  practice  of  the 
set  of  poets  often   called    Cavalier  Lyrists   that  it  is  difficult  to   dis- 
entangle the  two.     All,  no  doubt,  owed  much  to  that  mighty  influence 
of  Donne,  which  was  so  strangely  disconnected  from  any  publication 
of  his  work.     But  Donne  himself  is  metaphysical  in  the  greater  and 
wider  sense.     His  thoughts,  even  his  conceits,  are  never  far-fetched, 
because  his  immense  and  brooding   imagination  reaches  to  them  all 
without    the   trouble   of  fetching.     The  others  have  to  fetch  them ; 
they   could   in   some   cases    hardly  go   farther,   they    could  in   many 
hardly  fare  worse. 

Let  us  therefore,  for  the  sake  of  order  and  classification,  make 
divisions  in  the  abundant  group  of  poets  we  have  before  us.  Let 
us  take  the  three  great  sacred  metaphysicals,  Crashaw,  Herbert, 
Vaughan,  first ;  then  pass  to  the  lyric  group,  Herrick,  Carew,  Habing- 
ton,  Lovelace,  Suckling,  and  others;  next  notice  the  three,  oddly 
contrasted,  of  the  Commonwealth,  Davenant,  Chamberlayne,  and 
Butler ;  and  lastly  give  some  account  of  the  innumerable  and  curious 
collections  of  songs,  ballads,  and  the  like  which  succeed  the  Eliza- 
bethan miscellanies,  and  serve  with  less  breach  than  in  any  other 
department  of  verse  as  a  connecting  chain  between  the  poetry  of  the 
sixteenth  century  and  the  verse  of  the  eighteenth. 

Richard  Crashaw,^  who,  if  he  could  but  have  kept  himself  at  his 
own  best,  would  have  been  one  of  the  greatest  of  English  poets,   was 

1  See  Chalmers.    Also  ed.  Grosart,  2  vols,  privately  printed,  1872. 


CHAP.  II         THE   METAPHYSICALS   AND   LYRIC   POETS  413 

born  in  London  either  in  161 6  or,  as  has  been  made  more  probable, 
in  161 2.  He  was  the  son  of  a  clergyman,  whose  extremely  Puritan 
leanings    may,   as   often    happens,    account    for   Crashaw's 

•  Crsshaw 

subsequent  inclination  in  the  opposite  direction.  Richard 
was  educated  at  Charterhouse  and  Cambridge,  where  his  college, 
Peterhouse,  was  as  much  the  centre  of  High  Church  teaching 
and  feeling  as  Emmanuel  was  of  Puritanism.  He  refused  the 
Covenant  in  1644,  was  deprived  of  his  Fellowship,  and  went  abroad, 
quickly  joining  the  Church  of  Rome.  He  died  at  Loretto,  where  he 
had  been  appointed  canon,  in  1650,  and  there  were  rumours  that 
he  was  poisoned.  Some  of  his  poems  were  published  during  his 
lifetime,  others  in  a  posthumous  edition,  and  a  certain  amount  of 
matter  certainly,  probably,  or  possibly  his  has  been  added  since  from 
MS.  But  his  best  work  in  English  (he  was  a  pretty  Latin  poet,  and 
is  said  to  have  been  the  author  of  a  well-known  conceit  on  the  miracle 
of  Cana,  while  he  certainly  wrote  an  elegant  fancy  on  the  '•  Bubble ") 
has  been  known  for  two  centuries  and  a  half. 

Crashaw's  poetry,  more  almost  than  any  other  in  English,  must 
underlie  different  and  nearly  irreconcilable  judgments,  according  as 
the  judge  insists  upon  measure,  order,  and  the  steady  working  out 
of  central  ideas  in  poetry,  or  prefers  casual  and  irregular  bursts  of 
expression  and  fancy.  Pope,  who  rather  liked  him,  expressed  a 
typical  judgment  from  the  first  point  of  view,  the  terms  of  which 
undoubtedly  suggested  Johnson's  criticism  of  the  whole  metaphysical 
school.  To  the  great  apostle  of  correctness,  ''  all  that  regards 
design,  form,  fable,  which  is  the  soul  of  poetry,  all  that  concerns 
exactness  or  consent  of  parts,  which  is  the  body,"  seemed  wanting  in 
Crashaw ;  only  "pretty  conceptions,  fine  metaphors,  stuttering  e.x- 
pressions,  and  something  of  a  neat  cast  of  verse  —  which  are  properly 
the  gems,  dress,  or  loose  ornaments  of  poetry  " —  are  to  be  found  in  him 
and  in  his  likes,  who  should  be  considered  as  versifiers  and  witty  men 
rather  than  as  poets.  We  may  formulate  a  judgment  from  the  extreme 
opposite  point  in  very  similar  words ;  for  those  who  take  it  would 
doubtless  say  that  in  passionate  conception  (which  is  the  soul  of 
poetry)  and  harmonious  metrical  expression  (which  is  its  body)  Cra- 
shaw is  at  his  best  very  nearly  supreme,  while  he  need  only  be 
found  wanting  in  bulk  and  arrangement  of  plan,  orderly  management 
of  means,  and  self-criticism,  which,  though  useful  adjuncts  to  poetry, 
are  common  to  it  with  all  literature,  and  do  not  usually  affect  its 
special  excellence.  The  right  way,  as  usual,  will  be  between  the.se 
two  extremes,  but  very  much  nearer  to  the  standpoint  of  our  anony- 
mous enthusiast  than  to  that  of  Pope.  By  far  the  greater  part  of 
Crashaw\s  work  is  devoted  to  sacred  subjects,  but  some  of  his  best 
and  prettiest,  if  not  his  most  sublime,  pieces  are  secular.     The  best 


414  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vil 


of  these  is  the  well-known  IVishes  to  his  Supposed  Mistress,  a  decidedly 
whimsical  but  infinitely  graceful  thing ;  and  a  version  from  the  Italian 


beginning  — 


To  thy  lover, 
Dear,  discover. 


But  it  must  by  no  means  be  inferred  that  Crashaw  was  only  master 
of  this  exquisite  trifling,  and  of  the  frail  skipping  measures  that  best 
suit  it.  He  was  at  least  an  equal  adept  in  Pindarics,  and  in  the 
stateliest  form  of  the  contemporary  couplet;  and  his  noblest  poems 
are  composed  in  measures  of  this  kind.  They  are  also  entirely 
devoted  to  religious  subjects.  Not  indeed  that  this  class  of  subject 
was,  by  or  in  itself,  at  all  a  guarantee  of  unmixed  excellence  in  Cra- 
shaw. His  very  worst  things  —  things  as  bad  as  can  be  found  in 
the  wide  and  various  range  of  metaphysical  absurdity  —  occur  in  the 
poem  The  Weeper,  on  St.  Mary  Magdalen,  which  unluckily  stands 
in  the  forefront  of  his  works.  The  eyes  of  the  penitent  are  "sister 
springs,  Parents  of  silver-forded  rills";  they  are  "thawing  crystal 
heavens  of  ever-falling  stars";  their  tears  being  "the  cream  of  the 
milky  way,"  cherubs  sip  of  them,  and  their  liquid  is  bottled  by 
angels  for  new  guests  of  heaven.  Further,  the  eyes  are  the  hour- 
glasses of  time ;  "  walking  baths,  compendious  oceans "  ;  "  fertile 
mothers  of  simpering  sons."  Common  sense  may  almost  be  excused 
if  it  is  indignant  and  disgusted  at  these  frigid  ardours,  these  fustian 
imitations  of  brocade.  Yet  if  we  turn  from  this  to  The  Flaming 
Heart,  a  poem  in  honour  of  St.  Theresa,  and  to  a  hymn  addressed 
to  the  same  Saint,  we  shall  find,  though  still  the  same  pomp  and 
prodigality  of  imagery,  nothing  frigid,  nothing  fustian,  but  an  ever 
growing  and  glowing  splendour  of  sentiment  and  diction,  which 
culminates,  in  the  first  named  of  the  two  pieces,  in  the  most  unerring 
explosion  of  passionate  feeling  to  be  found  in  English,  perhaps  in  all 
poetry.  Crashaw  often  translated,  sometimes  from  very  second-rate 
models  like  Marino  and  Strada.  He  can  be  made,  though  by  some- 
thing of  a  garble,  the  awful  example  of  the  style.  But  he  as 
certainly  displays  its  most  splendid  capabilities. 

An  infinitely  more  popular   poet   than    Crashaw,  and   certainly  a 
more  equable,  though  at  the  best  of  both  Crashaw  towers  over  him, 
was  George  Herbert,^  a  member  of  the  noble  Norman-Welsh  family 
of  that  name,  and  brother  of  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury. 
HerbTt.       He    was    born    at     Montgomery    Castle    on     13th    April 
'593'  went   to   Cambridge,  became   Fellow  of  Trinity   in 
1615,  and  Public  Orator  four  years  later,  at  the  early  age  of  twenty- 
six.     He  held  the  place  for  eight  years  with  great  distinction,  though 

1  Many  editions.    The  "  Aldine  "  was  revised  by  Dr.  Grosavt  (London,  1890). 


CHAP.  11         THE   METAPHYSICALS   AND    LYRIC   POETS  415 


he  was  charged  with  the  fault  of  haughtiness,  and  seems  to  have 
looked  forward  to  a  political  career.  But  something  led  him  to  the 
course  of  saintly  life  as  a  country  clergyman,  latterly  at  Bemerton,  near 
Salisbury,  which  he  pursued  for  six  years,  till  his  early  death  in  1632. 
His  verse  (almost  entirely  included  in  the  well-known  collection 
called  The  Temple,  which  made  Crashaw  call  his  Steps  to  the  Tonple) 
was  not  published  till  after  his  death,  but  very  soon  after,  for  though 
the  date  of  the  first  edition  is  1633,  there  are  undated  copies  which 
seem  to  have  been  distributed  in  the  previous  year.  The  Temple  con- 
sists of  160  pieces,  arranged  partly  with  a  fancy  of  reference  to  the 
structural  arrangement  of  a  church,  beginning  with  "  The  Porch  "  ;  partly 
under  the  heads  of  the  great  festivals  and  services  ;  often  under  quite 
fantastic  titles,  "The  Quip,"  "The  Pulley,"  and  so  forth.  There  is 
no  prevailing  metre  —  couplets,  stanzas,  and  regular  and  irregular 
lyrical  forms  being  chosen  as  may  best  suit  the  poet's  purpose,  while 
occasionally  he  will  even  condescend,  as  in  "  Easter  Wings,"  to  that 
device  of  adjusting  his  verse  lengths  to  artificial  patterns  which 
excited  almost  more  horror  than  ridicule  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

And  the  note  of  fantasy  is  at  least  as  much  present  in  idea  and 
in  diction,  though  Herbert  seldom  pushes  either  to  very  extravagant 
lengths.  In  the  "Church  Porch,"  which  is  a  string  of  ethical  and 
religious  maxims,  tliis  fantasy  does  not  often  pass  beyond  the  almost 
proverbial  imagery  to  which  we  are  accustomed  in  such  connections. 
But  in  the  more  abstract  and  doctrinal  poems  Herbert  gives  himself 
a  much  wider  range,  and  ransacks  art  and  nature  for  quaint  similes, 
sometimes  worked  out  in  the  fashion  of  the  emblem-poetry  then  so 
popular.  The  Game  of  Bowls ;  the  real  or  fancied  properties  of  the 
orange  tree  ;  the  Palace  of  the  World,  with  Wisdom  sweeping  away  its 
cobwebs.  Pleasure  adorning  it  with  balconies.  Sin  splitting  the  walls 
with  stealthy  fig-tree  growth,  Grace  shoring  them,  and  Death  throwing 
them  down ;  the  imaginary  peculiarities  of  the  crocodile  and  elephant 
—  Herbert  presses  all  these  and  a  myriad  more  into  his  service. 
Yet  the  unaffected  piety,  and  perhaps  still  more  the  perfect  charity, 
of  his  tone,  his  abstinence  from  anything  like  strife  and  crying,  the 
heavenly  peace  that  pervades  him,  have  made  his  work  tolerated  by 
many  who  are  not  as  a  rule  very  tolerant  of  conceits. 

As  a  poet  he  is  certainly  not  the  equal  of  either  Crashaw  or 
Vaughan,  and  in  his  own  quiet  fashion  he  has  in  the  present  century 
been  equalled  by  Keble  and  surpassed  by  Miss  Christina  Rossetti. 
He  very  seldom  transports  :  the  throb  of  response  to  the  highest  and 
happiest  thoughts  and  expressions  of  the  poets  is  very  uncommon  in 
reading  him ;  his  is  an  cqual;le  merit,  a  soothing  and  healthful 
pleasure,  rather  than  the  dazzling  excellence,  the  contagious  rapture, 
of  the  great  ones.     But  he  can  never  be  mentioned  with  contempt 


4i6  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 

by  any  one  who  loves  poetry,  and  he  undoubtedly  holds  a  high  place 
among  those  who  have  attempted  the  exceedingly  difficult  task  of 
sacred  verse.  If  his  successes  are  never  so  great  as  those  of  some 
others,  it  is  -hardly  too  much  to  say  that  he  never  fails  with  the 
maddening  failure  too  common  in  religious  poets,  and  this  is  in  itself 
a  great  thing. 

The  contrast  between  Crashaw  and   Herbert  is  repeated  in  that 

between  Herbert  and  Vaughan,^  but  with  certain  variations.     Henry 

Vau«^han  —  "  Silurist,"  as  he  called  himself,  from  the  seat  of  his  family 

in   South  Wales,    "  Swan  of  Usk,"    Olor    Iscanus,    from 

aug  an.  ^^  river  on  whose  banks  he  lived  —  was  born  in  or  about 
1622,  at  a  place  called  Newton,  St.  Bridget.  He  and  his  twin 
brother  Thomas  (a  poet  likewise  and  a  diligent  writer  on  occult  and 
"Hermetic"  subjects)  went  to  Jesus  College,  Oxford.  He  seems  to 
have  begun  the  study  of  law  in  London,  but  to  have  turned  to  that 
of  medicine.  He  may  have  actually  served  in  the  Royalist  forces 
during  the  Rebellion,  and  was  certainly  a  strong  partisan  of  the 
King's  cause.  He  retired  quietly  to  Brecon  during  the  usurpation 
and  there  practised  physic.  Hardly  anything  is  known  of  his  long 
life.  He  may  have  had  two  wives ;  he  certainly  had  one,  who 
survived  him  at  his  death,  on  St.  George's  Day,  1695.  He  was. the 
last  of  the  Caroline  school  proper. 

His  poetry  as  originally  published  is  contained  in  four  volumes  — 
Poems,  chiefly  secular,  in  1646;  Silex  Schttillans,h\s  principal  book, 
and  wholly  sacred,  in  165 1  ;  Olor  Iscanus,  also  sacred,  a  year  later; 
and  Thalia  Rediviva,  many  years  afterwards,  in  1678,  which  returns 
to  the  secular.  There  is  no  doubt  (we  have  his  word  for  it,  and 
without  his  word  there  could  not  be  any)  that  Vaughan  was  greatly 
influenced  in  all  the  more  remarkable  part  of  his  work  by  Herbert, 
whose  poems  were  published  twenty  years  before  Silex  Scintillaiis. 
The  relation  between  the  two  men  is  altogether  that  of  master  and 
pupil,  but  in  divers  ways.  Often  Vaughan  copies  Herbert  directly.  But 
the  spirit  of  the  two  was  different  and  resulted  differently.  Vaughan 
is  not  more  or  less  pious  than  Herbert,  but  his  piety  is  much  more 
mystical ;  his  thoughts  are  deeper  and  farther  brought.  And  his 
expression  is  much  less  equable.  He  is  seldom  fantastic  to 
frigidity,  but  he  is  often  meditative  to  dulness.  He  never  disgusts, 
but  he  sometimes  tires,  because  he  has  not  cared,  or  has  not  been 
able,  to  give  his  thought  clear  poetic  expression. 

1  The  Poems  of  Vaughan,  after  being  completely  accessible  only  in  one  of  Dr. 
Grosart's  privately  printed  editions,  have  been  at  last  edited  by  Mr.  E.  K. 
Chambers  in  two  volumes  of  "  The  Muses'  Library  "  (London,  1896) .  The  Sacred 
Poems  were  provided  long  since  in  the  Aldine  series  (ed.  Lyte,  often  reprinted), 
and  there  is  an  edition  of  the  Secular  Poems  by  J.  R.  Tutin  (Hull,  1893). 


CHAP.  II        THE   METAPHYSICALS   AND    LYRIC   POETS  417 

There  was  no  real  reason  on  the  moral  side  for  the  compunc- 
tion which  Vaughan,  late  in  life,  expressed  for  his  early  secular 
poems.  But  as  a  profane  poet  he  has  nothing  above  the  average  of 
dozens  of  half  or  wholly  forgotten  versifiers  of  his  time,  and  is  often 
below  that  average.  His  love-poems  to  Amoret  and  Etesia  are 
sometimes  pretty,  though  never  distinguished ;  and  in  octosyllables, 
where  he  chiefly  follows  the  manner  of  Jonson,  he  is  at  about  his 
happiest.  His  decasyllabic  couplets  are,  as  Mr.  Chambers  has  justly 
observed,  based  on  Donne,  and  on  the  worst  part  of  Donne,  the 
designedly  crabbed  form  of  the  Satires  and  some  of  the  Epistles. 
It  is  as  the  author  of  the  Silex  Scintillans  that  Vaughan  holds  his 
place.  And  the  title  itself,  which  is  explained  by  the  frontispiece  —  a 
heart  of  flint  burning  and  bleeding  under  the  stroke  of  a  thunderbolt 
from  a  cloud  —  is  appropriate  in  more  than  the  pious  sense.  At  times 
there  is  in  Vaughan  genuine  blood  and  fire  ;  but  it  is  by  no  means 
always,  or  even  very  often,  that  the  flint  is  kindled  and  melted  to 
achieved  expression.  His  most  famous  and  successful  things, ''They 
are  all  gone  into  a  world  of  light "  ;  "  The  World,"  with  its  magnifi- 
cent opening  — 

I  saw  Eternity  the  other  night 
Like  a  great  ring  of  pure  and  endless  light 
All  calm  as  it  was  bright; 

"  The  Retreat,"  with  its  suggestion  of  Wordsworth's  great  ode  ;  "  The 
Storm,"  with  its  intensely  realised  imagery;  the  quaint  and  pleasant 
piece  beginning,  "  I  walked  the  other  day  to  spend  my  hour " ;  the 
beautiful  "Joy";  "The  Garland,"  with  its  wonderfully  .striking  picture 
of  youthful  delusions,  and  the  sharp  turn,  "  I  met  with  a  dead  man. 
Who  thus  to  me  began  " ;  "  The  Waterfall,"  with  its  Miltonic  richness 
and  appropriateness  of  epithet,  and  a  marvellous  adaptation  of  sound 
to  sense  —  these  and  some  other  things  are  not  merely  in  company 
unworthy  of  them  as  far  as  the  achieved  expression  goes,  but  are 
even  for  the  most  part  unworthy  of  themselves.  But  this  inequality 
of  expression  is  redeemed  by  the  almost  constant  presence  of  a  rare 
and  precious  tone  of  thought.  The  great  age  of  the  Church  of 
England  finds  in  Vaughan,  at  his  best,  its  best  poetical  exponent. 
He  stops  short  of  the  almost  maudlin  intoxication  with  divinity  which 
carried  Crashaw  out  of  the  Church  altogether,  and  he  far  transcends 
the  decent  piety  of  Herbert. 

The  pair  chosen  to  follow  this  trio  is  in  general  character  strangely 
contrasted  with  it.  though  a  certain  bridge  of  transition  exists  in 
Herrick's  "Divine"  poems.  Both  Hcrrick  and  Carew  are  far  greater 
artists  than  any  of  the  three  just  mentioned.  But  despite  of  tliis  and 
of  the  fact  that  their  temper  is  far  more  mundane,  they  are  still  alike. 

2E 


4i8  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vn 

Robert  Herrick,*  who  belonged  to  a  good  Leicestershire  stock, 
rather  remarkably  connected  with  literature  through  Quarles,  Dryden, 
^,  .  ,  and  Swift  as  well  as  through  himself,  was  born  in  London 
in  1 59 1.  His  father,  Nicholas  Herrick,  a  goldsmith, 
died  very  shortly  afterwards  by  falling  out  of  window.  Robert 
was  left  subject  to  the  guardianship  of  his  uncle,  a  rich  member 
of  his  father's  trade,  and  by  an  accident,  rare  with  men  of  letters 
of  the  time,  we  have  some  letters  exchanged  between  ward  and 
guardian,  when  the  former  was  at  Cambridge.  Here  he  was  a 
member,  first  of  St.  John's  College,  then  of  Trinity  Hall,  and  it  is 
thought  that  he  had  gone  to  the  first-named  from  Westminster 
School.  But  despite  these  letters  we  still  do  not  know  much  of  him. 
He  took  his  M.A.  in  1620,  when  he  was  nearly  thirty  years  old,  and 
apparently  orders  in  1629,  when  he  was  not  far  from  forty  —  an  entrance 
into  the  Church  nearly  as  late  as  Donne's,  and  even  less  accounted  for. 
At  any  rate,  in  the  year  mentioned,  he  was  presented  to  the  living  of 
Dean  Prior  on  the  skirts  of  Dartmoor,  at  which  he  rails  much,  and 
which  he  occupied  till  the  triumph  of  the  Parliament  drove  him  out. 
His  two  books  oi  v&rst,  A'oble  Numbers  (1647)  and  Hesperides  (1648), 
are  differently  dated  but  appeared  together.  There  is  absolutely  no 
mention  of  him  from  this  time  till  1662,  when  he  was  restored  to  Dean 
Prior;  and  again  there  is  none  till  his  death  and  burial  in  October 
1674,  at  the  age  of  more  than  eighty.  Moreover,  though  gossip 
about  men  of  letters  was  just  beginning,  there  is  a  strange  silence 
about  Herrick.  The  two  great  chatterers  of  the  time,  Howell  and 
Aubrey,  never  mention  him,  though  the  former  at  least  must  have 
been  sometimes,  probably  often,  in  his  company,  as  both  were  "sons" 
of  Ben.  The  Sessions  of  the  Poets  and  other  literary  comments 
of  his  day  pass  him  by ;  his  work,  contrary  to  the  almost  universal 
habit  of  the  time,  had  no  commendatory  verses  prefixed  to  it,  and  it 
seems  to  have  remained  almost  unnoticed  till  the  end  of  the  last 
century. 

Since  its  recovery,  however,  there  have  been  natural  diversities  of 
opinion,  justified  to  some  extent  by  the  admixture  of  bad  and  good 
which  it  contains.  The  two  divisions  together  contain  rather  more 
than  fourteen  hundred  poems,  to  which  a  few  doubtful  pieces  from 
miscellanies  or  MSS.  have  to  be  added.  No  one  extends  to  more 
than  a  few  pages,  and  most  do  not  exceed  a  few  lines.  They  fall 
naturally  into  three  classes :  epigrams  imitating  Jonson,  offensively 
personal  in  tone  and  coarse  in  diction,  with  but  seldom  a  grain  of 

1  Herrick,  neglected  from  his  own  day  till  the  end  of  the  last  century,  has 
been  repeatedly  reprinted  in  the  present.  The  latest  editions  are  those  by'  Mr. 
Pollard  in  "  The  Muses'  Library  "  (2  vols.  London,  1891)  and  by  the  present  writer 
in  the  "  Aldine  Poets  "  (2  vols.  London,  1893). 


CHAP.  11       THE   METAPHYSICALS   AND   LYRIC   POETS  419 

real  wit  to  keep  them  tolerably  sweet ;  Divine  Poems  of  wonderful 
beauty  at  their  best,  which  best  is  expressed  by  the  "  Litany  to  the 
Holy  Spirit "  and  ''The  White  Island";  and  lastly,  an  immense 
residue  of  secular  poems,  amatory,  descriptive,  occasional  in  the 
widest  possible  sense. 

It  is  on  these  last  that  the  fame  of  Herrick  really  rests,  and  it  is 
securely  based.     The  Julia  of  the  universally  known  "  Night  Piece  " 

—  "  And  when  I  meet,  Thy  silvery  feet,  My  soul  Til  pour  into  thee  "  — 
is  only  one  of  a  group  of  perhaps  real,  perhaps  imaginary,  mistresses 

—  Althea,  Electra,  Perilla,  Dianeme,  and  others  —  to  whom  the  most 
exquisitely  phrased  love-poems  are  devoted ;  the  country  sports  and 
scenes  (though  he  despised  them),  such  as  the  "  hock-cart,"  the  maying, 
and  the  like,  find  the  same  celebration ;  his  maid  Patience,  his  bread- 
bin,  the  daffodils,  violets,  primroses,  cherry-blossoms,  the  very  grass 
itself,  find  in  him  a  singer,  and  he  can  be  more  ambitious  and  ab- 
stracted, as  in  the  "  Mad  Maid's  Song  "  and  other  things.  But  the 
subject  of  Herrick's  verse  never  matters  very  much :  it  is  the  exquisite^ 
quality  of  his  phrase  and  his  "  numbers  "  that  exalts  him  to  aplace^ 
all  his  owiT.  "^ 'TTiTs'  quality  beggars  definition,  and  is  perhaps  the 
greatest'justification  in  English  literature  of  the  "  theory  of  the  single 
word  "  —  that  one  special  word  is  the  right  thing  in  the  right  literary 
place,  and  that  if  you  do  not  get  it  •' all's  spent,  nought's  had."  No 
one  has  ever  been  quite  certain  what  the  word  "  Protestant "  means 
in  the  celebrated  verse  beginning,  "  Bid  me  to  live  and  I  will  live, 
Thy  Protestant  to  be  "  ;  yet  every  one  who  knows  poetry  feels  that 

"  Protestant  "  could  not  be  changed  for  any  other  word  without  loss  ; 
and  this  is  only  an  extreme  and  obvious  case.  In  all  his  famous 
things,  which  a  hundred  anthologies  have  made  known,  and  in  others 
less  divulged,  this  absolute  and  unerring  perfection  of  word-selection 
appears.  The  thoughts  are  sometimes  trivial,  sometimes~Tiul ;  but 
the  expression  gives  them  at  once  the  freshness  of  the  morning  dew 
and  the  perennial  character  of  marble.  Herrick's  images  are  not  as  a 
rule  out  of  the  way  ;  his  mere  vocabulary  is,  for  his  time  and  class, 
quite  ordinary  for  the  most  part.  But  the  choice  and  the  collocation 
make  it  something  absolutely  unique. 

The  art  of  Thomas  Carew,^  narrower  in  range,  much   more  spar- 
ingly exemplified,  and  more   artificial  in  appearance,  is  of  much  the 
.same  kind.     Many  details   of  his  life   are  problematical,  but  he  was 
certainly  of  a  Gloucestershire   or  Worcestershire    branch 
of  the  great  western  family  of  Carew  or  Carey,  was   per- 
haps born  in  Kent,  perhaps  went  to  Westminster  School,  and  perhaps 

1  Ed.  Ebsworth,  London,  1893.  Like  most  of  the  poets  in  tliis  chapter, 
Herrick  and  Vaughan  l)oing  ttic  main  exceptions,  Carew  is  in  the  great  collections 
of  Anderson  and  Chahncrs. 


420  CAROLINE  LITERATURE  book  vii 


thence  to  Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford.  The  University  though 
not  the  College  is  certain,  as  also  that  he  was  known  to  most  of  the 
wits,  especially  the  Oxford  set  of  Falkland  and  Hyde,  that  he  was 
Sewer  (marshal  of  the  dishes)  to  Charles  L,  that  he  was  a  "son" 
of  Ben's.  He  died  in  or  about  1638.  Most  other  things  about 
him  are  guesswork,  but  it  is  the  merest  uncritical  partisanship 
to  neglect  or  slight  the  testimony  of  his  admiring  friend  Clarendon, 
that  his  life  had  been  somewhat  licentious,  though  his  death  was 
the  death  of  the  penitent.  A  masque  of  his.  Caelum  Britanni- 
cum,  which  is  not  unworthy  to  be  ranked  with  Ben's  all  but  best, 
had  been  published  in  1634;  but  Carew's  Poems  appeared  posthu- 
mously in  1640,  and  they  did  not  include  divers  paraphrases  of 
Psalms  which  are  of  no  great  value  —  a  sentence  which  extends  to 
divers  attributed  poems,  fished  out  from  MSS.  or  other  sources  by 
recent  diligence.  The  volume  of  1640,  small  as  it  is,  still  contains  his 
titles  to  fame. 

This  volume  is  small,  and  the  contemporary  malevolence  or  jest 
which  attributed  "  hide-boundness  "  to  Carew's  muse  was  not  subject 
to  any  such  complete  contradiction  as  Johnson's  characterisation  of 
Fielding  as  a  "  barren  rascal."  But  the  titles  are  indisputable.  The 
best,  —  the  "Persuasions  to  Love,"  to  A.  L.,  —  with  its  at  first  play- 
ful octosyllables  rising  to  a  panting  throb  of  passion  seldom  equalled  ; 
the  song,  characteristic  of  Caroline  triumph  in  such  things,  "  Give 
me  love  or  more  disdain  " ;  the  still  more  splendid  "  To  my  Incon- 
stant Mistress  "  —  "  When  thou,  poor  excommunicate  "  ;  the  indig- 
nant and  manly  expostulation,  "  I  was  foretold,  your  rebel  sex " ; 
the  inferior  but  very  pretty  "  He  that  loves  a  rosy  cheek " ;  the 
second  "  To  Celia  Singing  "  ;  "  Red  and  White  Roses,"  with  two  or 
three  other  things  the  pattern-piece  of  the  author ;  the  audacious  but 
also  admirable  "  Rapture  " ;  the  beautiful  group  of  epitaphs  on  Lady 
Mary  Villers ;  the  stately  elegy  on  Donne,  so  generous  and  yet  so 
just ;  and,  to  finish  with  what  all  admit,  the  splendid  "  Ask  me  no 
more"  —  these  things  by  no  means  exhaust,  but  put  at  perhaps  their 
very  best,  Carew's  titles  to  high  honour  as  an  English  poet.  His 
consummate  elegance  has  no  doubt  done  him  harm  with  some  judges, 
according  to  the  prejudice  put  in  the  well-known  verses  of  his  "  father" 
Ben  — 

Still  to  be  neat,  still  to  be  drest, 

and  so  forth.  But  the  "  Rapture,"  the  Donne  Elegy,  and  the  "  A.  L." 
verses  are  there  to  give  evidence  of  intensity,  of  real  passion  on  his 
part,  which  at  once  negatives  the  suspicion.  And  if  we  meditate  a 
little  on  such  a  piece  as  "  Red  and  White  Roses,"  it  will  be  very 
hard  to  refuse  its  author  a  place,  apart  it  may  be  from,  the  greater 


CHAP.  II        THE   METAPHYSICALS   AND    LYRIC   POETS  421 

summits  of  poetry  and  lower  than  they  are,  but  untouched,  unapproached, 
by  any  peak  in  its  own  kind.  Here,  as  in  those  best  pieces  of 
Herrick  which  have  been  noticed  above,  there  is  an  absolute  and  final 
felicity  in  the  style. 

The  poets  of  this  Caroline  age  are  so  numerous,  they  are  so 
attractive,  and  their  attractions  consist  so  much  in  little  separate 
bits  and  strokes,  that  there  is  danger,  more  than  in  almost  any 
other  of  our  compartments,  of  being  seduced  into  prolixity  dis- 
proportionate for  such  a  survey  as  this ;  and  we  must  quicken  the 
pace  with  a  large  group  of  singers.  The  order  in  which  they  are 
mentioned,  though  a  certain  rough  chronological  arrangement  may 
be  observed,  is  not  very  material.  The  lyric  touch,  which  is  the 
strong  point  of  nearly  all,  distinguishes,  with  only  slight  changes, 
alike  men  who  died  before  Milton  left  for  Italy,  such  as  Randolph, 
and  men  who  saw  the  eighteenth  century,  such  as  Sedley. 

Thomas  Randolph,^  who  will  be  mentioned  again  for  his  plays, 
was  born  in  1605,  of  a  gentle  family.  He  went  to  We.stminster 
School  and  was  of  both  Universities,  belonging  more  originally  to 
Cambridge,  where  he  was  a  Fellow  of  Trinity.  He  died 
when  he  was  only  thirty.  He  is  accused  of  rather  free  ^^  °p  ■ 
living,  but  this  sort  of  vague  and  stock  censure  of  poets  goes  for 
little,  and  certain  elegiac  verses  by  his  brother  Robert,  a  student  of 
Christ  Church,  who  outlived  him  many  years,  have  a  more  genuine 
ring  in  their  eulogy  than  is  usual  in  such  things.  Randolph's  non- 
dramatic  verse,  though  not  very  copious,  is  fresh,  vigorous,  and  dis- 
tinctly original.  It  is,  especially  in  the  couplet  pieces,  of  the  older 
cast  of  his  time,  and  in  stanza  or  octosyllable,  rather  Jacobean  than 
Caroline.  His  best  piece,  perhaps,  is  the  "  Ode  to  Master  Anthony 
Stafford  to  hasten  him  into  the  country,"  a  thing  somewhat  in  Ben's 
style. 

William  Habington  ^  was  born  in  the  same  year  with  Ran- 
dolph, at  Hindlip  Hall,  Worcestershire.  He  was  a  Roman  Catholic, 
and  so  did  not  go  to  either  University,  but  lived  as  a  country  gentle- 
man, marrying    Lady  Lucy    Herbert,  and   dving   in   1654.    „,. 

u     1    /.         '      1  W     Ai  /■    .  ^  11      .•  Habington. 

He  left  one  play,  T/ie  Queen  of  Arragon,  and  a  collection 
of  poems,  the  bulk  of  which  celebrates  the  charms  and  virtues  of  his  wife 
under  the  title-name  of  Castara.  Friendship  as  well  as  love  inspired 
him,  and  he  wrote  many  verses  on  the  death  of  his  comrade,  George 
Talbot,  with  a  few  miscellanies.  Habington  is  creditably  distin- 
guished from  too  many  of  his  contemporaries  by  a  very  strict  and 
remarkable  decency  of  tliought  and  language,  and  he  has  some  very 
fine  passages.     On  llic  whole,  however,  he  ranks  rather  with  Herbert 

1  Ed.  W.  C.  Hazlitt,  2  vols.  London,  1875. 

2  Ekl.  Arber,  and  in  the  collection  of  Chalmers. 


422  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vij 

as  a  poet  of  few  faults— he  has  not  even  the  excess  of  Herbert's 
quaintness  —  than  with  Crashaw  as  one  of  magnificent  bursts,  or  with 
Herrick  as  one  of  constantly  exquisite  felicities. 

William  Cartwright  ^  was  born  about  five  years  after  Randolph,  in 
1610,  and  died  two  years  before  Habington,  in  1643,  but  the  date 
and  place  of  his  birth  are  disputed.  He  certainly  spent  more  than 
.  half  of  his  short  life  at  Oxford,  where  he  died  during  the 
war,  and  five  years  after  he  had  taken  orders.  He  left 
plays,  too,  and  poems,  the  latter  fairly  numerous,  but  mostly  short 
and  always  occasional.  His  couplets,  like  Randolph's,  show  little  of 
the  new  form  and  pressure ;  but  his  lyric  verses,  again  of  the  Jonson 
tribe,  are  often  good,  aftd  sometimes  excellent.  The  more  extrava- 
gant side  of  the  school  is  shown  in  the  lines  on  "A  Gentlewoman's 
Silk  Hood,"  the  better  in  the  lines  ''To  Chloe,"  to  Bishop  Duppa, 
and  others. 

Richard  Corbet,^  Bishop  of  Oxford,  and  then,  just  before  Hall,  of 
Norwich,  was  a  much  older  man  than  those  just  mentioned,  having 
been  born  in  1582;  but  he  did  not  attain  to  his  chief  distinctions  till 
a  few  years  before  his  death,  which  happened  in  the 
same  year  as  Randolph's.  He  too  was  closely  connected 
with  Ben,  and  is  said  to  have  procured  him  his  degree  from  Oxford. 
He  appears  to  have  been  an  interesting  compound  of  a  sound  divine 
and  a  good  fellow,  and  his  poetical  pieces,  which  are  quite  occasional, 
were  probably  spread  over  the  greater  part  of  his  not  very  long  life, 
though  many  of  them  date  from  the  latter  part  of  it.  The  best  and 
most  poetical,  a  charming  address  to  his  little  son  Vincent,  combining 
humour  and  tenderness  in  the  best  English  fashion,  certainly  does  so, 
having  been  written  in  1630.  At  purely  serious  poetry  Corbet  was 
not  very  great,  but  in  lighter  and  satiric  verse  he  anticipates  Butler, 
Swift,  and  even  Prior,  as  in  his  Iter  Boreale  (a  title  copied  after- 
wards), his  Journey  itito  France,  and  (the  strongest  and  bitterest  of 
all)  his  "  Exhortation  to  Mr.  John  Hammond "  and  "  Distracted 
Puritan."     Moreover,  he  has  a  charming  piece  on  Fairies. 

There  is  a  certain  traditional  and  now  inseparable  bond  between 

Lovelace  and  Suckling.     Both  were  unlucky  Cavaliers,  both  illustrate 

the  poignant  charm  of  Cavalier  poetry  at  its  best,  and  both,  it  must 

■     be  added,  illustrate  also  the  slipshod  faults  of  this  poetry 

Suckling.  .  Ti      1  .  r  J 

at  Its  worst.  Both,  moreover,  give  us,  better  than  any 
others,  the  link  of  transition  from  the  first  to  the  second  lyrical  Caro- 
line School,  from  Herrick  and  Carew  to  Dorset  and  Sedley.  The 
short  life  of  Sir  John  Suckling 3  is  partly  mythical.  He  was  of  a 
good  though  not  great  family,  was  educated  at  Westminster  perhaps, 

1  Chalmers,  vol.  vi.  2  gee  Chalmers. 

8  Ed.  W.  C.  Hazlitt,  2  vols.  London,  1874. 


CHAP.  II        THE   METAPHYSICALS   AND   LYRIC   POETS  423 

and  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  certainly  became  early  master  of  a 
great  fortune,  lavished  it  in  travel,  in  court  frivolities,  and  (at  the 
breaking  out  of  the  war  with  Scotland)  in  equipping  a  troop  of  horse 
who  did  no  credit  to  themselves  and  their  leader,  was  a  strong 
Royalist  in  the  Long  Parliament,  and  had  to  fly  to  the  Continent, 
was  perhaps  a  victim  of  the  Inquisition  in  Spain,  and  perhaps 
poisoned  himself  at  Paris  in  1642.  Suckling's  excess  of  wealth  over 
birth,  and  perhaps  his  careless  living,  seem  to  have  excited  some  ill- 
feeling  against  him,  but  there  is  little  solid  proof  that  he  was  a 
cowardly  prodigal  and  fribble,  and  we  should  certainly  prefer  not  to 
think  the  author  of  the  "Ballad  on  a  Wedding"  anything  of  the 
kind.  Besides  that  charming  piece  and  his  plays  (see  as  in  other 
cases  post),  with  some  letters,  etc.,  he  has  left  a  parcel  of  poems, 
occasional,  satirical  (his  Session  of  the  Poets,  which  not  improbably 
earned  him  his  bad  reputation,  was  constantly  imitated),  and  above 
all  amatory,  of  a  curious  and  original  kind,  indicated  at  once  in  the 
words  — 

There  never  yet  was  honest  man 
Who  ever  drove  the  trade  of  love, 

upon  which  text  the  poets  and  play-writers  dwelt  with  unwearying 
iteration  for  the  next  half-century  and  more.  Suckling,  however, 
though  neither  a  refined  nor  a  very  passionate  writer,  does  not  reach 
the  dull  brutality  of  loveless  commerce  which  disgraces  the  worst 
writers  of  the  next  age  and  too  often  taints  the  best.  His  is  the  real 
"  elfin  laughter,"  the  true  tricksiness  of  Cupid,  which  even  Rochester, 
even  Congreve,  turned  to  sordid  treachery  and  ribald  coarseness 
later.  Everything  with  Suckling  turns  to  a  ripple  of  merriment. 
'•  Love's  World  "  reads  like,  and  perhaps  is,  a  designed  burlesque  of  the 
metaphysical  altitudes. 

'Tis  now  since  I  sat  down  before 
That  foolish  fort,  a  heart, 

is  the  very  triumph  of  the  style,  unless 

Out  upon  it !  I  have  loved 
Three  whole  days  together; 

or  the  universally  known 

Why  so  thin  and  pale,  fond  lover? 

demand  the  preference.  The  poet  is  not  always  quite  so  frivolous ; 
there  are  poems,  and  good  ones,  of  his  which  might  pass  muster  as 
serious,  but  one  always  suspects  that  they  are  not. 


424  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 

Richard  Lovelace  ^  derives  his  just  immortality  from  two  or  three 
pieces  of  exactly  the  opposite  kind.  He  was  of  a  better  family  than 
Suckling,  but  like  him  very  wealthy,  being  the  heir  to 
Sfreat  estates  in  Kent.  He  was  born  at  Woolwich  in 
1618,  educated  at  Charterhouse  and  at  Gloucester  Hall,  Oxford,  was 
prevented  from  taking  part  in  the  Civil  War  by  being  committed  to 
tbe  Gatehouse  and  held  to  enormous  bail  in  1642,  but  contrived  to  help 
the  King's  cause  with  much  money,  fought  abroad  at  Dunkirk  and 
elsewhere,  and  returning  to  England  in  1648,  was  again  imprisoned. 
He  was  released,  but  as  a  ruined  man,  and  he  died  in  Gunpowder 
Alley,  Shoe  Lane,  two  years  before  the  Restoration.  Meanwhile  his 
beloved  Lucy  Sacheverall  —  "  Lucasta  "  —  had  married  another  under 
the  belief  that  he  was  dead,  and  Lovelace,  one  of  the  handsomest 
men  of  his  time,  beloved  by  all,  rich,  well-born,  and  of  rare  abihties, 
died  thus  almost  miserrifnus.  He  published  Lucasta  in  1649,  and 
ten  years  later  a  brother  added  Posthuvious  Poems.  He  wrote  plays, 
but  they  perished.  The  greater  part  of  his  work  is  worthless,  and 
some  of  it  almost  unintelligible,  owing  to  the  strange  decay  which 
came  on  verse  about  this  time,  and  to  very  careless  printing.  But  "  On 
Going  to  the  Wars  "  and  "  To  Althea  from  Prison  "  defy  the  greatest 
things  of  the  greatest  poets  in  absolute  achievement  of  their  particular 
purpose,  and  there  are  charming  passages  in  "The  Grasshopper." 

From  these  two  mainly,  and  especially  from  Suckling,  proceed 
a  school  of  songsters  who,  as  has  been  said,  did  not  absolutely  cease 
till  the  death  of  Sedley  in  the  year  after  that  of  Dryden.  Dryden 
himself  has  some  claims  to  belong  to  them,  but  there  is  still  a  differ- 
ence of  cast,  hard  to  define  but  easy  to  perceive,  and  all  his  work 
had  best  be  handled  in  the  next  period.  Marvell,  at  his  best  almost 
the  equal  of  any  in  this  chapter,  Davenant,  and  that  remarkable 
isolation.  Chamberlayne,  may  be  placed  apart.  For  our  purposes 
the  group  may  be  composed,  again  in  loosely  chronological  order,  of 
Sherburne,  Bishop  King,  Stanley,  Godolphin,  Brome,  and  Cotton 
among  the  school  more  especially  of  Charles  I.  Rochester,  Dorset, 
Sedley,  and  Mrs.  Behn,  the  more  definitely  Restoration  group,  can 
be  postponed.  To  these  a  fringe  or  fringes  might  be  added  very 
copiously,  for  the  second  and  third  quarters  of  the  seventeenth 
century  swarmed  with  poets  and  poetasters. 

Of  these  last  may  be  mentioned  John  Cleveland,  who  was  born 
at  Hinckley  in  1613,  became  a  Fellow  of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge, 
took  refuge  at  Oxford  with  other  Cambridge  Cavaliers,  was  imprisoned 
under  the  Commonwealth,  and  died  of  fever  in  1658.  Cleveland  is 
rather  unfairly  known  by  some  citations  of  conceits  in  Johnson's  dis- 

1  Ed.  W.  C.  Hazlitt,  London,  1864. 


CHAP.  II        THE   METAPHYSICALS   AND   LYRIC   POETS  425 


quisition  on  the  metaphysicals  prefixed  to  his  Life  of  Cowley,  and  he 
has  not  recently  been  reprinted.  Even  Dryden  soon  after  the  Restora- 
tion sneers  at  him  ;  and  his  name  became  a  byword  for 
extravagances  of  style.  He  had,  however,  no  little  vigour,  and  others 
chiefly  shown  in  his  ''  State  "  Poems,  the  longest  of  which 
is  a  furious  onslaught  on  the  Scots  for  their  betrayal  of  Charles.  It 
is  at  least  curious  to  compare  his  elegy  on  Edward  King  with  Lycidas, 
and  in  his  outrageous  debauch  of  figure  and  fancy  we  may  charitably 
allow  a  suspicion  of  humorous  and  conscious  exaggeration.  Wild, 
author  of  a  second  Iter  Borcale  and  the  sharer  of  Dryden's  sarcasm, 
was  a  very  inferior  Cleveland  who  survived  the  Restoration ;  Flatman, 
a  poet  and  painter  with  an  unlucky  name  who  wrote  some  charming 
songs,  and  whom  Pope  found  "good  to  steal  from."  Flecknoe, 
notorious  for  Dryden's  unceremonious  use  of  his  name  in  his  satire 
on  Shadwell,  has  a  fine  poem  on  "  Silence "  and  some  other  good 
things.  Patrick  Carey's  Trivial  Poems  and  Triolets  (1651)  are 
pleasant  for  more  than  their  form  and  the  fact  that  Scott  re-edited 
them.  But  of  these,  as  still  more  of  Beedome  and  Baron,  Hall  and 
Heath  and  Hooke,  Tatham  and  Kynaston,  Prestwich  and  Shepherd, 
no  account  in  any  detail  can  be  given  here.^ 

The  life  of  Andrew  Marvell  -  and  his  work  both  fall  into  two 
sharply  divided  and  curiously  contrasted  sections.  In  the  first  he  is 
a  quiet  student,  a  passionate  lyrical  poet  of  love  and  nature,  and  if 
of  Puritan  leanings  and  surroundings,  gently  inclined  to 
what  is  noble  in  tlie  other  side ;  in  the  second  he  is, 
perhaps  an  austere  patriot,  certainly  a  violent  politician,  and  poetically 
a  ferocious  lampooner  in  rough  couplets.  We  may  confine  our- 
selves here  to  his  earlier,  and  as  literature  better,  period.  He 
was  born  in  1621  at  Winestead,  not  far  from  Hull,  and  went  early 
to  Cambridge,  where  he  took  his  Bachelor's  but  not  his  Master's 
degree.  He  seems  to  have  travelled  a  good  deal,  but  we  find  him 
in  1649  at  home,  contributing  to  the  collection  of  elegies  on  Lord 
Hastings  which  saw  Dryden's  first  work,  and  being  the  friend  of 
Richard  Lovelace.  Indeed,  the  splendid  lines  on  the  execution  of 
Charles  I.,  and  others,  show  him  as  at  least  partly  Royalist  at  this 
time.  In  1650,  however,  Fairfax  made  him  his  daughter's  tutor, 
and  for  this  reason  or  that  IVIarveil  seems  to  have  changed  his 
politics.  He  was  long  resident  with  his  young  pupil  at  Nun  Appleton, 
in    Yorkshire,   and   wrote    there   much    of  his    most   delightful    verse. 

1  For  Cleveland  I  use  Cleveland' s  Genuine  Poems,  1677 ;  for  Wild,  the  edition 
of  1671 ;  for  Fl.itman,  the  third  edition, ^682.  These  and  the  rest  liave  been  cruelly 
extruded  from  Mr.  Ward's  Poets,  but  Specimens  of  most,  if  not  all,  may  be  found 
in  lillis,  vol.  iii.,  and  Campbell,  vol.  iv.,  as  well  as  in  Mr.  BuUen's  privately 
printed  Speculum  Amantis  and  Musa  Protcrva. 

2  Ed.  Aitken,  3  vols.  London,  1892. 


426  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 

Becoming  an  admirer  of  Cromwell  and  a  friend  of  Milton,  he  entered 
Parliament  even  before  the  Restoration,  and  sat  for  Hull  till  his 
death  in  1678..  For  some  years  he  was  abroad  doing  diplomatic 
work,  but  latterly  he  fell  more  and  more  into  Opposition. 

His  best,  and  indeed  his  only  really,  poetical  work  was  done 
before  he  had  reached  middle  life,  and  exhibits,  with  a  form  individual 
and  in  a  type  more  chastened  and  classical,  the  best  characteristics  of 
the  Cavalier  poets.  The  exquisite  octosyllables  of  the  long  poem  on 
"  Appleton  House,"  and  the  shorter  and  still  better  known  ones  on 
''  The  Bermudas "  and  "  The  Nymph  regretting  the  loss  of  her 
Fawn,"  unite  Jonson's  art  with  Herrick's  grace.  "The  Coronet,"  in 
style  between  Crashaw  and  Vaughan,  is  free  from  the  rococo 
ornament  of  the  first  and  the  tongue-tied  inequality  of  the  second  ;  the 
passionate  magnificence  of  the  Amorists,  whom  Milton  so  tastelessly 
scorned,  has  no  nobler  examples  than  "To  his  Coy  Mistress,"  and 
still  more  "  The  Definition  of  Love,"  with  its  splendid  beginning  — 

My  love  is  of  a  birth  as  rare 
'  As  'tis  for  object,  strange  and  high  — 

It  was  begotten  of  Despair 
Upon  Impossibility ; 

and  the  majesty  in  style  of  the  "  Horatian  Ode  "  (to  Cromwell,  but 
containing  the  lines  on  his  victim)  is  among  the  noblest  and  most 
individual  of  the  kind  in  English.  Nor  can  it  be  said  that  Marvell, 
like  most  of  his  school  and  time,  wrote  unequally ;  so  that  it  is  only 
curious  that  he  did  not  write  more.  But  perhaps  it  is  not  fanciful  to 
argue  that  the  peculiar  and  indeed  unique  perfection  of  phrase  charac- 
terising the  best  poetry  of  this  period  involved  a  kind  of  mental  effort 
of  gestation  which  could  not  be  repeated  very  often,  and  which  obliged 
the  poet  to  be  either  unequal  or  else  infertile. 

Henry  King,^  a  typical  poet  of  this  period  (who  is   likely  to  keep 
his  place  in  English  literature  by  at  least  one  exquisite  piece  of  love- 
verse,  "  Tell  me  no  more  how  fair  she  is,"  and  by  a  part  claim  to 
"  Like   to    the    falling   of    a   star,"   one   of  those   sets   of 
verses  which  so  caught  the  fancy  of  the   time   that   they 
exist  in  many  different  forms  and  are  attributed  as  originally  the  work 
of  more  than  two  different  men),  was  born  at  Worminghall  in  Bucks 
in  1592,  was  educated  at  Westminster  and  Christ  Church,  received 
preferment  early  (his  father  was  Bishop  of  London),  but  justified  it 
both  by  abilities  and  virtues,  was  the  friend  of  Jonson,  Donne,  whose 
executor  he  was,  and  Howell  the  epistoler,  became  Canon  of  Christ- 
church,   Dean   of  Winchester,  and    Bishop   of  Chichester,  was  much 
despoiled  and  ill-treated  during  the  Rebellion,  but  recovered  his  see 
1  Ed.  (incompletely)  by  Rev.  J.  Hannah,  Oxford  and  London,  1843. 


CHAP.  II        THE   METAPHYSICALS   AND    LYRIC   POETS  427 

at  the  Restoration,  and  died  in  1669.  His  poems  were  partly- 
published  in  1657.  The  influence  of  his  great  friend  Donne  is 
obvious,  and  though  King  had  not  anything  like  Donne's  strength 
or  the  strangeness  of  his  charm,  yet  "  Tell  me  no  more  how  fair  she 
is "  is  perfect  in  its  kind. 

Of  the  five  Cavalier  poets  ^  mentioned  together  above,  most  were 
actively  engaged  in  the  war,  or  at  least  active  members  of  the 
Royalist  party.  Edward  Sherburne,  afterwards  knighted,  and  the 
son  of  a  knight  of  the  same  name,  was  born  in  London 
in  1618,  was  educated  abroad  (he  was  a  Roman  Catholic),  GJ,d''oiph"n'^ 
and  became  clerk  of  the  Ordnance,  but  lost  his  place  Stanley, ' 
and  his  liberty  in  1642.  On  his  release  he  joined  the  Brome! 
King's  army,  but  chiefly  studied  at  Oxford  till  the 
triumph  of  the  Parliament,  when  he  lost  all  his  property.  He 
recovered  his  Ordnance  post  at  the  Restoration,  but  lost  it  as  a 
Roman. Catholic  at  the  Revolution,  and  did  not  die  till  1702.  Much 
of  his  not  extensive  poetical  work  is  translated  from  authors  and 
languages  ancient  and  modern.  His  originals,  reminding  us  of 
Carew  on  the  profane  side,  of  Crashaw  on  the  sacred,  have  sufficient 
charm  of  their  own,  yet  perhaps  never  show  quite  at  the  best  of 
the  style.  Thomas  Stanley,  a  cousin  of  Sherburne's,  has  kept 
remembrance  better  as  the  author  of  the  first  English  History  of 
Philosophy,  and  as  the  editor  of  an  excellent  edition  of  Aeschylus, 
than  as  a  poet,  but,  as  was  not  uncommon  at  the  time,  great  and 
genuine  learning  by  no  means  extinguished  poetry  in  him.  He  was 
the  son  of  a  rich  man,  and  though  a  strong  Royalist,  does  not  seem 
to  have  'been  much  incommoded.  He  was  born  in  1624,  educated 
at  Pembroke  College,  Oxford,  and  died  in  1678,  having  lived  chiefly 
in  the  Temple.  He  sang  mainly  of  love,  and  well.  Another  of 
the  group,  Sidney  Godolphin,  uncle  of  the  future  Lord  Treasurer, 
and  himself  celebrated  by  Clarendon,  had  the  good  fortune  to  die 
young  and  gloriously  fighting  in  Hopton's  triumphant  campaign  at 
Chagford  in  1642.  He  was  not  much  over  thirty  at  his  death,  having 
been  born  in  1610.  He  had  entered  Exeter  College.  Oxford,  at 
fourteen,  and  with  Trevanion,  Slanning,  and  Sir  Bevil  Grenvil,  was  the 
flower  of  the  Cavaliers  of  the  West.  He,  like  his  friends,  was  both 
translator  and  original  writer,  and  though  his  work  is  not  great  in  bulk, 
le  has  the  ineffable  ring  of  the  time  in  many  more  places  than  this :  — 

Oh  love  me  less  or  love  me  more, 

And  play  not  with  my  liberty; 
Either  take  all  or  all  restore, 

Bind  me  at  least,  or  set  me  free. 

1  Sherburne,  Cotton,  and  Brome  are  in  Chalmers. 


428  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 

Brome  and  Cotton  were  of  somewhat  less  limited  production,  but 
also  of  a  less  rare  style.  Alexander  Brome  (to  be  distinguished 
from  Richard,  the  playwright,  whose  plays  he  edited)  was  a  Londoner 
and  an  attorney.  He  was  born  in  1620  and  died  in  1666.  It  does 
not  appear  that  he  took  any  active  part  for  the  King,  but  very 
many  of  the  songs  and  lampoons  by  which  the  Cavaliers  kept  up 
their  spirits  between  Rebellion  and  Restoration  are  attributed  to 
him  ;  he  has  Izaak  Walton's  good  word,  which  could  have  been  given 
to  no  bad  man ;  and  some  of  his  light  and  careless  ditties  have  the 
true  vein  of  jovial  and  not  ignoble  song.  If  he  is  sometimes  coarse,  he 
stopped  far  short  of  the  unpleasant  excesses  of  others  in  that  direction, 
and  there  is  tenderness  in  his  love-poems,  fire  in  his  Bacchanalia, 
sincerity  in  his  political  songs,  and  wit,  whim,  and  spirit  everywhere. 
Charles  Cotton  of  Beresford  Hall,  Staffordshire,  is  known  to  most 
people  as  Walton's  colleague  and  pupil  in  the  Complete  Aiigler ;  to 
some  as  the  author  of  the  admirable  "  New  Year  Poem,"  admired  by 
Lamb  ;  to  a  few  as  the  writer  of  many  other  pleasant  verses,  including 
the  last  rondemix  that  English  saw  for  a  century ;  and  to  fewer 
still,  it  may  be  hoped,  by  the  unworthy  following  of  Scarron  and 
Butler  combined,  called  Virgil  Travestie.  As  a  prose  writer  he 
is  kept  in  some  memory  by  his  translation  of  Montaigne,  though 
it  was  not  in  the  least  wanted  after  Florio.  His  original  poems,  very 
numerous,  very  unequal,  and  often  very  slight,  are  sometimes  at  least 
very  happy. 

Hardly  one  of  the  authors  as  yet  mentioned  in  this  chapter  was 
voluminous ;  we  must  now  turn  to  those  of  their  time  who  were. 
Butler,  though  really  of  it,  is  so  mixed  up  with  the  history  of  Restoration 

Ouarles       literature  that  he   may  be  postponed,   Davenant,  Quarles, 
More,  '      Chamberlayne,    More,   and    Beaumont    must   find    place. 

eaumon .  Yowx  of  these  Writers,  very  popular  in  their  time,  are 
now  merely  curiosities,  the  fifth  has  never  been  much  known,  but 
was  a  writer  of  singular  talent.  The  most  voluminous  of  all  was 
Francis  Quarles,^  who  was  born  of  a  good  Essex  family  near 
Romford,  in  1592,  was  a  member  of  Christ's  College,  Cambridge, 
and  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  and  held  divers  appointments  in  court,  city, 
and  the  lay  offices  of  the  Church.  He  just  survived  the  breaking 
out  of  the  Rebellion,  and  died  in  1644.  His  work  is  enormous:  he 
would  versify  anything  from  the  Arcadia  to  the  Lamentations. 
Little  of  his  is  now  remembered  except  his  famous  Emblems;  and 
he  wrote  prose,  of  which  again  nothing  survives  in  the  general 
memory  but  the  Enchiridion.  There  are  good  things  in  Quarles ; 
but  it  requires  a  great  deal  of  leisure  to  find  them  out,  and  they  are 

1  Quarles  is  reprinted  in  three,  Beaumont  in  two,  and  More  in  one,  of  the 
quarto  volumes  of  Dr,  Grosart's  privately  printed  "  Cliertsey  Worihies'  Library." 


CHAP.  II        THE   METAPHYSICALS   AND   LYRIC   POETS  429 

so  fragmentary  as  hardly  to  be  capable  of  separate  representation. 
Henry  More  and  Joseph  Beaumont  carried  the  dubious  Spenserianism 
of  the  Fletchers  yet  farther  by  writing  immense  poems  on  philosophical 
theology.  More's  enormous  Song  of  the  Snul  in  Spenserians,  and 
even  Beaumonfs  more  enormous  Psyche  in  sixains,  are  not  to  be 
spoken  of  without  respect,  the  first  being  certainly  the  work  of  a  man 
who  had  poetry  in  him.  But  the  choice  of  subject  in  each  case  was 
problematical,  the  choice  of  scale  in  both  fatal. 

The  middle  of  the  century  saw  two  other  long  poems  of  much 
more  human  interest.  Both  were  the  work  of  ardent  Cavaliers ;  both 
deserted  alike  the  classical  epic  and  the  allegorical  romance  for  a 
novel  kind  of  story  founded,  no  doubt,  in  each  case  (though  the  fact 
has  not  been  always  recognised)  on  the  French  heroic  novel,  but 
treated  with  independence.  One,  however,  distinctly  anticipated  the 
change  of  taste  which  was  coming,  and  was,  either  for  that  reason  or 
because  of  its  author's  busy  and  not  unamiable  character,  immediately, 
widely,  and  for  some  time  popular.  The  other,  except  in  scheme  and 
subject,  looked  backward,  and  seems  to  have  been  almost  entirely 
neelected.  These  are  the  Gondibert  of  Sir  William  Davenant  and 
the  Pharonnida  of  William  Chamberlayne. 

Davenant  1  was  born  at  Oxford  in  1605,  the  son  of  an  innkeeper, 
but  had  some  connection  with  Shakespeare,  wrote  verses  (and  not 
bad  ones)  on  his  death,  and  was  well  educated  at  Lincoln  College. 
He    was    taken    up    by    Lord    Brooke    and    others,   and     ^ 

^  Davenant. 

produced  his  tragedy  of  Albovine  in  1628,  when  most 
of  the  second  school  of  Elizabethans,  and  some  of  the  first,  were 
still  living  ancl  writing.  Ten  years  later  he  succeeded  Jonson  as 
Laureate,  became  a  playhouse  manager,  and  both  in  these  capacities 
and  as  a  busy  servant  of  the  King,  and  still  worse  of  the  Queen,  fell 
into  very  bad  odour  with  the  Puritan  party.  He  served,  was  capt- 
ured, and  thrown  into  prison.  He  even  seems  to  have  been  in 
some  serious  danger,  but  is  said  to  have  been  saved  by  Milton, 
whose  kindness  he  afterwards  returned  in  the  time  of  the  greater 
poet's  own  peril.  If  the  stories  are  true,  he  thus  knew  the  three 
greatest  men  of  letters  (for  he  was  later  intimate  with  Dryden)  of  the 
three  generations  of  the  century  ;  and  he  was  in  more  ways  than  one 
an  ingenious  and  interesting  man  of  letters. 

He  was  not,  however,  a  great  poet,  though  his  miscellaneous  verse 
is  sometimes  pretty,  and  Gondibert  is  not  a  great  poem.  It  was 
written  on  principle,  and  is  ushered  not  by  the  usual  crowd  of  com- 
mendatory verses  from  anybody  and  nobody,  but  by  two  copies 
only,  from  the  great  Mr.  Cowley  and  the  great  Mr.  Waller,  and  by 
letters  to  and  from  Mr.  Hobbes.  To  this  last  Davenant  explains  his 
1  Gondibert,  with  Davenant's  other  poems,  is  to  be  found  in  Chalmers. 


430  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  Book  vii 

principles  at  great  length,  and  Hobbes  replies  that  he  never  yet  saw 
poem  that  had  so  much  shape  of  art,  health  of  morality,  beauty  of 
expression,  as  this  Gondibert  (which  was  not  finished).  It  is  a  poem 
in  three  books,  each  of  several  cantos,  and  some  1700  or  1800 
quatrains  —  a  form  which  for  some  time  marked,  and  very  slightly 
arrested,  the  inevitable  transition  from  the  longer  stanzas  to  couplet 
and  blank  verse.  The  scene  is  Lombardy,  and  especially  Verona ; 
the  theme  the  affections  of  the  hero  as  tending  towards  Rhodalind 
or  towards  Birtha,  two  damsels  equally  '*  bright  of  blee  "  with  fighting 
and  other  things.  But  the  stanza  is  not  well  suited  for  narratives  of 
great  length,  and  the  verse,  though  occasionally  weighty  and  dignified, 
is  too  often  wooden ;  while,  except  in  Birtha,  there  is  little  attempt  at 
character. 

Fkaronnida^  is  a  very  much  better  thing,  though  by  no  means  a 

perfect   one.      Of  its   author  little   is   known.      He   was   born   about 

1620,    practised   as   a   physician,   and    died   in    1689,   at    Shaftesbury 

Chamber-     in  Dorsetshire.     He  was  a  good  Cavalier  and  fought  at 

layne.  ^j-^g  battle  of  Newbury.  He  tells  us  himself  that  he 
had  few  literary  friends.  Besides  Pharomiida  (published  in  1659, 
and  in  its  author's  lifetime  turned  into  a  prose  romance  under  the 
title  of  Ero/nena),  he  had  a  year  earlier  published  a  play,  Lovers 
Victories,  which  seems  to  have  been  acted  twenty  years  after,  also 
with  its  title  changed.  It  is  a  somewhat  confused  piece  (see  next 
chapter)  of  the  Brome  and  Nabbes  kind,  more  poetical,  with  some 
very  fine  flashes,  but  not  worth  much  as  a  whole. 

Pharomiida,  on  the  contrary,  is  worth  a  great  deal,  though  as  far 
as  possible  from  being  faultless.  It  is  difficult  to  agree  with  Camp- 
bell (the  first  of  the  few  who  have  praised  it)  that  it  is  "one  of  the 
most  interesting  stories  ever  told  in  verse,"  for  this  story,  such  as  it 
is,  is  extremely  incoherent,  and  the  personages  are  mere  stock 
romantic  types —  Pharonnida,  a  virgin  in  danger;  her  lover  Argalia, 
a  compound  of  Joseph,  Amadis,  and  Hector;  and  so  forth.  Further, 
the  ugly  colloquialisms  which  were  then  invading  both  verse  and 
prose  —  especially  that  ugliest  "to's"  for  "to  his,"  and  the  like  — 
deface  it.  But  the  versification,  which  represents  a  further  develop- 
ment from  Wither  and  Browne,  is,  though  too  much  "  enjambed," 
often  charmingly  melodious ;  some  of  the  episodes  —  especially  that 
at  Rhodes,  with  the  fate  of  Janusa,  which  Campbell  has  given,  not 
quite  completely  —  are  of  great  force  and  interest,  and  above  all  the 
spirit  of  romance  pervades  the  whole,  while  the  separate  phrases  and 
passages  of  beauty  are  literally  innumerable.  It  has  five  books,  each 
in  several  cantos  like  Gondibert,  and  must  contain  from  twelve  to 
fifteen  thousand  verses.  But  it  is  not  rash  to  say  that  of  the  nearly 
1  3  vols.  {Love's  Victories  is  in  the  third)  London,  1820. 


CHAP.  II        THE   METAPHYSICALS   AND   LYRIC   POETS  431 

five  hundred  pages  which  contain  them  hardly  one  can  be  read  with- 
out finding  some  notable  poetic  fragment,  and  few  without  finding 
more  than  one  such  thing  as  we  may  search  the  whole  poetry  of  the 
eighteenth  century  with  little  chance  of  paralleling. 

The  Miscellanies  and  Song-books  of  the  Elizabethan  period  proper 
continued,  through  its  Jacobean  and  Caroline  appendices,  in  slightly 
changed  fashions,  which  must  be  at  least  glanced  at  here.  The 
books  of  this  class  may  be  best  divided  into  two  varieties  cellanies 
which  often  crossed  each  other.  The  ballad, ^  the  rise 
of  which  was  sketched  formerly,  received  especial  attention  during  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  and  certain  individual  fashioners 
of  it,  Thomas  Delony,  Elderton,  Martin  Parker,  are  known.  The 
bulk  of  the  examples  preserved  for  us  by  the  fortunate  fancies  of 
Pepys  and  other  collectors  is  enormous,  and  from  time  to  time 
bundles  were  printed  under  divers  titles,  some  of  them  very  pretty,'^  in 
which  the  word  Garland  is  often  conspicuous.  But  there  were  also 
more  literary  collections,^  in  which  not  a  little  of  the  work  of  poets 
mentioned  already  occurs,  with  a  good  deal  that  is  anonymous,  this 
latter  sometimes  including  charming  things  such  as  the  famous 
"Phillida  (Phillada)  flouts  me."  At  about  the  time  of  the  Restora- 
tion these  books  were  apt  to  assume  the  title  of  Drollery,  which  per- 
severed for  a  good  many  years,  till  Dryden  stamped  Miscellany  with 
his  seal.  To  judge  the  progress  of  literature  one  must  read  most  of 
these  things ;  but  the  result  of  the  reading  is  not  easy  to  summarise. 
As  the  century  went  on,  the  coarseness  (sometimes  reaching  brutality) 
which  was  provoked  and  fostered  by  Puritanism  stains  them.  Yet 
even  in  the  dullest  and  most  offensive  deserts,  things  like 

And  the  Star  Chamber  of  her  eyes 
Robs  subjects  of  their  liberties, 

make  diversion  and  amends. 

1  The  labours  of  the  Ballad  Society,  with  the  more  especial  help  of  Mr.  Chap- 
pell,  Dr.  Furnivall,  and  Mr.  P2bsworth,  have  laid  these  pretty  well  at  our  disposal. 

2  There  can  hardly,  for  instance,  be  a  prettier  than  The  Crown  Garland  of 
Golden  Roses,  compiled  by  R.  Johnson  (Percy  Society,  1842-45).  The  contents 
only  sometimes  correspond. 

8  Musarum  DcUciae,  Wit  Restored,  Wit's  Recreations,  the  Rump  Poems  (re- 
printed, London,  n.d.,  4  vols.),  and  the  Covent  Garden,  Westminster,  and  C'loice 
Drolleries  (ed.  Ebsworth,  3  v(>ls.  Boston,  v.d.)  may  stand  as  examples,  being  those 
which  the  writer  knows  best. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE   DRAMA   TILL   THE   CLOSING   OF  THE  THEATRES 

Massinger  —  Ford  —  Shirley  —  Randolph  —  Suckling  —  Davenant  —  Brome  — 
Nabbes  and  Davenport  —  Glapthorne 

With  due  observation  of  the  caution  (which  may  seem  tediously 
repeated,  but  is  still  necessary)  as  to  the  overlapping  of  periods  in 
the  brief,  crowded,  and  intensely  active  years  of  the  drama  called 
Elizabethan,  we  shall  find  a  more  than  sufficiently  well-marked 
character  in  its  third  and  last  stage,  though  the  best  men  —  Massinger, 
Ford,  Shirley  —  were  not  very  young. 

Philip  Massinger,!  gQ^  of  a  gentleman-dependant  of  the  Pembroke 
family,  was  born  in  1583,  went  to  St.  Alban's  Hall,  Oxford,  and 
seems  to  have  remained  at  the  University  till  about  the  usual  age  of 
five  or  six  and  twenty.  We  do  not  know  how  or  when 
assinger.  ^^  made  his  way  to  London  and  began  play-writing, 
tnough  he  was,  on  documentary  evidence,  engaged  in  that  occupation 
as  early  as  1614;  but  the  earliest  thing  of  his  that  we  have  is  T/te 
Virgin  Martyr,  which  was  acted  in  1622.  He  died  seventeen  years 
later,  in  1639,  and  was  buried  in  St.  Saviour's,  Southwark,  a  church 
of  many  literary  connections.  It  was  not  that  of  his  own  parish,  for 
he  was  entered  as  "a  stranger."  Thus  he  is  nearly  as  little  known 
to  us  personally  as  his  colleague  in  The  Virgin  Martyr,  Dekker 
himself. 

But  in  his  literary  character  we  know  him  very  well.  Of  nearly 
twoscore  plays  recorded  and  ascribed  to  him,  rather  more  than 
half  are  lost,  but  the  eighteen  that  remain  ^  exhibit  him  in  suffi- 
ciently varied  lights,  and  the  total  judgment  of  him  would  probably 
not  be  much  altered  if  we  had  the  rest,  f  The  general  ijnpression 
TyViirV.  he-  p;ivff^,  wV>»n  v> p  js-c^un pared  with  his  predecessors^jsjhat-e? — -^^ 

1  Works,  ed.  Gifford,  with  those  of  Ford  and  an  Introduction  by  Hartley  Cole- 
ridge ("  new  edition,"  London,  1859). 

2  With  Sir  John  Van  Olden  Darneveldt  {Old  Plays,  ed.  A.  H.  Bullen,  vol.  ii.) 
as  a  not  improbable  addition,  though  there  is  no  evidence  of  authorship. 

432 


CH.  Ill  THE  DRAMA  TILL  THE  CLOSING  OF  THE  THEATRES  433 

3.  slightjncrease  of  artificiality_accornpanied  hy — anH  no  (ioyht  Hup 
to  —  a  correspondine;  decrease  iri  original  and  spontaneous  genius. 
Massinger's  tragedies  are  never  the  mere  blood-and-thunder  muddles 
of  which  we  have  so  many  before  him,  and  they  have  many  noble 
scenes  and  passages,  especially  in  T/ie  Unnatural  Cof/ibat,  The  Duke 
of  Milan,  The  Bondman,  The  Picture,  The  Roniati  Actor,  The  Fatal 
Dowry ;  but  with  the  exception  of  The  Virgin  Martyr  itself,  where  the 
difference  is  fairly  set  down  to  the  hand  of"  Dekker,  we  find  little  or 
nothing  of  the  ineffable  snatches  of  poetry  of  the  earlier  drama,  and 
an^nability  to  strike  out  those  fresTT  and  not  impossible,  if  not 
always  very  probable^  types  ot  character  which  (not  to  mention 
Shakespeare)  we  find  even  in  Beaumont  and  Fletcher.  So  also  his 
comedies  never  quite  descend  to  the  level  of  those  mere  heaps  of  less 
or  more  amusing  scenes  compacted  into  no  dramatic  story,  and  not 
even  connected  by  the  thread  of  any  one  vivid  character,  which  we 
find  earlier  in  Middleton,  and  later  in  Brome,  and  Nabbes,  and 
others  of  his  younger  contemporaries.  But  hardly  more  than  twice, 
in  the  famous  '  Neiv  Way  to  Fay  Old  Debts  (by  far  his  greatest  play, 
in  which  the"  usurer  and  tyrant  Sir_^Giles  Overreach  is  worthy  of 
Jonson  at  least)'  and  in  The  City  Madam,  does  he  rise  to  distinction 
in  comedy.  On  the  whole,  however,  tlie  greatest  of  the  great  race 
cease  with  him,  for  he  as  far  surpasses  Shirley  in  intensity  and  in  the 
goodness  of  his  best  things,  as  he  does  Ford  —  his  superior  in  these 
points  —  in  range,  bulk,  variety,  and  comparative  freedom  from  the 
morbid.  HTs  blank  verse  is  very  good,  less  miisical"  than  BeatTTTiont 
and  Fletcher's,  but  free  from  that  perilous  pressing  of  the  "  points  " 
which  is  observable  in  the  later  work  of  the  survivor  of  them,  admir- 
ably suited  for  stately  declamation,  and  yet  of  sufficient  variety. 
And  he  has  a  certain  indefinable  faculty  of  giving  a  good  account  of 
almost  any  subject  handled  by  him.  That  he  has  had  few  passionate 
admirers  is  due  probably  to  the  fact  that  he  rather  attains  and  keeps 
a  high  level  of  general  craftsmanship  than  shoots  to  solitary  heights 
oTlriiJtvidual  artistic^ success.  But,  since  GlfTord,  he  has  been  generally 
set  too  Tow,  and  Gifford  did  not  value  him  quite  aright. 

He   should   indeed  gain,  not  lose,  by  the  contrast  with  his  con- 
temporary,  John    Ford.^      Ford    does    go    higher    than    Massinger; 
he  has  received  warmer  praise  by  far;  it  is  considered  as  a  mark  of 
Philistinism    to   set   any   limitation   to  estimates  of    him. 
Yet  it  is  noticeable  that  wherever  Ford  is  at  his  best,  he 
avails  himself  of  illegitimate  aids,     y^is  very  best  play,  'Tis  Pity  she''s_ 
a  1 1  'hurc,  brings  on  the  scene  the  ])assion  ot  a  brother  for  a  sister,  and 
Ins  next  hest.  The  Broken  Heart,  piles  up  the  agony  ])y  the  most  pre- 
posterous  and  improbable    means.     Ford  cannot  do  with   nature;  he 

1  Ed.  Gifford  and  Hartley  Coleridge,  as  above  ;  also  Uycc,  reprinted  1895. 
2  F 


434  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vil 

must  ^Q  against  or  beyond  her  to  fetch  effects  of  tragedy,  and  in 
doing  tliis  he  stands  condenioui  Ulid  ejfektded  from  the  first  order 
of  poets  of  his  owa  time,  .or  in_deed  of  any..  The  inspiration  of  the 
unnatural  is  the  "  Dutch  courage  "  of  poetry.  ' 

^  He  was  not,  like  most  of  his  rivals,  a  writer  for  a  living,  though 
he  seems  to  have  worked  pretty  hard  for  those  by  no  means  lavish 
paymasters  the  theatrical  managers.  He  wrote  plays  in  the  second, 
third,  and  fourth  decades  of  the  century ;  but  he  was  a  member  of  a 
good  Devonshire  house,  the  Fords  of  Ilsington,  was  connected  with 
others,  was  a  member  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  though  we  have  no  record  of 
his  being  at  either  University.  As  early  as  1606  he  celebrated  the 
death  of  Lord  Mountjoy,  the  last  lover  and,  after  a  fashion,  second 
husband  of  Sidney's  Stella.  When  he  ceased  writing  or  when  he 
died  we  do  not  know,  and  we  have  very  few  notices  of  him,  the  chief 
being  the  often-quoted  one  in  a  Drollery,  which  is  not  unpicturesque  — 

Deep  in  a  dump  alone  John  Ford  was  got  [gat], 
With  folded  arms  and  melancholy  hat. 

Sixteen  plays  are  attributed  to  him  alone  or  in  collaboration.  We 
have  lost  Beauty  in  a  Trance,  destroyed  by  Warburton's  cook,  but 
entered  in  tl>e  Stationers'  books  as  late  as  1653.  The  London 
Merchant,  The  Royal  Co>nedy,  and  An  III  Beginning  has  a  good  End, 
also  destroyed  by  this  same  evil  cook,  appeared  still  later  in  1660, 
with  apparently  no  collaborator  in  any.  Ford  and  Dekker  are  re- 
sponsible for  The  Fairy  Knight  and  The  Bristowe  Merchant  (of  which 
from  Dekker  we  should  have  preferred  the  former),  and  Ford  and 
Webster  for  The  Murder  of  the  Son  upon  the  Mother,  which  from  the 
authors  of  The  Broken  Heart  and  The  Duchess  of  Malfy  must  have 
been  full  of  horrors  indeed.  We  have  remaining  the  curious  play  of 
^JThe  Witch  of  Edmonton,  in  which  Ford  took  part  with  Rowley, 
Dekker,  and  others;  The  Sun's  Darling,  by  Ford  and  Dekker,  and 
worthy  of  neither  except  that  it  has  some  of  the  charming  lyrics 
which  Ford  could  never  manage  alone,  but  which  mark  the 
passage  of  Dekker  everywhere.  The  Fancies  Chaste  and  Noble, 
Love's  Sacrifice,  The  Ladfs  Trial  are  all  feeble,  and  Love's  Sacrifice 
offensive ;  so  that  the  pieces  on  which  his  fame  rests  are  the  pair 
already  mentioned,  with  The  Lover's  Melancholy  and  Perkin  IVarbeck. 
This  last  has  the  perhaps  not  very  high  honour  of  being  one  of  the 
best  of  plays  on  an  English  historical  subject  out  of  Shakespeare; 
The  Lovers  Melancholy,  a  graceful  but  rather  feeble  piece,  is  prin- 
cipally famous  for  one  of  the  verse  transcripts  (Crashaw  did  another) 
of  Strada's  prolusion  on  the  nightingale  and  the  lute-player.  But 
neither  can  enter  into  competition  with  the  other  two,  and  it  is  by 
these  that  Ford's  reputation  stands  or  falls. 


CH.  Ill  THE  DRAMA  TILL  THE  CLOSING  OF  THE  THEATRES  435 

The  third  of  the  most  notable  poets  of  Charles's  reign,  James 
Shirley/  was  somewhat,  but  not  very  much,  younger  than  Massinger 
and  Ford.  He  was  a  Londoner,  and  was  born  in  1596  (thus  vindicat- 
ing the  right  of  the  drama  of  which  he  was  the  last  dis- 
tinguished practitioner  to  be  called  Elizabethan).  He  "  ^' 
was  educated  at  Merchant  Taylors'  and  hence  passed  not  merely  to 
the  natural  university  destination  of  its  scholars,  St.  John's  College, 
Oxford,  but  also  to  Catherine  Hall,  Cambridge.  He  was  ordained 
in  the  Church  of  England  but  went  over  to  Rome,  and  became  a 
schoolmaster,  between  which  occupation  and  the  writing  of  plays  he 
hovered  for  the  greater  part  of  his  tolerably  long  life.  He  is  said, 
as  well  as  his  wife,  to  have  died  of  fright,  and  perhaps  exposure,  in 
consequence  of  the  fire  of  London  in  1666. 

Shirley's  work,  what  with  masques  and  what  with  plays,  is  very 
voluminous,  extending  to  some  forty  pieces  with  a  few  non-dramatic 
poems.  To  the  general  reader  he  is  hardly  known  except  by  the 
famous  lyric,  ''  The  glories  of  our  blood  and  state,"  contained  in  one 
of  the  latest  of  his  entertainments,  T/te  Contention  of  Ajax  and 
Ulysses.  Yet  he  was  a  playwright  for  some  forty  years,  his  first 
piece.  Love  Tricks^  having  appeared  in  1625.  Other  comedies  are 
The  Witty  Fair  One  (1628),  The  Wedding,  The  Ball,  Hyde  Park, 
The  Changes,  The  Lady  of  Pleasure.  Among  his  tragedies  we  may 
name  The  Traitor  and  The  Cardinal;  the  first  named  of  which  is  his 
best  in  this  way,  as  The  Lady  of  Pleasure  is  his  best  in  the  other. 

Shirley,  almost  more  than  any  other  of  the  great  race,  has  suffered 
both  from  over-praise  and  over-blame,  as  well  as  from  the  want  of 
reading  as  a  whole,  which  he  especially  needs. ^  In  original  power 
he  is  undoubtedly  the  least  of  the  series  which  he  ends :  he  has  no 
great  plays,  hardly  any  great  scenes,  and  not  very  many  distinguished 
passages.  In  him,  almost  for  the  first  time,  we  detect  a  cert.iin  dis- 
tinct imitation,  the  "  litenviy  "  note.  On  the  other  hand  his  plays  arc 
Hy^enerally  re.1fRlble''a^wholcs,  and  have  a  certain  gain  in  coherence 
and  congruity,  even  though  they,  for  the  most  part,  belong  to  a  very 
loo.sely  constructed  scheme  of  drama.  He  does  not  fall  into  the 
astonishing  and  almost    inconceivable   hodge-podge  of   prose  that   is 

1  There  is  still  but  one  edition  of  Shirley  —  excellent,  but  rather  scarce  and 
rather  dear  —  that  of  Gifford  and  Dyce,  6  vols.  London,  1833.  Those  who  can- 
not attain  to  it  will  find  six  complete  plays.  The  Wiffy  Fair  One,  The  Traitor, 
Hyde  Park,  The  Lady  of  I'leasure,  The  Cardinal,  and  the  Triumph  of  Peace,  in  a 
single  volume  of  the  "Mermaid  Scries,"  edited  by  Mr.  Gosse  (London,  1888). 
This  series  also  contains  useful  selections  of  complete  plays  from  nearly  all  the 
chief  Elizabethans. 

2  This  statement  is  not  made  at  random,  but  after  a  consecutive  reading  of 
him  for  the  purposes  of  this  volume.  It  has  distinctly  raised  the  opinions  formed 
years  ago  on  a  more  piecemeal  acquaintance. 


436  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vil 

not  prose,  and  verse  that  is  not  verse,  which  we  find  in  men  like 
r>avpnant  and  .Siirkling,  but  can  write  more  than  fair  verse  wlien  he 
chooses  thisj^  and  very  fair  prose  when  he  chooses  that.  Indeed, 
now  and  then  his  verse  rises  to  a  melancholy  sweetness  which  ad- 
mirably suits  his  best  notes  of  character  and  tone  —  notes  of  a  rath«r 
feminine  grace  and  a  slightly  sentimental  chivalry.  As  in  tragedy 
he  sfops  short  of  horrors  generally,  so  m  comedy  he  abstains  gener- 
ally from  obscenity.  After  the  Restoration  he  fell  into  disrepute  — 
on  the  one  hand  Pepys  sneers  at  his  individual  plays,  and  on  the 
other  the  almost  always  generous  Dryden  takes  Shirley  as  a  type  of 
dulness.  But  this  is  quite  unjust,  and  he  is  even  a  direct  link 
between  Fletcher  and  the  distinctive  Restoration  comedy  in  all  its 
better  and  some  of  its  worse  ways.  He  was  undoubtedly  unlucky  in 
coming  just  where  he  did,  and  may  be  said  to  have  fallen  between 
two  generations.  Yet  he  by  no  means  unworthily  ends  his  own 
great  class. 

Even  in  these  three  greater  men  —  certainly  in  Shirley  —  signs,  if 
not  of  decadence,  at  any  rate  of  impending  change,  are  manifest ; 
in  nearly  all  the  minor  playwrights  of  the  period  these  signs  become 
flagrant.  The  most  promising  of  this  group  is  Randolph,^ 
whose  dramatic  work,  Artstippus,  The  Conceited  Pedlar, 
The  Jealous  Lovers,  The  Muses''  Looking-Glass,  Aniyntas,  and  Down 
with  Knavery,  all  show  the  influence  of  the  classics  both  directly  and 
through  Jonson.  Amyntas  and  The  Mtises''  Looking-Glass  are  the 
best,  but  no  one  is  absolutely  good,  and  all  labour  under  the  defect  of 
being  rather  exercises  in  different  schools  of  drama  than  original 
compositions.  Sir  John  Suckling's  ^  plays  again,  to 
continue  with  those  dramatists  who  were  also  more  or 
less  considerable  poets,  form  a  curious  contrast  to  his  poems.  The 
versification  shows  almost  every  fault  of  which  dramatic  verse  is 
capable,  and  which  has  been  or  was  to  be  shown  by  English 
dramatists.  It  is  by  turns  as  stiff  as  Gorboduc  an"d  as  loose  as  the 
worst  imitations  of  Fletcher's  later  redundances,  while,  like  play-verse 
generally  at  this  time  and  for  some  years  to  come,  till  Dryden 
tightened  things  up  again,  it  very  often  slips  and  flounders  about  as 
if  it  never  could  make  up  its  mind  to  be  verse  or  prose,  heroics  or 
doggerel.  The  prettily  named  tragedies  of  Brennorali,  The  Sad 
One,  and  Aglaura  (the  last  of  which  has  two  fifth  acts,  as  fishing- 
rods  have  two  tops)  are  strange  nondescripts,  blending  echoes  of 
Shakespeare,  who  was  very  popular  at  Charles  the  First's  court,  with 
imitations  of  the  heroic  novels.  The  Goblins^  a  comedy,  is  rather 
amusing  but  wildly  chaotic. 

1  Edition  as  for  Poems. 

3  Ed.  Hazlitt,  2  vols.  London,  1874. 


CH.  Ill  THE  DRAMA  TILL  THE  CLOSING  OF  THE  THEATRES  437 

Davenant's  ^  verse  in  his  plays  is  not  much  better  than  Suckling's, 
but,  partly  by  accident,  he  is  a  more  important  person  in  the  history 
of  the  stage  if  not  of  the  literary  drama.  It  has  been 
said  that  he  began  as  a  playwright  with  Alboviiie  (1628), 
The  Cruel  Brother,  and  other  things,  quite  early,  and  he  followed 
them  up  with  others  —  The  IVits,  News  from  Plymouth,  the  Fair 
Favourite,  The  Unfortutiate  Lovers,  Love  and  Honour,  etc.,  none  of 
them  very  good  plays  and  all  of  them  in  very  bad  verse  —  verse  so 
bad  that  one  suspects  some  convention  of  deliberate  badness,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  satirists.  But  when  Davenant,  long  after  the  theatres 
were  closed,  had  secured  his  liberty  through  Milton,  and  perhaps 
also  through  him  had  become  acquainted  with  Cromwell,  he  used  his 
influence  with  the  Protector  to  obtain  permission  (1656)  for  the 
performance  of  musical  entertainments,  which  practically  restarted 
the  drama  itself.     Notice  of  these  will  come  better  in  the  next  Book. 

The  most  prolific  playwright,  however,  of  this  time  was  Richard 
Brome.'-  We  know  next  to  nothing  of  Brome  except  that  he  was 
dead  in  1653,  and  that  at  one  time  he  was  servant  to  Ben  Jonson, 
who  mentions  him  by  no  means  unkindly,  though  others, 
to  curry  favour  with  Ben,  or  out  of  spite  to  Brome,  spoke 
of  his  plays  as  the  sweepings  of  Jonson's  study.  They  are,  as  we 
have  them  edited  by  his  namesake  Alexander,  fifteen  in  number, 
and  they  belong,  without  exception,  to  that  rather  nondescript  class 
of  plays  of  contemporary  manners  which  has  been  already  noted 
under  the  heads  of  Middleton,  Jonson,  and  Fletcher.  The  best  of 
them  are  The  Northern  Lass  (in  which  Constance  the  heroine  is 
made  to  speak  a  sort  of  Scots)  and  The  Jovial  Crew,  a  very  merry 
picture  of  gipsy  life.  All  the  rest.  The  Sparagus  Garden,  A  Mad 
Couple  well  Matched,  The  City  Wit,  The  Lovesick  Court,  The  Queen 
and  Concubine,  The  Antipodes,  The  Novella,  The  Court  Beggar,  The 
Damoiselle,  The  English  Moor,  Covent  Garden  Weeded,  The  New 
Exchange,  resemble  each  other  curiously.  We  read  them  without 
too  much  belief  in  their  pictures  of  manners,  and  yet  recognising 
traits  here  and  there  as  from  the  life. 

Of  Thomas  Nabbes,*  a  weaker  Brome,  we  know  even  less —  nothing, 
in  short,  except  that  he  once  drank  some  good  strong  beer  at  Droit- 
wich,  and  seems   generally   to   have    haunted   Worcester- 
shire.      His     plays,    Covent     Garden,    Tottenham     Court    p^y^"*", 
(names  indicating  the  style),  Hannibal  and  Scipio,  a  weak 
play  of  a  more  ambitious  sort.   The  Bride,  The  Unfortunate  Mother, 

1  Ed.  Maidment  and  Logan,  5  vols.  Edinburgh,  1882. 

2  Reprinted  in  3  vols.  London,  1873. 

8  Nabbcs  is  given  in  two  and  Davenport  in  one  of  Mr.  Bullen's  "  New  Series" 
of  Old  Plays  ;  their  best-known  pieces  are  in  Hazlitt's  Dndslcy, 


438  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 


with  the  moral  masque  of  Microcosmus,  by  which  he  has  been  most 
generally  known,  and  which  is  perhaps  his  best  thing  —  all  seem 
to  have  been  produced  between  1638  and  the  closing  of  the  theatres. 
Robert  Davenport  ^  was  an  older  writer  if  not  an  older  man,  for  he 
had  a  historical  play,  now  lost,  licensed  in  1624,  and  another,  Khig 
John  and  Matilda,  his  best  thing,  has  been  thought  to  be  not  much 
younger,  though  we  hear  nothing  of  it  till  1639,  and  it  was  not  printed 
till  still  later.  The  City  Nightcap,  which  ranks  with  it,  but  is  a 
comedy,  must  have  been  as  old  in  years  as  the  histories,  and  there  is 
a  third  existing  play  of  some  merit,  A  New  Trick  to  Cheat  the  Devil, 
which  was  published  in  1639.  Davenport  certainly  wrote  other 
plays,  and  those  which  we  have  are  good  enough  to  make  us  wish 
for  what  we   have   not.     A   similar   wish   would   perhaps 

ap  orne.  ^^  niore  difficult  in  the  case  of  Henry  Glapthorne,  of 
whom  again  so  little  is  known  that  his  editor  ^  has  thought  it  neces- 
sary to  print  some  documents  about  a  George  Glapthorne,  not  known 
to  be  in  the  slightest  degree  connected  with  the  dramatist.  We  have 
of  his  a  certain  number  of  poems,  mostly  in  couplets,  and  in  a  feeble 
style,  and  five  plays  —  Albertns  IVallenstein  (more  interesting  from 
its  subject  than  from  itself),  Argalus  and Farthenia,  one  of  the  numer- 
ous dressings  up  of  the  Arcadia,  Wit  in  a  Constable,  The  Lady^s 
Privilege,  and  The  Hollander.  Perhaps  he  wrote  The  Lady  Mother. 
He  is  something  of  a  poet,  but  very  little  of  a  dramatist. 

Besides  these  the  fifteen  years  or  thereabouts  of  Caroline  drama 
provide  the  names  of  Shakerley  Marmion,  who  besides  a  rather 
pretty  poem,  Cupid  atid  Psyche,  produced  at  least  three  extant  plays, 
the  best  of  which  is  The  Antiqiiary,  long  known  from  its  inclusion 
in  Dodsley ;  Sir  Aston  Cokain,  the  author  of  The  Obstinate  Lady, 
Trappolin  Creduto  Priticipe,  and  Ovid',  Thomas  May,  rival  of  Dave- 
nant  for  the  Laureateship,  and  it  is  said  from  spite  at  his  non-success 
afterwards  a  Commonwealth's  man  and  historian  of  the  Long  Parlia- 
ment, who  has  left  us  The  Heir  and  The  Old  Couple ;  Cartwright, 
whose  Ordinary  has  merit ;  and  Dr.  Jasper  Mayne,  whose  City  Match 
has  more.  AH  deserve  respectable  places  in  a  separate  history  of 
the  drama,  and  all  deserve  mention  here.^ 

iSee  note  3  on  preceding  page.  ^2  vols.  London,  1874. 

8  Cokain  and  Marmion  figure  in  volumes  of  the  Edinburgh  Dramatists  of 
the  Restoration ;  the  others  will  be  found  in  Hazlitt's  Dodsley.  For  yet  other 
scattered  plays  of  known  and  unknown  authors  during  the  three  divisions  of  the 
"  Elizabethan  Period "  which  cannot  find  room  here,  I  may  be  permitted  to 
refer  the  more  curious  student  to  my  Elizabethan  Literature,  pp.  423-427. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  GOLDEN  AGE  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PULPIT  —  II 

Jeremy  Taylor  —  Fuller — South  —  Barrow  —  Baxter,  Chillingworth,  Hales, 

and  others 

Not  the  least  admirable  and  remarkable  division  of  Caroline  literature 
is  that  peopled  by  the  Sermon-writers.  Indeed,  taking  advantage  of 
the  facts  that  of  Hall  and  Donne,  the  chief  ornaments  of  the  earlier 
period,  one  survived  Charles  I.  himself  and  the  other  saw  the  first  ten 
years  of  his  reign,  and  that,  under  Charles  II.,  another  and  only  less 
great  race  arise,  with  a  slightly  diflerent  style,  it  has  been  not  un- 
common to  speak  of  the  great  divines  in  a  body  as  Caroline.  We 
shall  here,  as  before,  borrow  from  the  Second  Charles  those  divines 
who,  under  him,  still  exhibited  the  graces  more  specially  attributable 
to  English  under  his  father,  and  postpone  those  who,  like  Tillotson, 
are  rather  eighteenth  than  seventeenth  century  in  character. 

The  greatest  of  the  group  thus  provided  are  Taylor,  Fuller,  and 
South  —  the  last  a  much  younger  man  than  the  others,  and  a  severe 
critic  of  them,  as  well  as  a  survivor  into  the  reign  of  the  last  Stuart 
who  occupied  the  throne,  but  still  distinctly  Caroline  and  not  Augustan 
in  spirit;  the  midmost  of  the  three,  the  wittiest  of  English  divines 
except  Sydney  Smith,  and  much  more  of  a  divine  than  Sydne^;  the 
first  in  almost  all  ways  the  chief  of  English  orators  on  sacred  subjects. 
These  three  display  the  characteristics  of  the  time  so  well  that  a 
fairly  careful  survey  of  them  will  enable  us  to  pass  more  rapidly  over 
their  fellows. 

Jeremy  Taylor  Mvas  born  at  Cambridge  in  August  1613,  and  was 
the  son  of  a  barber.  He  was  sent  to  Caius  College,  took  his  degrees 
there,  and  perhaps  became  Fellow, ..but  by  Laud's  influence  was 
transferred  to  O.vford,  where  in  1636  he  became  Fellow  of  All 
Souls.  He  obtained  the  rectory  of  Uppingham  two  years  later,  and 
married  in   1639.      ^^*^  '•''  guessed  rather  than   known  to  have  served 

1  Moris,  3  vols.  London,  1844.  No/y  Living  and  Dying  exist  in  many  separate 
forms,  and  The  Golden  Grove  in  some. 

439 


440 


CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 


as  chaplain  in  the  King's  army  during  the  Rebellion,  and  dates  are 
also  very  uncertain  in  regard  to  the  death  of  his  first  wife,  his  mar- 
riage with  a  second,  and  his  retirement  (probably  to  her 
Ta'Xr^  property)  in  Wales.  Here,  after  some  time  of  poverty 
and  school-keeping,  he  was  patronised  by  the  Earl  of  Car- 
bery,  became  tolerably  prosperous,  and  during  the  twelve  or  fifteen 
years  of  his  Welsh  sojourn  composed  most  of  his  greater  works. 
Yet  he  was  thrice  imprisoned  during  this  time  for  political  and 
ecclesiastical  malignancy.  Even  before  the  Restoration  he  received 
(rather  unluckily)  preferment  in  Ireland,  being  appointed  by  Lord 
Conway  to  a  lectureship  at  Lisburn,  and  when  the  King  came  home 
he  was  made  Bishop  of  Down.  Connor,  and  shortly  afterwards  Dro- 
more,  becoming  also  an  Irish  Privy  Councillor  and  Vice-Chancellor 
of  Dublin  University.  But  he  was  by  no  means  happy  in  Ireland, 
where,  between  Roman  Catholics  and  chiefly  Presbyterian  Protestants, 
his  Laudian  Anglicanism  was  very  uncomfortably  placed,  and  where 
he  had  domestic  troubles.  He  died  on  13th  August  1667,  at  Lisburn, 
and  was  buried  in  his  cathedral  of  Dromore. 

Taylor's  unique  position  as  an  English  churchman  of  letters  was 
attained  not  by  erudition  (for  though  it  would  ill  beseem  most  men 
nowadays  to  belittle  him  in  this,  he  was  for  that  most  learned  of 
times  by  no  means  extremely  erudite),  nor  by  his  theological  power 
(for  logic  was  not  his  forte,  and  he  more  than  once  approached  heresy 
unawares),  nor  in  that  special  product  of  the  time,  casuistry,  for 
which  his  dialectics  are  not  delicate  enough  ;  but  wholly  and  solely 
by  his  magnificent  rhetoric.  This  rhetoric  is  so  true  to  itself  that  he 
does  not  even  show  as  a  writer  so  well  as  he  must  have  shown  to  his 
hearers,  since  some  pretty  obvious  faults  in  the  page  would  have 
been  nearly  imperceptible  as  they  came  from  the  pulpit,  while  all 
his  beauties  would  be  enhanced  by  actual  delivery,  especially  as  he 
is  known  to  have  had  a  handsome  presence  and  an  admirable  elocu- 
tion. '  He  began  as  a  writer  in  1642  with  a  defence  of  Episcopacy, 
but  did  not  show  his  real  quality  till  he  was  safe  in  Wales,  under  the 
wing  of  Lord  and  Lady  Carbery,  the  latter  the  Lady  of  Comus,  Alice 
Egerton.  Of  the  numerous  works  then  written.  The  Liberty  of  Proph- 
esying is  an  argument  for  toleration  which  would  have  been  more 
effective  if  the  author  had  been  a  closer  reasoner,  and  perhaps  also  if 
he  had  not  been  on  the  losing  side  at  the  time.  1650  saw  a  Life  of 
Christ  and  the  famous  Hal^LMimng,  which  was  completed  next  year 
by  Holy  Dyi/i^.  A  course  of  Sermons  for  the  Christian  Year  was  then 
b^giin,  and  finished  in  1653.  1655  saw  the  devotional  work  called, 
from  the  seat  of  the  Carberys,  The  Golden  Grove;  1655  Uniim 
Necessarium,  a  treatise  on  Repentance,  in  some  points  dubiously 
orthodox;    and  in   1660  the  Dnctor   Dubitantiiim,  his  chief  work  in 


CH.  IV    THE   GOLDEN   AGE   OF  THE   ENGLISH    PULPIT  — II     441 

casuistry.  In  all  these  works,  as  well  as  in  his  numerous  others, 
the  chief  of  which,  for  our  purpose,  is  the  supplement  of  eleven  extra 
sermons  to  the  Eniaiiios,  or  Christian  Year,  it  is  almost  a  universal 
rule  that  Taylor  is  supreme  in  exhortation  and  rhetorical  description, 
great  (though  more  unequal)  in  meditation,  and  weakest  in  anything 
that  requires  close  logical  argument.  It  may  be  questioned  whether 
his  thought  is  ever  very  profound,  and  it  is  certainly  never  very 
original.  We  are  not  to  look  in  him  for  anything  like  the  infinite 
suggestiveness,  the  far-reaching  vistas,  of  Donne.  But,  luckily  for 
Taylor,  his  subject  supplied  him  with  depth  and  height  enough  in 
mere  matter,  and  he  had  nothing  to  supply  but  the  external  graces 
of  his  inimitable  expression. 

Almost  everything  that  can  fairly  be  said  against  this  expression 
is  summed  up  in  the  one  word  "  florid,"  and  it  seems  practically 
impossible  for  impartial  criticism  to  deny  that  this  word  is  applicable. 
The  presence  of  the  quality  it  denotes  shocked  the  younger  genera- 
tion of  Taylors  own  time,  and  is  commented  on  in  a  passage,  not 
quite  so  unjust  as  harsh  and  unbecoming,  by  South ;  it  probably 
lessened  Taylor's  influence  with  the  eighteenth  century,  and  it 
certainly  procured  him  abundant  compensation  at  the  time  of  the 
Romantic  revolt.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Taylor's  flowers  of 
speech  are  most  exquisite  and  most  lavishly  provided.  They  hardly 
ever  deserve  from  just  criticism  the  epithet  of  tawdry.  But  they  are 
something  too  lush  in  their  growth  ;  they  are  strung  with  stock 
devices  of  phrase  ("so  have  I  seen,"  especially)  which  are  irritating; 
and  their  extraordinary  abundance  gives  an  air  of  fulsome  and  some- 
what feminine  languor  and  luxuriance  to  the  style.  The  less  good 
effect  of  this  is  increased  by  Taylor's  confused  grammar.  Like  most 
of  his  predecessors  except  Hooker,  he  never  seems  quite  certain 
whether  he  is  writing  Latin  or  English,  and  abuses  the  license  of 
both  languages,  as  well  as  length  of  sentence.  Yet  to  no  person 
of  fairly  catholic  taste  can  his  defects  come  into  any  close  compari- 
son with  his  beauties.  If  he  is  seldom  deep  he  is  never  shallow;  his 
subjects  are  always  noble  and  always  worthily  handled ;  even  his 
plainer  writing  has  a  musical  cadence  and  a  pictorial  effect.  If  we 
want  something  better  still  we  can  only  go  to  Donne  or  Browne,  and 
Donne,  at  least,  if  not  Browne,  will  give  it  us  in  scantier  measure,  I 
and  in  manner  harder  to  receive. 

A  contrast,  whicii  is  almost  the  full  one  between  tragedy 
and  comedy,  exists  between  Jeremy  Taylor  and  Thomas  Fuller,^ 
who  was   born   at    Aldwinkle    St.    Peter's,  the  other  division   of  the 

1  There  is  no  complete  edition  of  Fuller,  but  most  of  the  books  mentioned  are 
obtainable  in  various  forms,  and  a  collection  of  sermons  appeared  (ed.  Bailey  and 
Axon)  in  1891. 


442  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 


village  in  which  Dryden  was  born  later,  in  the  summer  of  1608,  his 
father  being  rector  of  the  parish.  He  was  sent  to  Queen's  College, 
•  Fuller  Cambridge,  from  which  he  passed  to  Sidney  Sussex,  and 
in  1630  obtained  a  curacy  from  a  third  college.  Corpus  or 
Benet.  His  uncle,  Dr.  Davenant,  who  had  been  President  of  Queen's, 
was  now  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  and  made  Fuller  first  a  prebendary  of 
his  cathedral  and  then  vicar  of  Broadwindsor,  in  Dorset.  He  wrote 
some  verse  of  no  merit  early,  and  produced  his  Holy  War,  a  history 
of  the  Crusades,  in  1639,  and  his  Holy  and  Profane  States  in  1642, 
with  some  sermons  between  them.  Just  before  the  war  he  was  made 
preacher  at  the  Savoy,  and  during  it  was  an  army  chaplain.  But  his 
moderation,  or,  more  probably,  his  humour,  made  him  thought  half- 
hearted by  some.  He  printed  at  Exeter  in  1645,  when  hope  was 
almost  gone,  Good  Thoughts  in  Bad  Times,  one  of  his  very  best 
books;  and  followed  it  in  1647  with  Better  Thoughts  in  Worse 
Times.  Like  some,  though  not  many,  sound  divines  and  royalists, 
he  was  not  absolutely  persecuted  during  the  usurpation,  and  though 
he  was  unable  to  keep  a  post  at  St.  Clement's,  Eastcheap,  he  was 
more  fortunate  with  one  at  Waltham  Abbey.  In  1650  he  published 
his  Pisgah  Sight  of  Palestine,  a  book  on  the  Holy  Land,  in  1655  his 
great  Church  History  of  Britain,  and  in  1658  his  Mixt  Co)iiempla- 
tion  for  Better  Times.  At  the  Restoration  he  was  made  D.D.  and 
chaplain  to  the  King ;  and  a  bishopric  is  said  to  have  been  designed 
for  him,  but  he  died  of  some  sort  of  typhus  or  typhoid  in  August 
1661.  The  largest  and  almost  the  most  characteristic  of  all  his 
works,  the  Worthies  of  England,  was  published  posthumously. 

Fuller,  like  Taylor,  was  the  darling  of  some  of  the  great  English- 
men of  the  Romantic  revival,  such  as  Coleridge,  Southey,  and  Lamb. 
The  last  named  avowedly  doted   on   him,  has   made   a   selection    of 
J  some  of  his  greatest  phrases,  and  may  be  said  to  owe  his  style  more 
:;  to  Fuller  and  Browne  than  to  any  one  else.     At  the  same  time,  he 
ijhas  been  by  no  means  universally  popular.      The  formidable  South 
jfell  foul  of  him  almost   more    roughly  than  of  Taylor  just  after   his 
'  death ;    the   eighteenth  century  regarded  him  as  a  learned    buffoon ; 
^  and  it  is  by  no   means   certain   that   more   modern  judgments    have 
•been  wholly  conciliated  to  him.      Nor  is  this  surprising,  for,  as  has 
ibeen  said,  the  knowledge  of  Fuller,  except  among  a  few  students,  is 
probably  by  no  means  extensive  nowadays,  and  his  temper  is  one  not 
now  commonly  met,  and  regarded,  when  it  occurs,  either  with  sus- 
picion or  positive  dislike.      Fuller's  most  heartfelt  interests  were  all 
in    .serious    things.      He    was    probably   not   intensely   interested   in 
politics,    and    except   that   he   was   strongly   anti-Roman,   the   purely 
ecclesiastical    quarrels    of    his    day   did    not    excite    any    very   bitter 
feelings  in  him ;  he  was  a  true  Royalist  and  Anglican,  but  not  a  keen 


CH.  IV     THE   GOLDEN   AGE   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PULPIT  — H     443 

one.  Yet  his  Christianity  was  the  very  life  of  him ;  he  was  an 
earnest  student  of  history,  especially  in  the  lines  of  topography, 
genealogy,  and  heraldry.  All  these  are  of  the  class  of  subjects 
which  —  the  world  seems  to  take  it  for  granted  —  ought  to  be  treated 
ia  what  some  one  has  called  "  the  grave  and  chaste  manner." 

But  it  was  impossible  for  Fuller  to  be  grave.  No  mind  was  ever 
freer  from  the  slightest  irreverence  than  his.  But  the  quips  and 
conceits  of  the  Elizabethan  time,  the  "  metaphysical "  fancies  of  the 
Jacobean,  had  been  in  some  singular  way  seasoned  in  his  case  by  an 
anticipation  of  the  more  purely  satirical  and  jocular  tone  of  the  later 
seventeenth  and  earlier  eighteenth  century,  though  without  a  trace  of 
the  coarseness,  hardness,  and  impiety  which  too  often  accompanied 
this.  It  is  absolutel)  impossible  for  Fuller  to  resist  a  jest,  whether  on 
natural  phenomena,  as  where  he  writes  of  wax.  '•  It  being  yellow  by 
nature  is  by  art  made  red,  white,  and  green,  which  I  take  to  be  the 
dearest  colours,  especially  when  appendant  on  parchment " ;  or  in 
divinity,  as  when  he  observes  of  ejaculations  or  short  prayers,  that  '•  the 
soldier  may  at  the  same  time  shoot  out  his  prayer  to  God  and  aim 
his  pistol  at  his  enemy,  the  one  better  hitting  the  mark  for  the  other." 
This  quaint  quipping  wit  does  not  appeal  to  all  readers,  especially  in 
modern  days,  and  is  no  doubt  extremely  annoying  to  some ;  but  they 
are  probably  the  wisest  who  can  enjoy  it,  though  it  is  not  perhaps 
necessary  for  them  to  go  to  the  extremes  of  laudation  indulged  by 
Lamb  and  Coleridge.  The  range  of  Burton  and  the  depth  of  Browne 
are  both  denied  to  Fuller;  his  temper  is  a  very  little  childish  in  the 
bad  sense  as  well  as  childlike  in  the  good.  But  if  not  for  all  tastes, 
or  even  for  all  hours,  as  these  two  are,  in  the  case  of  those  who  love 
them,  he  is  no  mean  ornament  to  English  literature,  and  no  scantily 
stored  treasure-house  of  it. 

If  Taylor  is  sometimes  open  to  the  charge  of  effeminacy  and 
Fuller  to  that  of  childishness,  neither  fault  can  be  found  with  Robert 
South,  the  most  masculine  of  English  seventeenth-century  writers 
except  Hobbes,  and  indeed  a  sort  of  orthodox  pair  to 
that  great  writer.  He  was  born  at  Hackney  in  1633, 
and  passed  through  Westminster  (which  certainly  did  not  at  this 
time,  under  the  rule  of  Busby,  discredit  Solomon's  system  of  educa- 
tion) to  Christ  Church,  where  he  became  a  student  in  1651.  He 
took  orders  before  the  Restoration,  and  when  that  event  occurred, 
was  made  public  orator  of  his  University,  chaplain  to  Clarendon, 
a  prebendary  of  Westminster,  and  a  canon  of  Christ  Church.  He 
lived  to  a  very  great  age,  and,  at  any  rate  after  his  earliest  manhood, 
was  always  a  very  strong  Tory  ;  but  he  was  not  a  nonjuror,  and  lield 
his  preferments  to  iiis  death  in  1716.  He  was  a  formidable  contro- 
versialist, signalising   himself  in    tiiis  way  against    Sherlock;  but  his 


444 


CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vil 

literary  reputation  rests  upon  his  numerous  and  very  remarkable 
sermons. 1  He  was  controversial  enough  even  in  these,  as  may  be 
seen  in  the  passages  already  referred  to,  where  he  makes  strictures 
on  Fuller  and  Taylor;  and  compliments  have  been  paid  to  his  vi^it 
almost  equal  to  those  bestowed  upon  Fuller  himself.  They  are 
merited,  always  remembering  that  in  using  the  word  of  seventeenth- 
century  writers  we  must  observe  the  sense,  then  more  specially 
attached  to  it,  of  intellectual  keenness,  not  necessarily,  though  very 
often,  exhibited  in  relation  to  the  ludicrous.  South  has  still  some- 
thing of  Elizabethan  conceit  and  word-play,  and  a  great  deal  of 
Jacobean  scholasticism.  But  the  new  style  of  restricted  antithetical 
balance  which  was  rising  around  him  affected  him  a  good  deal,  though 
not  to  the  same  extent  as  that  to  which  it  affected  Tillotson  or  Temple 
or  Dryden,  so  that  he  comes  in  best  for  notice  here,  and  not  with 
them. 

For  he  retains  that  fondness  for  luminous  if  also  audacious  imagery 
which,  though  certainly  not  absent  from  Dryden,  or  even  from 
Temple,  was  to  be  more  and  more  restricted  both  in  them  and  in 
their  followers.  His  famous  sentence,  "An  Aristotle  was  but  the 
rubbish  of  an  Adam,  and  Athens  but  the  rudiments  of  Paradise," 
unites  seventeenth-century  splendour  of  fancy  —  the  sudden  blaze  of 
the  imaginative  rocket  —  with  eighteenth-century  balance,  antithesis, 
and  point.  It  can  be  matched  with  hundreds  of  single  things,  hardly 
less  ingenious  and  successful,  while  South  is  also  able  to  build  up 
larger  sentences,  till  he  reminds  us,  not  so  constantly,  of  Browne 
before  and  Temple  after  him  in  the  two  styles.  Thus,  while  he  never 
has  the  beauty  of  Taylor,  while  he  lacks  the  easy  lambent  light  of 
Fuller's  wit,  he  is  in  better  fighting  trim,  better  balanced,  less  unequal 
and  disquieting  than  either,  and  provides  in  almost  all  his  work 
quite  admirable  examples  of  the  more  scholastic  prose. 

Isaac  Barrow,^  who  was  a  little  older  than  South,  was  also  a 
Londoner,  born  in  1630,  but  his  school  was  Charterhouse.  Hence 
he  passed  to  Felsted,  in  Essex,  and  to  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
of  which  he  became  Fellow  in  1649.  He  was  known 
"  ^'  as  a  strong  Cavalier  and  Churchman,  and  this  for  the 
time  prevented  the  further  promotion  which  his  extraordinary 
abilities,  both  on  the  literary  and  scientific  sides,  would  have  gained 
him,  and  he  travelled  much  abroad.  On  the  eve  of  the  Restoration 
he  became  Professor  of  Greek  at  Cambridge,  and  after  it  a  Fellow 
of  the  Royal  Society,  Gresham  Professor  of  Geometry,  and  Lucasian 
Professor  of  Mathematics,  where  Newton  followed  him.  The  King 
always  greatly  fancied  his  preaching,  and  in  1672  made  him  Master 

1  4  vols.  London,  1843. 
2  Works  (non-mathematical),  ed.  Napier,  9  vols.  Cambridge,  1859. 


CH.  IV     THE   GOLDEN   AGE   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PULPIT  — H     445 

of  Trinity,  but  he  died  five  years  later.  Barrow's  style  is  less  severe 
than  South's,  but  also  a  little  less  technically  good,  more  disposed  to 
long  and  wandering  sentences,  though  in  other  respects  perhaps  more 
modern. 

We  need  pause  less  on  some  others.  Bishop  Pearson  (1612- 
86),  though  a  longer  liver  than  Barrow,  was  born  much  earlier, 
and  his  birth-date  is  reflected  in  the  style  of  his  famous  treatise  On 
the  Creed  and  his  other  works.  He  was  a  Norfolk 
man,  a  son  of  Eton  and  of  King's  College,  Cambridge,  chiuing- 
a  Royalist  chaplain  (though  he  does  not  seem  to  have  ^an^'ot'herr' 
been  much  interfered  with  during  the  Commonwealth)  ; 
and  after  the  Restoration  Master  of  Jesus,  Lady  Margaret  Professor 
of  Divinity,  Master  of  Trinity,  and  Bishop  of  Chester.  Richard 
Baxter,  one  of  the  lights  of  English  Nonconformity,  was  a  little 
younger  than  Pearson,  and  lived  a  little  longer  (1615-gi).  He 
was  neither  ill-born  nor  very  ill-educated,  but  went  to  no  University, 
and  after  some  changes  of  mind,  became  a  schoolmaster  and  took 
orders.  His  duty  was  chiefly  at  Kidderminster,  with  which  town 
he  was  throughout  his  life  most  connected.  He  welcomed  the 
Restoration,  and  might  have  had  a  bishopric,  but  scrupled,  and 
"went  out"  in  1662.  his  recalcitrance  to  the  law  being,  of  course, 
followed  by  some  inconveniences,  but  by  nothing  serious  till  the 
tyranny  of  James  H.  His  Saints''  Rest  (1650),  his  Call  to  the 
^///fr^^wz/^/V^c/ (1657),  and  the  agreeable  posthumous  work  published  in 
1696  as  Reliquiae  Baxterianae,  are  perhaps  the  most  important  for  us 
out  of  a  very  large  total  of  work.  Baxter,  who  is  said  ne\er  to  have 
altered  or  corrected  his  work,  and  whose  style,  thougli  neither  so 
vernacular  nor  so  racy,  has  a  certain  approximation  to  Bunyan's,  is  a 
distinctly  pleasant  writer,  if  not  very  much  more. 

This  rich  period  contains  in  theology,  as  in  other  departments, 
much  that  it  would  be  interesting  to  comment  upon.  John  Hales 
(1584-1656),  the '•  ever  memorable,"  was  born  at  Bath  and  educated 
there  and  at  Cambridge,  but  transferred  himself  to  Oxford,  where  he 
became  a  Fellow  of  Merton  and  a  lecturer  in  Greek  In  161 9,  or 
earlier,  he  was  made  a  I'ellow  of  Eton  College,  and  lived  there  all 
the  rest  of  his  life,  though  he  was  deprived  of  his  Fellowship  after  the 
King's  death.  He  was  one  of  Falkland's  set  in  Oxfordshire  and  of 
Jonson's  in  London,  and  a  mighty  admirer  of  Shakespeare.  His 
repute  is  rather  greater  than  his  works, '  which  consist  of  tracts, 
sermons,  and  letters  from  the  Synod  of  Dort,  where  he  went  witli  Sir 
Dudley  Carleton.  His  chief  single  work  is  the  tract  on  Schism  and 
Schismatics,  1636.     It  and  the   rest   of  his  works  contain  arguments 

1  Ed.  Dalrymple  (Lord  Hailes),  3  vols.  Glasgow,  1765. 


446  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vu 

for  toleration,  and  for  a  sort  of  orthodox  freethinking,  expressed  in  a 
rather  undistinguished  style.  It  is  supposed  to  have  been  written 
against,  or  at  least  in  reference  to,  the  Religion  of  Protestants  of 
William  Chillingworth,  who  was  born  at  Oxford  in  1602,  was  much 
favoured  by  Laud,  became  Fellow  of  Trinity  in  1628,  see-sawed  a 
good  deal  in  religion,  but  after  an  experience  of  Romanism  returned 
to  the  Church  of  England,  was  Royalist  in  the  Rebellion,  and  died 
soon  after  the  capture  of  Arundel  Castle,  where  he  was  taken  prisoner 
in  1644.  The  principal  merit  of  his  style  (and  in  his  days  it  was  no 
common  one)  is  its  extreme  clearness.  George  Herbert  wrote  some 
prose  very  like  his  verse.  Archbishop  Robert  Leighton  (161 1-84) 
was  born  and  educated  at  Edinburgh,  where  he  was  Principal  and 
Divinity  Professor  in  the  University ;  later  travelled  a  good  deal ; 
became  Bishop  of  Dunblane  in  1661  and  Archbishop  of  Glasgow  in 
1669;  resigned  and  died  at  Horsted  Keynes  in  1684.  His  character, 
in  a  position  likely  to  attract  slander,  excited  universal  admiration ; 
his  style  (shown  chiefly  in  Commentaries  on  the  Scriptures,  which 
had  an  immense  influence  on  Coleridge)  has  been  highly,  though 
not  always  clearly,  praised.  It  belongs  to  the  class  of  the  great 
imaginative  styles  of  his  time.  Bishop  Wilkins  (1614-72),  a  man 
with  a  rather  questionable  record,  who  married  Oliver's  sister  and 
contrived  to  make  the  best  of  both  sides  in  the  struggle  between 
King  and  Parliament,  and  of  both  Universities,  being  Warden  of 
Wadham  at  Oxford  and  Master  of  Trinity  at  Cambridge,  was  an 
early  student  of  physical  science,  and  member  of  the  Royal  Society. 
His  works.  Discovery  of  a  New  World,  Discourse  concemirtg  a  New 
Planet,  Mathematical  Magic  and  Essay  towards  a  Philosophical  {i.e. 
universal)  Language,  display  in  their  very  titles  the  survival  of  the 
fantastic.     His  style  is  simple  and  lively  enough. 

Lastly,  the  famous  school  of  metaphysical  theologians,  called  the 
Cambridge  Platonists,  produced  in  Henry  More,  the  poet,  and  still 
more  in  Ralph  Cudworth,  the  author  of  the  Tr7ie  Intellectual  System 
of  the  Uttiverse  (1678),  notable  prose-writers.  Cudworth,  born  161 7, 
in  Somerset,  entered  Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge,  in  1630,  and 
becoming  successively  Master  of  Clare,  Professor  of  Hebrew,  and 
Master  of  Christ's,  died  1688.  Besides  his  great  book,  which  is  a  sort 
of  history  of  philosophy  as  well  as  a  contribution  to  it,  Cudworth  wrote 
a  treatise  on  Eternal  and  Immutable  Morality,  and  other  things. 
Though  he  has  nothing  like  the  vigour  and  distinction  of  his  enemy, 
Hobbes,  as  a  prose-writer,  Cudworth  stands  high  among  our  early 
philosophers  for  his  style,  which,  if  not  exactly  elegant  and  never 
splendid,  is  solid  and  clear. 


CHAPTER  V 

MISCELLANEOUS    PROSE 

Milton's  prose — Its  faults  and  beauties  —  Sir  Thomas  Browne  —  Religio  Medici  — 
Vulgar  Errors —  Urn  Burial —  The  Garden  of  Cyrus  —  Clarendon —  Hobbes 
—  Felltham  —  Howell —  Walton 

The  eminence  of  this  remarkable  period  is  certainly  not  least  shown 
in  the  department  of  miscellaneous  prose.  After  dealing  with  the 
theologians,  we  have  still  left  the  prose  work  of  Milton,  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,    Hobbes,   and   Clarendon,   together  with    not    a  , 

few  minor  prose  writers  of  quality  from  Walton  down- 
wards. Milton's  prose  work,  as  has  already  been  said,  was  in  the 
main,  though  not  quite  wliolly,  comprised  in  the  twenty  years  of  his 
middle  age,  and  is  again  inainly,  though  not  quite  wholly,  controver- 
sial in  character.  The  great  bulk  of  it  is  an  instance  of  the  unwisdom 
of  objecting  to  the  distinction  of  matter  and  manner  in  literary  history. 
If  we  look  at  the  matter,  it  requires  almost  desperate  partisanship  to 
put  [much  of  Milton's  prose  work  high.  Except  the  Areopagitica 
and  the  Letter  to  Education,  almost  all  of  it  is  more  than  question- 
able. The  divorce  tracts  are  dubious  from  the  point  of  view  of  public 
morality,  and  ludicrously  one-sided  as  expressions  of  private  spleen. 
The  rudeness,  the  sheer  ill-manners  of  the  political  and  educational 
pamphlets  are  allowed  by  all  except  those  who  decline  to  see  any 
fault  in  the  author  of  Paradise  Lost.  Even  as  a  controversialist,  all 
questions  of  taste  and  literary  courtesy  put  aside,  Milton  is  too  one- 
sided, too  passionate,  and  too  weak  in  mere  argumentative  power  to 
receive  high  praise  from  impartial  criticism. 

But  when  we  turn  to  the  mere  form  of  his  prose  the  case  is  quite 
altered.  It  is  true  that  even  here  praise  cannot  be  indiscriminate, 
and  that  tliere  have  been  some  who,  even  on  formal  grounds,  have 
denied  to  Milton  very  high  rank  as  a  prose-writer.  But  some  trick 
of  imperfect  sympathy  may  in  "such  cases  be  suspected.  It  is  true 
that  Milton  is  by  no  means  a  faultless  writer;  he  is,  indeed,  a  very 
faulty  one.     Nothing  is  more  curious  than  to  see    how  he,  the  great 

447 


448  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 

architect  of  the  paragraph  and  the  sentence  in  verse,  seems  to  be 
utterly  ignorant  of  the  laws  of  both  in  prose,  or  at  least  utterly  inca- 
pable or  careless  of  obeying  those  laws.  On  many,  perhaps  on  most, 
occasions  the  gorgeous  harmonic  phrases,  of  which  in  prose  as  in 
verse  he  is  a  master,  entirely  fail  to  adjust  themselves  to  any  kind  of 
symphonic  arrangement.  They  clash  and  welter  against  each  other, 
or  suddenly  quaver  off  into  some  cacophony  or  insignificance  of  close 
which  destroys  their  effect  and  value.  The  pleas  that  Milton''s 
writing  was  constantly  not  merely  rhetorical,  but  oratorical^  and  that 
we  must  give  it  the  license  of  heard  matter,  as  well  as  that  his  blindness 
latterly  made  correction  difficult,  have  a  certain  validity  as  excuses, 
but  not  as  defence.  And  the  first,  at  least,  can  be  only  partially 
admitted  as  fact.  There  are  sentences  of  Milton's  which,  though  ugly 
on  the  page,  would  be  harmonious  on  the  platform  or  in  the  pulpit, 
but  there  are  others,  and  many  of  them,  which  would  be  ugly  any- 
where. 

The  fact  evidently  is  that  Milton,  to  whom  prose  was  not,  as  verse 
was,  his  native  organ  of  speech,  suffered  exceptionally  from  the  three 
vices  of  the  prose  of  his  age  —  the  tendency  to  an  unduly  laboured 
vocabulary,  that  to  an  unduly  Latinised  syntax,  and  that 
and^eauiTes.  ^^  enomiously  long  sentences.  For  the  two  first  there 
was  in  his  case,  as  all  fair  critics  have  acknowledged, 
not  merely  the  excuse  that  men  of  letters  read  more  Latin  than 
English,  but  the  particular  one  that  it  was  the  custom,  and  latterly  the 
business,  of  this  man  of  letters  to  write  more  in  Latin  than  in  English. 
And  it  seems  strange  that  any  one  should  be  capable  of  denying  the 
splendour  of  Milton's  prose  at  its  best.  The  gorgeous  evocations  of 
vision,  how  "  for  us  the  Northern  Ocean,  even  to  the  frozen  Thule, 
was  scattered  with  the  proud  shipwrecks  of  the  Spanish  Armada"'; 
the  thunder  of  single  phrases,  "  the  dateless  and  irrevoluble  circle " ; 
the  famous  comparison  between  the  poet,  with  his  garland  and  singing 
robes  about  him,  and  the  same  sitting  in  the  cool  element  of  prose; 
and  the  almost  more  famous  one  as  to  the  wandering  of  his  younger 
feet  among  those  lofty  fables  and  romances ;  the  magnificent  search 
for  the  Dead  Truth  in  the  Areopagilica,  —  other  things,  not  much 
below  these,  are  there  to  prove  his  quality.  We  could  have  had  them 
from  no  one  but  Milton,  for  the  best  of  them  have  a  certain  quality 
or  inseparable  accident  of  egotism,  not  to  say  arrogance,  about  them 
of  which  Shakespeare  and  Spenser  and  Shelley,  and  others  of  the 
greatest,  could  never  have  been  capable,  and  which  yet  gives  them 
the  swell  of  their  cadence  and  the  thrill  of  their  ring.  So  let  us  be 
thankful  for  even  the  egotism  of  Milton. 

The  humour  which  Milton  so  profoundly  lacked,  together  with 
a   certain  detachment  which   (for   his   and   our  good,  no  doubt)  he 


CHAP.  V  MISCELLANEOUS  PROSE  449 

lacked  likewise,  were  both  present  in  the  next  writer  to  be  mentioned, 
the  greatest  prose-writer  perhaps,  when  all  things  are  taken  together, 
in  the  whole   range   of  English.     Thomas   Browne,^  who  gj^. 

became  Sir  Thomas  in  the  last  years  of  his  life,  was  Thomas 
born  in  London  on  19th  October  1605.  His  father,  ro^^ne. 
who  was  in  trade  but  of  a  good  Cheshire  extraction,  died  when 
Thomas  was  a  child,  and  his  mother  married  a  certain  Sir  Thomas 
Dutton.  The  boy  was  sent  to  school  at  Winchester,  and  thence  to 
Broadgates  Hall,  Oxford,  which,  before  he  left  it,  was  turned  into 
Pembroke  College.  He  took  his  Masters  degree  in  1629,  and  then 
studied  medicine  at  Leyden,  graduating  there  as  doctor.  After  some 
years  of  travel  and  of  practice  in  difterent  places,  he  settled  in  the 
year  1636  at  Norwich,  with  which  city  he  was  connected  for  nearly 
fifty  years,  marrying  a  Norfolk  lady  a  few  years  later,  and  passing 
bad,  worse,  and  better  times  (as  Fuller's  classification  has  it)  in 
inoffensive  and  unmolested  prosperity.  His  knighthood  took  place 
in  1671,  and  his  death  in  1682.  Besides  letters  and  a  few  minor 
miscellanies,  we  have  from  him  five  capital  works,  very  difterent 
from  each  other  in  size,  but  of  pretty  uniform  excellence  as 
literature  —  Rcligio  Medici,  written,  it  would  appear,  pretty  early 
(about  1635),  but  not  printed  till  1642;  Fseudodoxia  Epideiiiica, 
better  known  by  its  English  title  of  Vulgar  Errors,  1 646 ;  Urn 
Burial  and  the  Garden  of  Cyrus,  published  together  in  1658;  and 
the  posthumous  Christian  Morals,  which  was  not  printed  till  1716 
and  was  edited  forty  years  later  by  the  great  light  of  his  college  in 
the  next  century,  and  its  great  Christian  moralist,  Samuel  Johnson. 
Every  one  of  these  works,  from  the  mere  pamphlets  which  contain 
the  third  and  fourth  to  the  bulky  treatise  on  Errors,  is  of  the  very 
first  importance  in  English  literature. 

Religio  Medici  has  perhaps  been  the  general  favourite,  a  position 
at    least   deserved    by   the   fact   that    it    contains    the    first-fruits   of 
Browne's  extraordinary  style,  that  it  is  a  sort  of  key  to  the  others, 
and  that  it  displays,  as  does  no  other  book,  the  mental 
attitude    of    the     older    and    better    generation    of    the       Me'Iici. 
Jacobean    and    Caroline    time.      This    attitude    may    be 
taken  as  resulting  from  the  following  conditions.     An  immense  but 
what  we  may  perhaps  call  a  somewhat  lopsided  erudition  —  ancient 
writers   and   modern    writers    in    Latin    being    insufficiently   lialanced 
by    those    in    the    modern    tongues ;    science,    in    the    modern    sense, 
conspicuous,  but  as   yet   unorganised;    a  wide   and    deep,  Imt    by  no 

1  Ed.  Simon  Wi!kin,  in  4  vols.,  reprinted  (not  quite  complcfelv)   in  three  of 
Bohn's  Library.     Reli,!^io  Medici,  Christian  Morals,  Urn  Burial,  and  the   Garden 
of   Cyrus,  are  accessible  in  two   small  volumes  of   the  "  Gulden  Treasury,"  one 
edited  with  great  care,  and  the  other  begun,  by  Ur.  Gicenhill. 
?.G 


450  CAROLINE  LITERATURE  ^OOK  vii 


means  necessarily  unorthodox,  and  scarcely  at  all  scornful,  scepticism ; 
and  a  gorgeous  setting  glow  of  poetical  fancy.  The  result  was  an 
inevitable  melancholy  in  all  the  choicer  souls,  except  those  where 
"cheerfulness  would  break  in,"  as  with  Fuller;  or  those  who  were 
furiously  devoted  to  the  strife  of  the  time  and  otherwise  wrapt  up  in 
themselves,  as  with  Milton  —  inevitable,  though  this  melancholy  might 
be  erudite  and  discursive,  as  in  Burton ;  mystical  and  sensuous,  as  in 
Donne;  hectically  religious,  as  in  Crashaw ;  meditatively  sc,  as  in 
Vaughan.  In  Browne  it  is,  as  melancholy,  kept  in  the  background. 
He  has  not  merely,  like  Burton,  his  learning  ever  present,  but  a 
practical  and  busy  art ;  religious  as  he  is,  he  does  not  become 
absorbed  in  religion  like  Crashaw  or  Herbert  or  Vaughan ;  his  blood 
is  cooler,  and  his  brain  less  trammelled  with  occult  things  than  Donne's. 
And  the  result  is  the  Religio,  a  confession  of  intelligent  orthodoxy  and 
logical  supernaturalism  couched  in  some  of  the  most  exquisite  English 
ever  written. 

The  great  medley  of  the  Psendodoxia  is  more  puzzling  to  modern 
ideas.  Here  Browne  first  discusses  the  general  subject  of  delusion 
in    a    fashion    singularly    different    from,   though    perhaps    not    less 

philosophical    than,    that   which   would   suggest   itself    to 
Errirs       niost  people.     Now  and  then  he  takes  the  errors  one  by 

one,  but  the  fact  is  that  "  errors "  is  not  quite  the 
right  word.  Pseudodoxy,  as  opposed  to  orthodoxy,  consists  in  the 
assumption,  as  positive  truths,  of  things  unproved,  in  the  explanation 
of  undoubted  phenomena  by  wrong  causes,  at  Jeast  as  much  as  in 
the  belief  in  things  certainly  false.  Very  often  he  will  not  go 
beyond  the  position  that  the  popular  creed  may  be,  with  more 
reason,  denied  or  affirmed ;  sometimes  he  has  possible  explainings 
away  of  difficult  facts ;  and  it  will  readily  be  anticipated  that  he 
very  often  advances  hypotheses  more  difficult  for  modern  science  to 
admit  than  the  facts  he  wishes  to  explain.  He  is  himself,  though 
profoundly  sceptical,  by  no  means  obstinately  incredulous ;  and  if  he 
cannot  believe  the  magical  qualities  of  gems,  and  must  admit  that 
"  it  hath  much  deceived  the  hopes  of  good  fellows  what  is  commonly 
expected  of  bitter  almonds,"  he  declares  "  that  an  unsavoury  odour  is 
gentilitious  or  natural  unto  the  Jews,  we  cannot  well  conceive." 
Yet  he  is  by  no  means  prone,  as  his  great  editor  and  fellow- 
collegian  was,  to  deny  things  simply  because  they  are  strange ; 
and  the  result  is  that  the  Psendodoxia,  written  in  a  delightful  style, 
ranging  through  a  vast  multitude  of  sometimes  absurd  but  almost 
always  interesting  legends,  anecdotes,  beliefs,  and  lighted  throughout 
with  Browne's  own  special  candles  —  his  mild  intelligence  and  his 
unaggressive  irony  —  is  one  of  the  most  charming  books  existing  or 
conceivable. 


CHAP.  V  MISCELLANEOUS   PROSE 


451 


The  little  tractates  called  Hydriotaphia,  or  Ur-n  Bjirial,  and  The 
Garden  of  Cyrus  contain,  the  first  but  some  half-hundred,  the  other 
sgjne    hundred   small    pages ;     but    between    them     they 


sho\ 


^sITow    the    quintessence    of    Brau«e:s.^hought,~aTn*-the  ^''"  ^"'^'''^• 


palmary  CAaiifpfe-©l-4«s'"styre.  The  first  is  pertiaps  the  chief  in- 
stance of  his  melancholy,  meditative,  yet  pious  and  not  unhopeful 
mysticism,  the  second  of  his  mysticism  fantastic.  Hydriotaphia, 
starting  from  the  fact  of  the  discovery  of  some  sepulchral  urns  in 
Norfolk,  considers  first,  in  a  sweeping  yet  punctilious  generalisation, 
the  various  historic  methods  of  sepulture,  or  rather  disposal  of  the 
dead.  Then  it  passes  to  the  sepulchral  antiquities  of  Britain,  and 
thence  to  urns  and  their  contents,  with  some  considerations  on  the 
relative  durability  of  different  parts  of  the  human  body.  A  chapter 
on  funeral  ceremonials,  beliefs  in  immortality  or  annihilation  and  the 
like  follows,  and  leads  up  to  the  ever-memorable  finale,  beginning, 
"  Now  since  these  dead  bones,"  which  has  rung  in  the  ears  of  some 
eight  generations  as  the  very  and  unsurpassable  Dead  March  of  Eng- 
lish Prose.  Every  word  of  this  chapter  is  memorable,  and  almost  every 
word  abides  in  the  memory  by  dint  of  Browne's  marmoreal  phrase, 
his  great  and  grave  meaning,  and  the  wonderful  clangour  and  echo 
of  his  word-music.  "Time,  which  antiquates  antiquities,"  will  have 
some  difficulty  in  destroying  this.  And  through  all  the  chapter 
his  style,  like  his  theme,  rises,  till  after  a  wonderful  burst  of 
mysticism,  we  are  left  with  such  a  dying  close  as  never  had  been 
heard  in  English  before,  ''  ready  to  be  anything  in  the  ecstasy 
of  being  ever,  and  as  content  with  six  foot  as  w^ith  the  moles  of 
Adrianus." 

The  Garden  of  Cyrus,  a  study  on  the  conveniences  and  delights 
of  the  quincunx  ( [  •  ; )  is  a  curious  and  no  doubt  a  designed 
contrast,  exhibiting,  though  without  any  FuUerian  merriment,  the 
lighter  side  of  that  seventeenth-century  quaintness 
which  disgusted  and  puzzled  the  eighteenth,  and  which,  JJcyritsT 
perhaps,  the  nineteenth  has  not  for  the  most  part 
genuinely  sympathised  with.  We  start  gravely  with  the  fact  (or 
assertion)  that  Vulcan  gave  arrows  unto  Apollo  and  Diana,  the 
fiftli  day  after  their  nativities,  and  so  pass  to  the  Gardens  of 
Antiquity  (for  Browne  is  as  much  a  lover  of  gardens  as  his  younger 
contemporaries  Cowley  and  Evelyn  themselves),  and  to  the  quin- 
cuncial  arrangement  of  those  of  Cyrus  according  to  Xenophon, 
with  some  remarks  on  the  mysteries  of  decussation  and  its  results, 
the  various  kinds  of  crosses.  It  is  finally  pointed  out  that  in 
Paradise  itself,  the  first  garden,  the  Tree  of  Knowledge  appropriately 
supplies  a  centre  of  this  decussation.  But  the  (juincunx  is  far  from 
limited  to  planting  —  architecture,  crowns,  beds,  nets,  tactics,  and  many 


452 


CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 


other  things  display  it.  It,  or  its  number  Five,  is  in  the  flowers  in 
gypsum,  in  honey-combs,  in  the  belly  of  the  water-beetle,  "though 
we  found  not  what  we  expected  in  the  cartilaginous  parts  of  the 
weasand,  and  the  discernible  texture  of  the  lungs  of  frogs."  The 
excellence  of  planting  in  this  form  is  returned  to :  rams'  horns,  by 
the  way,  will  grow  if  planted  at  Goa.  And  lastly,  with  an  apology, 
some  other  mysteries  of  Five  are  touched,  till  the  whole  ends  again 
with  another  triumph  of  elaborate  rhetorical  art,  "  But  the  quincunx 
of  Heaven  runs  low,"  etc. 

It  is  not  at  all  uninteresting  or  unimportant  that  the  posthumous 
Christian  Morals,  though  as  characteristic  of  Browne's  thought,  style, 
and  vocabulary  as  any  of  the  others,  has  somewhat  less  finished 
splendour,  and  indeed  ends  with  a  sort  of  duplication  of  the  finale 
of  the  Urn  Burial.  For  this,  it  must  Be  remembered,  the  author 
himself  never  published,  and  the  fact  shows  (what  indeed  is  certain 
from  other  evidence,  both  internal  and  external)  that  Sir  Thomas 
was  a  very  studious  corrector  of  his  own  work.  Nor  could  any  one 
have  improvised  such  miracles  of  execution  in  prose  as  the  best 
things  in  the  earlier  books.  Except  in  these  respects,  and  in  the 
somewhat  more  sober  cast  which  its  practical  purpose  imposes  on 
it,  the  book  is  entirely  of  a  piece  with  the  others  —  the  same 
gorgeously  Latinised  terminology,  which  somehow  never  becomes 
stiff  or  awkward ;  the  same  sententious  weight,  which  is  never  heavy 
or  dull ;  the  same  cunning  construction  of  sentences  and  paragraphs ; 
and  above  all,  the  same  extraordinary  power  of  transforming  a 
commonplace  into  the  eternal  idea  corresponding  to  it  by  some 
far-reaching  image,  some  illustration  quaintly  erudite,  or  even  by  sheer 
and  mere  beauty  of  phrase  and  expression. 

For  this  is  the  great  merit  of  Browne,  that,  quaint  or  gorgeous, 
or  even,  as  he  sometimes  may  seem  to  be,  merely  tricksy  —  bringing 
out  of  the  treasures  of  his  wisdom  and  his  wit  and  his  learning 
things  new  and  old,  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  showing  them  —  thought 
and  expression  are  always  at  one  in  him,  just  as  they  are  in  the 
great  poets.  The  one  is  never  below  the  other,  and  both  are 
always  worthy  of  the  placid,  partly  sad,  wholly  conscious  and 
intelligent,  sense  of  the  riddles  of  life  which  serves  them  as  a  back- 
ground. 

As  if  to  justify  Browne's  own  theory  of  the  quincunx,  there  were 
at  the  same  time  with  him,  with  Milton,  and  with  Taylor,  two  other 
prose  writers  of  the  first  class,  though  of  different  kinds,  Edward 
Hyde,  Earl  of  Clarendon,  and  Thomas  Hobbes.  Hyde,i  whose  name 
and  extraction  came  from  Cheshire,  though  he  was  a  Wiltshireman  by 

1  Clarendon's  works  were  presented  by  his  heirs  to  the  University  of  Oxford, 
and  have  always  been  issued  by  the  University  Press,  which  bears  his  name. 


CHAP.  V  MISCELLANEOUS   PROSE  453 

birth,  was  born  in  1608,  was  educated  at  Oxford  (Magdalen  Hall),  and 
then  practised  law.  At  first  a  younger  son,  he  came  into  the  prop- 
erty by  the  death  of  his  brothers.  His  early  Opposi- 
tion attitude  in  the  struggle  between  the  King  and  the  ^'^^"  °°' 
Parliament  was,  like  that  of  other  good  lawyers,  chiefly  dictated  by 
dislike  of  the  few  or  false  precedents  adduced  for  some  actions  of  the 
Crown.  He  was  also  a  very  strong  Anglican,  and  irreconcilably  opposed 
to  Presbyterianism,  and  from  1641  onward  he  was  the  King's  chief 
ostensible  adviser,  though  unluckily  his  influence  was  more  apparent 
than  real.  He  followed  first  the  King  and  then  the  Prince  of  Wales, 
becoming  later  chief  minister  to  Charles  H.  in  his  exile  and  poverty, 
as  well  as  father-in-law  to  the  future  James  IL  At  the  Restoration 
he  still  remained  Charles's  Prime  Minister,  but  he  became,  partly  no 
doubt  by  his  own  fault,  unpopular,  and  being  left  in  the  lurch  by  the 
King,  was  impeached,  and  quitted  England  in  1667.  He  lived  at 
Montpellier  and  Rouen  for  seven  years  longer,  and  died  at  the  Norman 
capital  in  1674.  Nothing  of  his  was  published  till  the  eighteenth 
century,  but  he  had  written  much,  beginning  his  famous  history,  in 
the  narrow  room  of  Scilly,  as  early  as  1646.  And  this  appeared  in 
1704.  Later  he  wrote  his  own  Life,  but  for  literature  his  importance 
consists  in  the  iiistory  of  the  Great  Rebellion. 

Clarendon's  peT^uiial  character  and  his  political  action  have,  as 
was  inevitable,  been  judged  rather  too  much  according  to  the  judge's 
political  sympathies,  and  this  fashion  of  judgment  has  extended  even 
to  his  literary  merits.  On  these  last,  however,  'there  should  be  no 
serious  difference.  His  demerits  are  sufficiently  obvious  —  they 
consist  first  in  an  awkward  syntax,  secondly,  and  still  more,  in  the 
most  extraordinary  sentences,  piled  up  to  appalling  bulk  by  additions, 
parentheses,  and  a  complete  contempt  of  the  humble  art  of  punctua- 
tion. His  merits,  on  the  other  hand,  are,  as  regards  the  general 
scheme  of  his  book,  what  has  justly  been  called  an  epical  composition 
—  a  sense  of  the  central  story  and  its  unfolding ;  and  in  regard  to 
individual  passages,  a  singular  accomplishment  and  skill.  Few 
historians,  prolix  as  he  seems  to  be,  can  describe  a  given  event  —  a 
battle,  a  debate  or  what  not  —  with  more  vividness  than  Clarendon. 
But  not  one  in  all  the  long  list  of  the  great  practitioners  of  the  art  has 
such  skill  at  the  personal  Character.  This  character,  it  has  been  already 
observed,  was  a  favourite  exercise  of  the  time,  both  in  France  and  in 
England;  but  Clarendon's  are  far  the  greatest.  He  is  accused  of 
partisanship  by  partisans,  but  this  would  matter  little,  even  if  the 
accusation  were  just.  For  what  we  want  to  see  is  how  Clarendon  can 
draw  us  the  portrait  he  wanted  to  paint.  Its  justice  concerns  history : 
literature  is  only  busied  with  its  art. 

Thomas  Hobbes   was   twentv   vears   older   than    Clarendon.      He 


454  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 


came  from  the  same  county  (where,  at  Malmesbury,  he  was  born  on 
5th  April  1588)  and  went  to  the  same  college.  When  quite  a  young 
Hobbe  "^^^  '^^  became  attached,  as  tutor,  to  the  family  of 
Cavendish,  and  remained  a  friend,  and  for  the  most  part 
an  inmate,  of  that  family  for  almost  the  whole  residue  of  his  long  life. 
He  was  acquainted  with  Bacon,  and,  it  would  seem,  with  most  of  the 
literary  men  of  the  capital  in   the   days   of  James   and   Charles,   but 

published    nothing   himself  till   1628,  and  then  only  a  translation 

though  a  very  remarkable  one  —  of  Thucydides.  He  was  much 
abroad,  sometimes  in  charge  of  pupils,  but  published  nothing  of  his 
own  till  1642,  when  De  Cive  appeared.  The  more  famous  Leviathan 
did  not  appear  till  nine  years  later,  in  its  author's  grand  climacteric. 
Hobbes  was  pensioned  at  the  Restoration,  but  still  lived  chiefly  with 
the  Devonshire  family,  and  died  at  their  seat  of  Hardwick  Hall  in 
Derbyshire  on  4th  December  1679,  having  come  well  within  a  decade 
of  seeing  both  the  Armada  and  the  Revolution.  His  work  ^  is 
extensive,  and  much  of  it  exists  in  duplicate,  for  Hobbes  followed 
Bacon's  plan  of  issuing  his  work  both  in  Latin  and  English.  His 
eccentric  fancy  of  trying  to  translate  Homer  into  verse,  with  an 
excessively  wooden  result,  is  of  no  importance  for  literature,  nor  are 
his  generally  mistaken  mathematical  works.  But  his  books  on 
political  and  other  philosophy  are  the  first  things  on  the  subject  in 
English  which  unite  very  original  thought  with  a  masterly  and 
individual  style.  The  extreme  nominalism  of  their  metaphysics,  the 
absolutism  of  their  politics,  and  the  rather  inferential  than  declared 
freethought  of  their  religion,  do  not  concern  us  here,  though  all  had 
a  great  effect  on  English  philosophy,  and  through  it,  by  way  of 
answers,  deductions,  and  the  like,  on  English  literature. 

Hobbes,  however,  might  have  been  much  less  remarkable  on  these 
points,  and  yet  have  held  a  very  important  place  in  the  history  of 
literature  itself.  His  style  stands  very  much  alone,  and  with  the 
usual  allowance  for  personal  idiosyncrasy,  seems  to  have  been  formed 
by  two  main  influences.  The  first  of  these  was  his  practice  in 
translating  Thucydides,  whom  he  has  followed,  in  the  brevity 
and  pregnant  compression  of  'his  manner,  without  imitating  the 
Thucydidean  license  of  syntax.  The  second  may  be  connected  with 
his  own  philosophical  doctrines,  which  made  him  regard  words  as 
things  of  stable  and  rigid  signification,  to  be  kept  strictly  to  certain 
concrete  meanings,  and  handled  with  the  same  absence  of  vagueness 
as  if  they  were  figures  or  coins.  If  there  is  any  style  before  him  to 
which  his  bears  special  resemblance,  it  is  that  of  Ben  Jonson,  while 
there  are  also,  and  naturally,  a   few  resemblances    to    Bacon.     As   a 

i  Ed.  Molesworth,  16  vols.  London,  1839-45.  The  English  works  fill  ten  of 
these,  with  an  eleventh  for  index. 


CHAP.  V  MISCELLANEOUS   PROSE  455 

whole,  though  devoid  of  ornament  to  a  degree  which  may  sometimes 
seem   almost   repulsive,  it  h^  nne  nf  ndmiml^lp  viCTflirj_Hf;nrrif"7i_|  and_ 
adaptability,  especially  for  argumentative  purposes.     It  shows  at  once 
"^soost  popularly,  and  not  to  least  technical  advantage,  in  the  wonderful 
little  treatise  on  Human  Nature^^^ 

At  least  five  other  prose^^iters  of  this  period  must  receive  a 
short  detailed  notice  —  Felltham,  Howell,  Walton,  Harrington,  and 
Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury. 

Of  Owen  Felltham  {c.  \(>oo-c.  1680),  once  more,  "little  or  nothing 
is  known."  He  was  a  Suffolk  man,  and  wrote  several  things  in  prose 
and  verse,  but  his  fame  rests  entirely  on  his  Resolves?-  Although 
this   book  was   so   popular  that  a  ninth    edition   at   least      ^  „  ^ 

,     ,      .  ,i,,.r.  1  1  !•  Felltham. 

appeared  durmg  the  author  s  lifetime,  and  an  eleventh  in 
1708,  after  which  it  went  out  of  fashion  for  a  century,  we  do  not 
know  exactly  when  the  first  edition  appeared.  The  second  is  dated 
1628.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  book  of  Essays,  showing  the  extremely 
strone  nisus  of  the  time  towards  that  form.  There  are  a  hundred 
and  eighty-five  of  them,  the  subjects  and  the  general  treatment  being 
not  unlike  Bacon's,  though  far  less  magniloquent.  Yet  Felltham 
wrote  well,  thought  wisely,  and  sometimes  gives  curiously  fresh  traits 
and  touches  of  his  time  in  manner  as  well  as  thought.  His  verses 
in  the  metaphysical  kind  are  more  curious  than  poetical,  his 
observations  on  the  Low  Countries  shrewd  enough,  and  some  letters 
agreeable. 

Felltham's   letters,  however,  are   few,  and   by  no   means   the   most 
noteworthy  part  of  his  work ;  those  of  James  Howell  -  hold  one  of  the 
♦  principal  places  in  English  epistolary  literature,  and  being  themselves 
considerable  in  bulk,  have  survived,  almost  alone,  from  a       „ 

•  •  11-  1  TT  Howell. 

much  larger  body  of  compositions  by  their  author.  He  was 
born  at  Abernant  in  Carmarthenshire  about  1594.,  was  educated  at 
Hereford  School  and  Jesus  College,  Oxford,  and  showing  aptitude 
for  business,  had  various  commissions  abroad  of  a  commercial  nature 
at  Venice  (to  import  glass  workers),  in  Spain  (to  recover  debts  due 
in  England),  etc.  At  home  he  was  one  of  Ben  Jonson\s  "sons,"  and 
had  numerous  patrons  through  whom  he  obtained  divers  employ- 
ments, ending  in  the  important  one  of  Clerk  of  the  Council.  This, 
however,  was  just  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Rebellion,  and  Howell 
reaped  from  it  chiefly  imprisonment.  He  became  Historiographer 
Royal   at   the    Restoration,   and   died   in    1666.       His   Letters,  which 

1  Reprinted  eaHy  in  this  century  by  Cummings  (London,  1820),  hut  in  a 
somewhat  garbled  form.     The  contemporary  editions  are  preferable. 

2  Contemporary  copies  also  numerous;  indeed,  editions  continued  to  be 
multiplied  till  well  into  the  eighteenth  century.  Mr.  Jacobs  lias  edited  a  hand- 
some reissue  (2  vols.  London,  1890). 


456  CAROLINE  LITERATURE  book  vii 

alone  need  concern  us  here,  extend  over  a  very  long  period, 
and  in  some  cases  certainly,  in  many  probably,  are  not  so  much 
genuine  letters  as  Essays  thrown  into  epistolary  form.  At  other 
times,  however,  and  specially  in  those  dealing  with  his  foreign  travels, 
there  is  no  reason  to  suspect  their  trustworthiness,  and  the  medley  of 
their  subjects,  dealt  with  in  a  gossiping  style,  but  by  no  means  without 
knowledge,  and  with  a  curious  profusion  of  details  of  the  most  various 
kind,  has  always  been  found  agreeable  by  good  judges. 

We  still  rise  in  the  scale  of  general   acceptance  as  we   come   to 

Izaak   Walton,^   one   of    the    most    popular,    and    justly   popular,   of 

English   writers.      He   was    born   at    Stafford   in    August    1593,    but 

became   a   Londoner,  and  carried  on   the   trade    of  linen 

Walton.  ,  .,  ,,  -T.         ^  .r 

draper,  "sempster,"  etc.  His  first  wife  was  a  great- 
grand-niece  of  Cranmer,  and  his  second  a  half-sister  of  Ken,  con- 
nections not  more  causing,  than  springing  from,  his  intimate  and  deep 
affection  and  loyalty  to  the  Church  of  England.  He  was  the  friend 
of  Donne,  of  Bishops  Morley,  Sanderson,  and  King,  and  of  Sir  Henry 
Wotton,  lived  latterly  at  Winchester,  where  his  son-in-law  Dr. 
Hawkins  was  prebendary,  and  died  there  in  1683.  He  lives  in 
literature  by  \\\f^.ouMp.tp.  Angler,  the  first  editjon  of  which  —  it  was 
afterwards  mucHaltered  and  supplemented  by  Cotton  —  appeared  in 
1653,  in  the  depth  of  Fuller's  "worst  times,"  and  by  five  short  but 
admirable  biographies  of  Donne,  Wotton,  Hooker,  Herbert,  and  San- 
derson. It  is  impossible  to  overpraise  Walton's  books,  which  are 
among  the  most  unique  and  agreeable  possessions  of  English  literature, 
but  it  is  possible  to  misprai.se  them,  and  this  has  often  been  done.  It  is 
questionable  whether  he  had  any  literary  art ;  his  charm  is  exactly 
that  of  the  conversation  of  one  of  the  rare  children  who  from  time  to 
time  concentrate  the  charms  of  childhood.  As  he  happened  to  live  in 
the  greatest  of  our  literary  ages ;  as  he  had  no  vanity,  no  bad  taste, 
great  friends,  and  the  luck  to  set  out  what  he  thought  about  them 
and  about  his  favourite  pastime  quite  simply,  he  is  admirable  and 
delectable,  and  stands  by  himself. 

The  brother  of  one  of  his  heroes,  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury,^  is 
as  pretty  and  complete  a  contrast  to  Walton  as  can  well  be  imagined. 
In  Walton,  for  all  his  infantile  grace,  there  is  not  a  touch  of  the  cox- 
comb. Lord  Herbert  is  coxcombry  personified.  He  was  born  early 
enough  (1583)  to  take  a  strong  cast  of  the  Elizabethan  character, 
but  he  displays  only  its  foibles,  or  some  of  them.  His  poems,  which 
are  not  numerous,  display  a  tone  which,  though  never  religious  and 
not  always  moral,  is  still  that  of  his  brother   transposed ;  their   chief 

1  Editions  innumerable. 

2  Autobiography,  ed.  S.  L.  Lee,  London,  1886 ;  Poe7ns,  ed.  J.  C.  Collins, 
London,  1881. 


CHAP.  V  MISCELLANEOUS    PROSE 


457 


interest  is  the  occurrence  in  them  of  the  In  Memoriam  metre,  with 
not  a  few  instances  of  its  well-known  cadence,  and  of  the  mould  of 
phrase  and  thought  which,  like  the  Spenserian,  it  imposes  almost 
automatically  on  poets.  He  wrote  in  Latin  De  Veritate,  Religio 
Laid,  and  other  things  which  have  the  not  covetable  honour  of 
having  founded  English  Deism,  and  are,  at  any  rate,  expressions  of 
the  scepticism  which  in  nobler  contemporaries  produced  magnificent 
work.  His  English  productions  are  a  History  of  Henry  VIII., 
printed  the  year  after  his  death,  which  occurred  in  1648,  and  his 
very  astonishing  and  rather  popular  Autobiography,  which  did  not 
appear  till  Horace  Walpole  printed  it  in  1764.  Herbert  behaved 
very  badly  in  the  Rebellion,  and  his  own  accounts  of  his  personal 
prowess  earlier  are  uncorroborated  by  external  evidence ;  but  he  is 
not  inconsiderable  as  a  man  of  letters.  If  Shakespeare  knew  him, 
which  is  quite  possible,  it  is  a  thousand  pities  that  he  did  not  put 
him  into  a  play.  The  counterfeit  would  have  had,  and  deserved,  all 
the  literary  graces  of  Adriano  de  Armado  and  of  Polonius  in  his 
speeches ;  in  his  actions  he  might  have  supplied  a  dignified  pendant 
to  Parolles. 

James  Harrington,^  a  much  more  agreeable  person,  and  a  better 
though  quainter  writer,  may  fitly  close  this  chapter.  He  was  the 
son  of  a  knight  in  the  county  of  Rutland.  He  was  born  in  161 1, 
and  was  a  member  of  Trinity  College,  Oxford,  came  early  into  a  fair 
fortune,  and  enjoyed  the  advantages  of  travel  and  court  attendance. 
Though  of  republican  principles,  he  sympathetically  attended  Charles  I. 
in  his  captivity,  and  was  with  the  King  to  the  "  memorable  scene " 
itself.  During  the  interregnum  (1656)  he  wrote  Oceana.  At  the 
Restoration  he  was  imprisoned,  but  released,-and  lived  till  1677. 

Harrington  was  undoubtedly  mad  at  certain  times,  and  perhaps 
not  quite  sane  at  any.  But  his  imaginary  Commonwealth,  Oceana,'^ 
makes  the  subject  of  a  very  delightful  though  excessively  odd  book, 
wherein  the  project  for  a  doctrinaire  republic  is  worked  out  with  all 
the  learning,  all  the  quaintness,  and  almost  all  the  splendour  of  these 
mid-seventeenth-century  writers,  and  with  a  profusion  of  fancy  that 
never  comes  very  far  short  of  expression  suitable  to  it.  His  otiier 
works  are  mostly  unimportant. 

1  Not  to*be  confounded  with  the  earlier  Sir  John  Har(r)ington  {1561-1612), 
godson  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  translator  of  Ariosto,  and  author  of  some  serious  litera- 
ture, and  some  curiosities  thereof. 

2  Ed.  H.  Morley,  London,  1887. 


CHAPTER  VI 

SCOTS  POETRY  AND  PROSE 

Reformation  verse  —Alexander  Scott  —  Montgomerie  —  Sir  Robert  Ayton  —  The 
Earl  of  Stirling — Drummond — Prose —  The  Complaint  of  Scotland — Knox 
and  Buchanan —  King  James  —  Sir  Thomas  Urquhart 

Whe.v  we  last  handled  the  special  Scottish  division  of  English  liter- 
ature, it  was  up  to  the  death  of  Sir  David  Lyndsay,  and  not  long 
before  the  birth  of  James  VI.  and  I.  James  had  not  been  long  dead, 
his  son  was  but  just  executed,  when  definitely  Scots  literature  came 
to  an  end  altogether,  or  was  continued,  in  poetry  and  belles  lettres  at 
least,  only  by  a  few  stragglers  like  the  Sempills  of  Beltrees,i  to  the 
time  when  the  older  part  of  it  was  revived  as  a  curiosity  by  Watson 
and  Allan  Ramsay,  and  inspired  some  fresh  attempts.  To  endeavour 
to  account  for  this  is  not  necessary ;  indeed,  all  such  accounts  must 
be  mainly  guesswork.  It  is  enough  to  say  that,  as  in  the  other  case 
of  the  dying  out  of  Anglo-Saxon,  the  most  obvious  explanation  is  by 
no  means  the  safest  or  most  probable.  As  there  would  probably 
have  been  little  more  Anglo-Saxon  literature  if  there  had  been  no 
Conqueror  in  1066,  so  there  would  probably  have  been  little  Scots 
literature  had  there  been  no  Union  of  Crowns  in  1603.  Both  lan- 
guages were  ceasing  to  be  equal  to  the  literary  demands  on  them,  and 
both  ceased  to  produce  literature. 

The  Reformation  struggle  itself  contributed  a  little  to  Scottish 
verse,  but  it  cannot  be  said  to  have  contributed  much  to  Scottish 
poetry.     The   famous   Glide  and   Godlie   Ballates'^  —  perhaps    due   to 

the  Vedderburnes  or  Wedderburns  —  and  the  miscellanies 
Reformation    j„ogt|y   attributed    to    Robert    Sempill    (not    "bne    of    the 

Beltrees  family),  which   have  been  collected  as  Satirical 
Poems  of  the  Refortnation,^  are  very  rarely  of  poetical  value.     Hardly 

1  See  their  Poems,  ed.  Paterson,  Edinburgh,  1849.  There  is,  however,  some 
guesswork  about  the  attributions. 

2  Ed.  Mitchell,  S.T.S.,  Edinburgh,  1897. 

8  Ed.  Cranstoun,  S.T.S.,  2  vols.  Edinburgh,  1891. 

458 


CHAP.  VI  SCOTS   POETRY  AND   PROSE  459 


anything  in  the  former  repeats  the  vigour  and  "  go  "  of  the  celebrated 
"  Hey,  trix  !  trim  go  trix ! "  which  Sir  Walter,  as  far  as  he  could, 
inserted  in  The  Abbot.  The  other  "  Gude  and  Godlie "  pieces  art 
either  pious  but  not  specially  poetical,  or  else  smirched  with  the 
savage  moroseness  which  is  the  disgrace  of  the  Protestant  party. 
This  appears  to  a  far  worse  degree  in  the  "  Satirical  "  poems.  Some 
of  these,  which  have  very  little  to  do  with  the  Reformation,  are  simply 
ballads,  rather  ribald  but  not  unamusing,  yet  hardly  ever  poetical. 
Still,  we  may  congratulate  ourselves  that  the  authors  wrote  them 
rather  than  such  serious  and  decorous  work  as  that  of  John  Rolland,' 
who  is  the  chief  named  poet  between  Lyndsay  and  Scott.'-  Holland, 
of  whom  very  little  is  known,  but  who  seems  to  have  been  a  Dalkeith 
man,  composed  two  poems  of  some  length,  both  on  merely  mediaeval 
and,  or  at  latest,  fifteenth-century  subjects,  and  in  styles  to  match  — 
the  Seiiin  Sages  and  the  Court  of  Venice.  It  is  perhaps  enough  to 
say  that  in  the  latter  he  very  nearly  clears  away  the  shame  of  Eng- 
land when  Lydgate  and  Occleve  are  compared  with  Henryson  and 
Dunbar.  He  certainly  provides  the  very  dullest  and  most  prosaic 
poetry,  if  not  exactly  the  worst  verse,  of  the  entire  school,  whether 
northern  or  southern. 

The  latest  poets  of  distinction  in  the  older  Scots  were,  however, 
found,  a  little  after  these,  in  Alexander  Scott  and  Alexander  Mont- 
gomerie.  Here  also  we  cannot  but  be  struck  by  the  extreme  antiquity 
of  their  forms  as  compared  with  those  of  their  English  contemporaries. 
Scott,  who  was  in  all  probability  still  writing  when  Spenser  began, 
is  almost  indistinguishable  except  philologically,  if  even  so,  from 
Dunbar  ;  The  Cherry  and  the  S/ae,  Montgomerie's  great  work,  is  in 
the  exact  allegorical  tone  of  the  fifteenth  and  even  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  thougli  its  author  does  not  seem  to  have  died  much  before 
Shakespeare. 

Scott,  however,  redeems  the  poetical  fame  of  the  reign  of  Queen 
Mary.     We   know   really   nothing   about    him.     We     can   even    date 
only   two   of    his   poems, ^   the     Lament   of  the   Master  of  Erskine, 
who   was   killed   at    Pinkie,    and  the   Welcome    to  Queen 
Mary  in  1562.     He  seems  to  have  been   unlucky  in    his        Scott." 
married   life,   and   if  he   is    the   "old     Scott"    to    whom 
Montgomery   refers,    he    was    apparently    no   more    successful    than 
most   poets   in  acquiring  a  fortune.     But  all    this,  except    the  dates, 
comes  to  reallv  nothing.     From   him,  or  attributed  to  him,  we  have 

"^  Sciitn  .'i<7_!res,  Ballantyne  Club,  1837;  Cour/  of  Venus,  ed.  Gregor,  S.T.S., 
Edinburgh,  1884. 

2  The  Court  of  Venus,  not  printed  till  1575,  seems  to  have  been  written  before 
1560. 

8  Ed.  Cranstoun,  S.T.S.,  Edinburgh,  1896. 


46o  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 

just  three  dozen  pieces,  none  of  them  long.  Most  are  love-poems, 
the  rest  complimentary,  satirical,  or  occasional  in  one  way  or  another, 
with  one  or  two  sacred  —  in  fact  the  usual  tarrago  of  the  poets  of  his 
time.  Scott  has  no  one  favourite  metre ;  he  will  write  in  octaves  with 
abundance  of  "aureate"  terms— "genetrice,"  "celsitude,"  and  the 
like  —  as  in  the  address  to  Queen  Mary  ;  in  the  popular  Chrisfs  Kirk 
on  the  Green  metre,  as  in  the  "jousting  and  debate  between  Adam- 
son  and  Sym";  and  in  many  other  metres,  mostly  lyrical,  and  all 
managed  with  skill.  He  is  not  free  from  the  excessive  coarseness  in 
phraseology  which  has  already  been  noted,  and,  unlike  Lyndsay,  he 
does  not  accompany  looseness  of  speech  with  any  great  preciseness 
in  moral  teaching.  But  he  is  a  really  agreeable  poet  of  love  in  his 
way,  playful,  musical,  and  in  the  poem  which  bears  the  epigraph, 
'•When  his  Wife  left  Him,"  really  pathetic,  with  a  not  unmanly 
revulsion  later  to  the  indignant  resolve  to  "  choose  ane  other  and 
forget  her,"  instead  of  continuing  "  to  break  mine  heart  and  not  the 
better,"  the  last  phrase  forming,  with  slight  changes,  the  refrain  of  the 
poem. 

Alexander  Montgomerie  ^  is  a  much  more  tangible  person,  and  a 
rather  more  considerable  poet  than  Scott ;  yet  even  about  him  our 
personal  information  is  by  no  means  abundant.  He  is  said  to  have 
.  been  born  at  Hazelhead  Castle  in  Ayrshire,  not  later 
on  gomerie.  ^j^^^  1550,  and  to  have  belonged  to  a  junior  branch  of 
the  Eglinton  family.  Another  tradition  identifies  the  scene  of  The 
Cherry  and  the  Slae  w'ith  the  junction  of  the  Tarff  and  the  Dee  just 
above  Kirkcudbright.  He  was  in  the  service  of  the  Regent  Morton, 
and  then  in  the  King's  about  1578.  being  called  "Captain,"  with 
exactly  what  right  is  not  known.  James  received  sonnets  from  him, 
and  quotes  him  in  his  Reivlis  and  Cautelis  (vide  post),  but  it  does  not 
appear  that  he  ever  did  much  for  him,  except  giving  him  500  merks 
a  year,  chargeable  on  the  Archbishopric  of  Glasgow.  He  mentions 
many  persons,  some  known,  some  unknown,  as  his  friends.  He  got 
into  some  not  clearly  defined  trouble,  was  dismissed  from  court,  and 
lost  his  pension,  but  had  it  restored  or  confirmed  by  legal  process  in 
1588,  and  we  know  that  he  was  dead  in  161 5. 

His  works  consist  of  one  long  and  (at  least  by  name)  tolerably 
well-known  poem,  The  Cherry  and  the  Slae,  a  "  Flyting "  of  the  old 
kind  with  Hume  of  Polwarth,  seventy  sonnets,  about  as  many  more 
short  miscellaneous  poems,  mostly  secular,  about  half  a  score  devo- 
tional pieces,  and  not  quite  a  score  versions  of  psalms  and  canticles. 

The  Cherry  and  the  Slae  is  allegorical,  though  there  is  not  uni- 
versal consent  as  to  what  the  allegory  is.     It  turns  at  any  rate  on  the 

lEd.  Cranstoun,  S.T.S.,  Edinburgh,  1887, 


CHAP.  VI  SCOTS   POETRY   AND    PROSE  461 

contrast  between  the  cherry  growing  aloft  and  afar,  the  sloe  beneath 
and  at  hand,  the  cherry  sweet  and  precious,  the  sloe  bitter  and  despised. 
A  highborn  love  and  a  lowly  one,  virtue  and  vice,  have  been  sug- 
gested, to  which  one  might  obviously  add  success  and  failure,  learning 
and  an  idle  life,  and  a  hundred  other  pairs.  The  metre  is  peculiar, 
and  became  extremely  popular  in  Scotland,  so  that  it  is  better  known 
by  imitations  than  in  the  original,  and  may  possibly  have  been  com- 
bined by  Montgomerie  himself,  though,  as  we  have  seen,  northern 
poets  in  the  alliteration +  metre-and-rhyme  stage  had  been  extremely 
curious  in  their  complicated  arrangements.  It  is  a  quatorzain  made 
up  of  the  common  sixain  of  886886,  rhymed  aabaab,  than  a  quatrain, 
8686,  rhymed  cdcd,  and  then  another  quatrain  of  sixes,  rhymed 
ef^  internally  in  the  odd  lines,  and  simply  at  the  end  in  the  even. 
Except  that  the  complete  separation  of  the  rhymes  of  these  three 
subdivisions  rather  interferes  with  the  unity  of  the  whole,  it  is  a  very 
artful  and  agreeable  device.  There  are  114  such  stanzas  in  the 
piece,  making  nearly  1600  lines,  and  Cupid,  Hope,  Experience, 
Reason,  Will.  Danger,  and  other  old  friends,  from  the  days  of  the 
Rose  downwards,  take  part  in  the  conversation.  But  to  modern 
readers  the  pleasant  opening  description  (again  the  old  Rose  descrip- 
tion, but  agreeably  varied),  the  more  original  picture  of  the  cherry- 
crowned  crag  and  the  effort  to  scale  it,  some  well-expressed  saws  of 
mother  wit,  and  a  fine  final  stanza  of  praise,  supply  its  attractions. 
The  Flyting.  alliterative,  and  of  course  foul-mouthed,  is  merely  a 
curiosity.  The  sonnets,  though  not  without  a  certain  stiffness  which 
we  find  in  all  the  early  attempts  at  that  form  in  our  language,  have 
stateliness  and  even  positive  beauty,  especially  those  to  his  mistress, 
who  has  been  identified  with  his  kinswoman.  Lady  Margaret  Mont- 
gomerie. Many  of  his  miscellaneous  poems  are  to  the  same  or  other 
loves,  though  we  have  among  them  a  burlesque  Navigation,  and 
some  strictly  miscellaneous  matter.  It  is  perhaps  on  these  that 
Montgomerie's  claims  may  be  most  surely  based,  for  he  shows  in  them 
more  variety,  as  well  as  more  strength,  than  Scott  does.  There  is  a 
quite  fresh  note  in  a  piece  which  begins  on  an  old  string  — 

Hay !  now  the  day  dawis. 

The  transition  is  curiously  sharp  to  Sir  Robert  Ayton,  who  was 
more  than  a  child  at  the  probable  date  of  the  death  of  Scott,  and  a 
man  far  advanced  in  middle  life  before  that  of  Montgomerie.     He 
was  a  cadet  of  the  family  of  Ayton  of  Kinaldie  in   Fife, 
and  took  his  degree   (having  been  born  in  1570)  at  St.      'Aytm" 
Andrews   in    1588.     He  travelled,  but  after   the  accession 
of  James  to  the   Englisli    throne   came  to  court,  was  knighted,  and 


462  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vil 

became  private  secretary  to  Anne  of  Denmark,  a  position  which  he 
afterwards  filled  in  the  household  of  Henrietta  Maria.  He  had 
diplomatic  employments  abroad,  and  at  home  was  familiar  with  all 
the  English  wits  from  Ben  Jonson  downward.  He  died  in  1638, 
and  is  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey.  He  wrote  in  a  good  many 
languages,  but  the  important  thing  for  us  is  that  his  English  poems 
do  not  atfect  the  slightest  Scots  dialect.  The  most  famous  of  them 
is  the  universally  known 

I  do  confess  thou'rt  smooth  and  fair; 

while  he  has  claims,  inferior  to  those  of  Sempill,  on  the  authorship  of 
the  original  oi  Atdd  Lang  Syne. 

The  tendency  which  Ayton  ^  thus  shows  to  abandon  the  Scots 
altogether  —  a  tendency  which  may  be  partly  accounted  for  by  the 
wish  to  get  rid  of  the  associated  traditions  of  alliteration  and 
allegory,  partly  by  the  temptations  of  a  wider  audience  in  Southern 
English  —  is  shown  much  more  strikingly,  and  in  greater  bulk  and 
variety  of  illustration,  by  two  poets  who  are  usually  linked,  William 
Alexander,  Earl  of  Stirling,  and  William  Drummond  of  Hawthornden, 
to  whom  the  great  Marquis  of  Montrose  may  be  added. 

The  first  named  '^  was  born  at  Menstrie,  near  Alloa,  at  a  date  not 

precisely  ascertained  —  it  used  to  be  put  at  about  1580,  but  some  hold 

that  to  be  about  a  dozen  years  too  late.     He  was  well  educated,  and 

travelled  with  the  seventh  Earl  of  Argyll,  to  whose  house 

stirlfng.°  his  family  seems  to  have  been  for  some  time  attached. 
And  he  published  most  of  his  work,  the  sonnets  called 
Aurora  and  the  curious  Monarchical  Tragedies  of  Crcesits,  Darius, 
Alexander,  and  Julius  Ccesar,  so  early  that  they  were  all  done 
by  1607.  He  was  knighted,  became  a  member  of  the  house- 
hold, first  of  Prince  Henry  and  then  of  Prince  Charles,  had  employ- 
ment in  Scotland,  and  in  1614  began  a  poem  on  Doomsday,  which 
he  afterwards  continued  on  a  scale  suitable  to  the  subject.  In  162 1 
he  was  grantee  of  the  whole  of  Nova  Scotia,  in  1626  Secretary  for 
Scotland,  and  in  1633  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as  Viscount  Stirling, 
the  earldom  being  afterwards  bestowed  upon  him.  He  died  in 
London  in  1640. 

Lord  Stirling  is  a  distinct  Elizabethan.  His  strange  monarchic 
tragedies  were  probably  suggested  by  Fulke  Greville,  and  their 
choruses  and  dedications  contain  much  stately  work.  The  Exhorta- 
tion to  Pri?ice  Henry,  which  some  have  called  his  best  thing,  belongs 
to  the  same  class  as  much  of  the  work  of  Drayton,  Daniel,  and 
Chapman,  from  which  Doomsday  and  the  less  portentous  Jonathan 

1  Ed.  Rogers,  London,  1871. 

2  Part  in  Chalmers  :  complete,  3  vols.  Glasgow,  1870, 


CHAP.  VI  SCOTS   POETRY  AND   PROSE  463 

are  also  not  far.  The  Aurora  collection  of  sonnets,  songs,  sestines, 
elegies,  etc.,  in  the  same  way  resembles  many  pieces  of  the  lyric 
yield  of  the  last  decade  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  was  but  a  few 
years  later  in  publication  (1604).  The  unfortunate  thing  for  the  poet  is 
that  he  comes  extremely  late,  and  that  his  by  no  means  inconsiderable 
beauties  are  scattered  over  such  an  enormous  mass  of  work  as  to  be 
discerned  and  enjoyed  only  by  an  effort  even  more  considerable. 

In  this  as  in  other  respects  Drummond  of  Hawthornden  ^  had  the 
advantage  over  his  friend.  He  was  born  at  the  much  visited  and 
beautiful  seat  of  his  family,  on  13th  December,  1585,  was  educated  at 
the  High  School  and    University  of   Edinburgh,    studied 

iii-ri  •  n  TT       Urummond. 

also  in  France,  and  succeeded  his  lather  m  loio.  hie 
lived  for  forty  years  after  this,  chiefly  at  his  own  home,  marrying 
twice,  but  losing  his  first  wife  after  a  year,  and  remaining  eighteen 
years  a  widower;  entertaining  Ben  Jonson  (v.  supra),  enjoying  the 
friendship  of  most  distinguished  persons  in  Scotland  and  many  in 
England.  His  death  in  1649  is  said  to  have  been  hastened  by  grief 
for  Charles  I-,  but  he  had  submitted  (unwillingly,  it  is  true)  to  the 
Covenant.  His  notes  of  Ben  Jonson's  conversations  have  brought 
some  obloquy  on  him,  but  the  defence  that  he  himself  seems  never  to 
have  intended  them  for  publication  has  validity,  and  at  the  worst 
they  are  rather  indiscreet  than  malevolent.  Drummond  was  a  very 
considerable  man  of  letters,  and  perhaps  the  best-known  Scottish 
poet  between  Dunbar  and  Burns.  He  began  with  elegiac  verses  on 
Prince  Henry  in  161 3,  and  altogether  left  a  good  deal,  the  chief 
items  being  Forth  Feasting,  a  complimentary  address  to  James  in 
161 7  on  his  return  to  Scotland;  an  amusing  but  not  quite  certainly 
genuine  macaronic  poem  called  Polevw-Middinia ;  a  prose  tract 
entitled  the  Cypress  Grove,  which  is  a  fine  piece  of  musical  and 
melancholy  Jacobean  prose;  and  a  great  number  of  miscellaneous 
poems,  sacred  and  profane,  sonnets,  madrigals,  and  epigrams,  trans- 
lations, elegies,  hymns;  and,  in  short,  all  the  miscellanea  of  the 
Caroline  muse. 

The  extreme  beauty  occasionally  recognisable  in  Drummond's 
verse  is  marred  first  by  a  certain  tone  of  the  literary  exercise,  by  a 
suggestion,  at  least  as  strong  as  in  the  case  of  his  friend  Alexander, 
that  he  would  not  have  written  if  he  had  not  had  the  great 
body  of  Elizabethan  and  other  poetry  before  him;  and  secondly 
(though,  indeed,  this  is  only  the  same  fault  in  another  form)  by  a 
distinct  deficiency  in  spontaneity,  ease,  and  flow.  Yet  he  is  a  very 
charming  poet,  especially  in  his  madrigals  and  some  of  his  sonnets, 
possessed  of  an  elaborate  courtly  grace  that  does  not  exclude  passion, 

lAlso  not  quite  completely  in  Chalmers.  Sep.nrately  by  CunninKham  and 
Turnbull,  and  in  "  The  Muses"  Library."     Life  by  Professor  Masson,  1873. 


464  CAROLINE  LITERATURE  book  vii 

and  though  never  reaching  the  consummate  expression  of  the  best  of 
his  English  contemporaries,  yet  very  little  behind  them. 

The  verses  which  have  made  the  special  fame  of  Montrose  are  so 
few  that  they  need  but  mention ;  so  delightful  that  mention  of  them 
could  not  possibly  be  avoided.  "Great,  good,  and  just"  and  "He 
either  fears  his  fate  too  much "  have  secured  their  place  and  are 
never  likely  to  be  put  out  of  it.  They  are  contained  in  a  hundred 
anthologies,  but  may  be  best  sought  in  Dr.  Hannah's  admirable 
collection  of  Courtly  Poets^  which,  beyond  its  special  purpose,  serves 
as  a  thesaurus  of  much  occasional  work  of  the  best  kind  during  the 
period  covered  by  this  and  the  two  preceding  Books,  including  the 
whole  of  the  probable  poetical  work,  strangely  beautiful  at  times,  of 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  the  graceful  and  interesting  copies  of  verses 
which  we  owe  to  Wotton,  and  many  pleasing  things  by  Wyatt  and 
Vaux,  Oxford  and  Essex,  Tichborne  and  Southwell,  Dyer  and  Sandys. 
We  have  previously  considered  the  reasons  of  the  lateness  of 
Scottish  poetry,  and  incidentally  those  of  the  still  greater  lateness  of 
Scottish  prose.     But  no  reasons,  however  reasonable,  will  ever  entirely 

remove  surprise  that   The  Complaint  of  Scotland  (1549), 

which  dates  from  the  very  eve  of  the  middle  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  should  be  up  to  the  present  time,  and  should 
have  every  chance  of  continuing  to  be,  the  earliest  known  original  ^ 
work  of  any  importance  in  the  kind.  It  is  not  a  fresh  surprise 
(on  the  contrary,  the  opposite  would  be  one)  that  its  style  is  as 
antique  as  its  date  is  belated.  It  is  not  merely  that  the  "  aureate " 
term,  the  rhetoriqtieiir  language,  of  the  fifteenth  century  pervades 
and  saturates  it,  but  that  the  general  scheme  is  scarcely  more 
modern  than  —  is  scarcely  so  modern  as  —  that  of  Chaucer's  Boethins, 
more  than  a  century  and  a  half  earlier.  This  curious  mixture  of 
archaism  and  pedantry  continued  to  distinguish  Scots  prose  until  it 
ceased,  as  a  characteristic  and  national  language,  to  be  written ;  and 
as  Professor  Ker  has  well  observed  on  this  very  subject,  we  see  it  at 
least   as   late   as    Sir  Thomas  Urquhart,  who  has  it  supremely.     The 

Coviplaint  itself,  in  substance  and  scheme  a  violent 
^f^ifoT^w"^  "^i^t^be  against  England  (not  surprising,  inasmuch  as  it 

was  written  just  after  Pinkie),  is  treated  like  a  prose 
Romance  of  the  Rose  so  far  as  the  tendency  of  the  author  to  digress, 
divagate,  and    make    excursions    in    every    possible    direction  is  con- 

1  In  the  "  Aldine  Poets,"  London  ;  constantly  reprinted. 

2  There  had  been,  of  course,  translations,  but  even  these  are  not  very  early. 
Bellenden,  in  the  early  sixteenth  century,  was  the  first  important  and  consider- 
able translator  into  Scots.  The  standard  edition  of  the  Complaint  is  that  of  Dr. 
Murray,  E.E.T.S.,  1872-73.  It  includes  some  slightly  earlier  tracts.  John  Gau's 
Right  Way  to  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  (ed.  Mitchell,  S.T.S.,  Edinburgh,  1887) 
was  translated  and  adapted  from  the  Danish  as  early  as  1533. 


CHAP.  VI  SCOTS   POETRY   AND   PROSE  465 


cerned.      The  book  is    not  solely  a  literary  curiosity,  but  it  is  very 
mainly  so. 

The  Complaint  is  anonymous,^  and  therefore  borrows  no  interest 
from   known    or   supposed   authorship.      The  same  cannot,  perhaps, 
quite  be  said  of  the  English  writings  of  the  two  most  famous  of  the 
author's      countrymen    and    contemporaries,    John    Knox 
and  George  Buchanan.'^     The  piquant  title  of  the  former's     Buchanan, 
principal    early   work,    The  First  Blast   of  the    Trumpet 
against  the  iMoHstroiis  Regiment  of  IVotnen,  1558,  is  the  best  part  of 
it ;   the  History  of  the  Reformation  has  something  of  the  quaintness 
but  little    of  the  attraction   of  its    time ;    his   tracts   and  letters  have 
small   literary   interest.       In   fact,    Knox    was  only  in  a  very  minor 
degree  a   man   of  letters   at    all.     He    was    simply    an   ecclesiastical 
politician,   using   the   press,    which   had   become   already  one  of  the 
most  powerful    of  political    engines.      His    English  writing   is  clear, 
vigorous,  and  not  incorrect ;  but  it  aims  at  nothing  more. 

Buchanan,  on  the  contrary,  was  a  man  of  letters  first  of  all, 
though  he  made  a  figure  in  politics.  But  his  literary  work  was,  in 
its  greatest  and  by  far  its  best  part,  written  in  a  dead  language.  As 
we  have  seen,  his  own  country,  for  fifty  years  and  more  after  he  was 
born,  in  1506,  had  little  or  no  prose  literature,  and  her  poetry  was 
dropping  off.  He  himself  was  more  a  Frenchman  than  a  Scot  by 
domicile  for  the  greater  part  of  his  life,  seeing  that,  from  the  time  when 
as  a  young  man  he  left  St.  Andrews  till  long  past  his  fiftieth  year,  he, 
save  for  one  short  interval,  was  resident  in  France.  His  occupation 
was  mainly  pedagogic.  Montaigne  was  under  him  at  Bordeaux, 
and  he  wrote  Latin  plays  and  poems  of  real,  though,  even  when 
every  allowance  is  made,  rather  exaggerated,  merit.  His  work  in  the 
vernacular  is  very  small,  and  consists  of  political  pamphlets,  the  chief 
of  which  is  the  savage  but  ingenious  Chamcsleon,  directed  with  a 
certain  amount  of  reason  against  Maitland  of  Lethington.  Buchanan 
is  less  "  aureate "  than  the  author  of  the  Complaint,  a  little  more 
florid  than  Knox,  and  on  the  whole,  as  indeed  we  should  expect, 
holds  the  position  of  something  like  a  Scottish  Ascham  in  style, 
though  with  a  stiffness  and  tendency  to  pedantry  which  may  justly  be 
charged,  not  merely  upon  his  own  more  pedantic  temperament,  but  on 
the  infinitely  less  advanced  condition  of  Scots  as  a  literary  language 
when  compared  with  English. 

The  polemic  temper   and   purpose  of  these  men   reflects  itself  in 

1  It  has  been  attributed,  like  the  Cude  and  Godlie  Ballates,  to  the  Dundee 
Wedderburns. 

2  Mr.  Arber  has  given  The  First  lilast  in  the  "English  Scholar's  Library," 
London,  1878.  The  best  edition  of  Knox's  Works  is  that  of  Laing.  6  vols. 
Kdinburgh.  1846,  sq.  The  Enfjlish  opiiscula  of  Buchanan  have  been  edited  by 
1'.  Hume  Brown,  S.T.S.,  Edinburgh,  1892. 

2  H 


466  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vn 

most  of  their  contemporaries  and  successors,  and  the  wide  spread  of 
it  may  indeed  be  fairly  charged  in  part  with  the  sterility  of  Scots  in 
literature  proper.  Ninian  Winzet,  the  chief  pamphleteer  on  the 
Roman  side,  is  early,  was  a  learned  and  ingenious  writer,  and  con- 
trasts very  favourably  with  his  opponent  Knox  in  tone  and  temper; 
but  still  he  is  no  great  man  of  letters,  nor  are  the  Melvilles  (Sir 
James,  1535-1607;  Andrew,  1545-1622;  James,  1556-1614),  Spottis- 
woode,  Baillie,  and  others  later,  such.  They  are  interesting  by  their 
matter  and  by  the  racy  quaintness  which  hardly  failed  any  one  then. 
The  Reivlis  and  Cautelis  ^  of  King  James  have  been 
ing  James,  ^^^^^^y  i-eferred  to,  and  are  a  not  unimportant  document 
in  the  history  of  English  criticism ;  the  Counterblast  to  Tobacco,  the 
Basilikon  Doron,  and  the  Detnonology  are  known,  at  least  by  their 
titles,  to  all,  and  there  is  a  very  large  residue  of  chiefly  theological 
work.  But  he  is  only  a  good  plain  writer,  not  equal  to  his  own 
recorded  powers  in  conversation,  or  those  lent  him  by  the  greatest 
man  of  letters  of  the  nation  that  he  first  ruled.  Still,  Scots  prose 
was  to  produce  one  last  delightful  example,  concentrating,  heightening, 
embellishing,  and  preserving  for  ever  all  its  own  most  racy  character- 
istics, in  Sir  Thomas  Urquhart,'^  Knight  of  Cromarty,  and, 
Urmjhart^^  in  far  other  sense  than  most  of  us,  a  descendant  in  lineal 
and  specified  genealogy  from  Adam.  He  was  born  in 
1605,  took  a  strong  part  on  the  Royalist  side,  shared  in  the  "  Trot  of 
Turriff,"  was  knighted  in  1641,  fought  at  Worcester,  and  died  just  at 
the  moment  of  the  Restoration.  His  known  work  consists  of  a  trans- 
lation of  Rabelais  and  of  several  most  singular  tractates  on  mathe- 
matics, linguistics,  and  what  not,  with  wonderful  Greek  compound  titles, 
and  written  in  a  language  which  is  Eiip/ines  and  Sir  Thomas  Browne 
rolled  into  one,  and  extra-illustrated  by  national  and  personal 
peculiarities.  It  is  impossible  to  read  Urquhart  without  conceiving 
a  strong  liking  for  the  man  and  a  great  admiration  for  his  literary 
powers ;  but  it  must  be  admitted  that  it  was  well  he  left  no 
school. 

lEd.  Arber,  with  Gascoigne's  Steel  Glass,  etc.  Not  much  else  has  been 
recently  reprinted. 

2  There  is,  unluckily,  no  complete  edition  of  Urquhart.  The  Rabelais  has 
been  often  reprinted;  the  Maitland  Club  collected  his  quaint  treatises,  Trisso- 
tetras,  Logopandccteision,  etc. ;  but  there  is  said  to  be  other  unprlnted  matter.  In 
fuller  space  the  historian  Pitscottie,  the  collectors  Maitland  and  Bannatyne  (more 
precious  to  literature  than  many  men  of  letters),  Scot  of  Scotstarvet,  Mure  of 
Rowallan,  Alexander  Hume,  and  Robert  Ker,  Earl  of  Ancrum  (known  by  one 
fine  sonnet),  could  claim  notice,  and  even  here  they  claim  mention. 


INTERCHAPTER   VII 

The  present  Interchapter  must  be  so  contrived  as  to  pay  a  double 
debt,  and  to  summarise  not  merely  the  Caroline  sub-period  but  the 
entire  literary  age  which  is  still,  and  justly,  called  Elizabethan  by 
those  who  are  not  studious  of  innovation  for  innovation's  sake. 

In  the  first  respect  our  recapitulation  in  the  three  kinds  should 
have  been  made  unusually  easy  by  the  chapters  which  have  gone 
before.  In  all  three  the  mark,  if  not  of  decadence  —  that  is  a  dangerous 
word  —  yet  of  completion  of  phase,  is  very  distinct.  There  is  not  a  touch 
of  it,  save  for  the  most  unessential  things,  in  Milton ;  but  then  Milton  is 
one  of  those  examples  which  come,  fortunately,  from  time  to  time,  to 
prove  the  folly  of  any  strict  "  evolution  "  theory  in  letters,  and  the  superi- 
ority of  a  theory  of  revolution  tempered  by  permanence.  He  dwells 
apart ;  but  the  rest,  whether  poets,  prose-writers,  or  dramatists,  tell  of 
the  future  as  much  by  their  excellences  as  by  their  shortcomings. 
For  delight  Caroline  poetry,  in  the  characteristic  form  of  it,  has  few 
superiors ;  but  no  one  who  keeps  his  critical  head  can  say  that  its 
charms  have  not  a  touch  of  the  morbid.  They  consist  in  extreme 
strangeness,  in  quintessenced  and  preternatural  art,  rather  than  in  the 
direct  and  simple  appeal  in  transcendence  to  nature.  We  would  not 
lose  them  for  anything;  but  we  feel  that  they  are  something  of  the 
kind  of  Ninon  de.Lenclos,  their  contemporar)',  who  fascinated  the 
grandsons  of  her  first  admirers.  And  then,  side  by  side  with  them, 
there  is  the  phenomenon,  never  known  except  ii}  periods  of  eclipse, 
of  a  quite  different  school  growing  and  flourishing.  In  these  things 
there  is  no  possibility  of  mistake.  The  fear  or  hope  of  change  is 
hardly  even  perplexing,  it  is  so  clear. 

The  same  signs  present  themselves  in  drama,  but  more  unmis- 
takably still,  and  with  far  less  of  compensation.  Once  more,  we 
would  not  lose  the  best  plays  written  after  the  accession  of  Charles  I., 
but  the  loss  would  by  no  means  be  the  occasion  of  such  grief 
as  we  should  feel  if  we  had  known  and  were  suddenly,  by  some 
malignant  power,  forced  to  forget,  except  in  vague  recall  of  their 
charm,    Herrick   and   Marvell,    Crashaw   and    Carew.      In    this    kind 

467 


468  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book 

the  sudden  flight  compensates  less;  and  here  —  as  not  in  poetry  —  we 
look  in  vain  for  any  promise  of  a  new  style  to  take  the  place  of  that 
which  is  failing.  Jonson  and  Chapman  and  Dekker  belong  to  a  far 
earlier  time ;  Massinger  and  Ford  and  Shirley,  despite  the  ambition 
of  the  second  and  the  industrious  talent  of  the  other  two,  leave  us 
partly  cold ;  and  there  are  no  others  that  rise  beyond  a  very  moderate 
second  class.  Above  all,  the  inability  to  raise  any  new  form  in 
drama,  and  the  quite  shocking  laxity  of  the  verse  in  which  most  of  what 
is  written  shows  itself,  reconcile  us  to  closing  the  chapter.  When  a 
man  of  undoubted  talent  like  Davenant  succumbs  in  this  way  there  is 
clearly  something  wrong;  but  when  a  man  who  is  at  least  parcel- 
genius  like  Suckling,  who  can  write  other  verse  quite  excellently, 
follows  suit,  then  no  further  doubt  is  possible :  it  is  time  for  this 
kind  of  drama  to  go. 

The  phenomena  of  prose  are  not  entirely  different,  but  show  them- 
selves in  a  different  and  much  more  satisfactory  way.  Here  also  we 
see  that  there  is  a  necessity,  if  only  a  temporary  necessity,  for  a 
change.  Prose  —  "the  instrument  of  the  average  purpose"  —  has  got 
very  ill  fitted  indeed  for  any  such  thing.  It  has  become,  save  in  the 
hands  of  Hobbes,  nearly  incapable  of  directness,  of  plain  business- 
like treatment.  The  protest  which,  as  we  shall  see,  was  made  in  the 
beginning  of  the  new  period  by  Sprat  was  justified  absolutely  so  far  as 
the  mere  business  requirements  of  the  matter  went,  and  was  not 
entirely  without  justification  even  from  the  point  of  view  of  belles 
lettres.  A  general  theory  of  style  which  could  allow  even  Milton 
constantly  to  spoil  his  sentence,  and  which  could  not  shepherd  even 
Clarendon  from  wandering  inextricably  into  a  cul-de-sac  at  every 
few  pages,  obviously  required  at  least  the  provision  of  something 
alternative  if  not  an  utter  reformation. 

Yet  here  the  actual  condition  of  things  provided  condolences  and 
vails  of  such  magnificent  quality  that  those  are  almost  to  be  excused 
who  would  have  had  no  reform  at  all.  An  English  literature  without 
Sir  Thomas  Browne  is  a  thing  so  impoverished  as  to  be  appalling  to 
think  of,  and  the  loss  of  Taylor  and  Milton  in  his  prose,  of  Fuller  and 
the  not  yet  mentioned  Glanville,  and  of  not  a  few  minors,  would  still 
be  a  hideous  deprivation.  Even  these  minors,  and  still  more  the 
eccentricities  of  the  Urquhart  type,  have  an  engagingness  which  we 
look  for  in  vain  from  Dryden  to  Southey ;  while  the  great  men  of  the 
time  are  simply  unmatchable  in  any  language.  The  close  of  the 
Apology  itself  is  a  very  little,  though  only  a  very  little,  inferior  to 
the  close  of  the  Hydriotaphia. 

Nor  must  we  forget  that  this  incomparable  descant  is  the  Ite 
7nissa  est  of  something  more  than  Caroline  prose  or  Caroline  litera- 
ture —  it    is    that    of    the   whole    great    Elizabethan    period.      That 


VII  INTERCHAPTER   VII  469 

period  from  beginning  to  end  covered  just  eighty  years  —  an  ordinary 
lifetime ;  indeed,  Hobbes  was  born  less  than  ten  years  after  its 
beginning  and  outlived  its  close  by  nearly  twenty.  Yet  into  this 
ordinary  lifetime  it  had  compressed  the  literary  events  of  a  dozen 
ordinary  generations.  It  had  found  English  literature  with  scarcely 
more  than  one  name  which  could  pretend  to  the  first  class,  with 
very  few  of  the  second,  with  but  a  scanty  battalion  of  distinguished 
known  writers,  with  a  body  of  work,  anonymous  and  assigned,  which 
in  its  more  notable  examples  would  fill  but  a  very  small  bookcase, 
with  the  list  of  styles  and  kinds  either  full  of  blanks  or  completed 
only  by  experiments  and  rough  sketches,  the  great  department  of 
drama  having  nothing  to  show  but  these.  It  left  a  mighty  library 
full  of  masterpieces,  with  the  figures  of  Spenser  and  Shakespeare 
among  dead,  and  those  of  Milton  and  Browne  among  living,  men, 
showing  as  but  the  captains  of  scores  and  hundreds  of  poets  and 
prose-writers  and  dramatists  of  almost  every  kind.  Not  one  single 
department  of  literature  except  the  prose  novel  was  now  in  a  rucfi- 
mentary  condition,  and  no  language  was  in  this  respect  better  oft" 
than  our  own.  In  not  a  single  kind  were  we  now  unfurnished  with 
champions  whom  we  could  oppose  to  the  greatest  of  any  literature, 
ancient  or  modern. 

This  vast  overrunning  of  the  literary  territory,  this  tumultuous 
peopling  of  the  literary  solitudes,  is,  no  doubt,  the  chief  general 
phenomenon  of  the  time,  and  its  minor  phenomena  should  have  been 
almost  sufficiently  indicated  in  the  divisional  summaries  and  the  text 
which  supports  them.  In  all  departments  we  can  indeed  observe 
(taking  care  not  to  make  the  generalisations  too  strict)  a  cliaracter  of 
mgre  or_j^ess  playful  exuberance  in  the  strictly  Elizabethan  part,  of 
recollection  and  sober  weiglvfy^TlToiiglit  Tir~"tTTe"" Jacobean,  and  a 
ftnther^tage  either  of  sheer  extravagance,  ot  melancholy  mysticism, 
or~~nf~rjuTntessenced,  artificial,  verysttgl^tfy-  fiivuloUs^  grace  in  the 
Caroline ;  bllt  these  notes  must  not  be  forced.  We  can  see  the 
vast  jpipnrtannp-  gfjJie.  period  in  prosody,  with  Spensei^  reshaDin!|,  and 


to  iifTfjt  c\tpnt  fivin^j^poetic  dictionand  its  sound  value  ;  with  Sjjake- 
T^peare  and  the  dramatists  loosening  and  suppling  versification  toTiie 
utmost  possible  extynt ;  AlUl  With  Mil  tun  nil  JTio;  !Ttcle  and^t+ie  early 
coupK'tpTrs  on  tlic  other  pi-evpntin,(r  it  Irom    hprrirnin.cr  simj^ly  l^^w-jpss. 


We  see  the  P2uphuist  protest  against"want  of  colour  in  prose,  at  first 
merely  fantastic  and  bizarre,  losing  little  of  its  fantasy,  but  acquiring 
gi;avity,  harmony,  weight,  in  Jacobean  hands,  and  at  last  giving  us 
theilnsurpassable  majesty  and  sweetness  at  once  of  the  great  prose- 
writers  of  the  middle  of  the  centoiy.  The  essay  makes  its  appear- 
ance, and  spreads  itself  subtly,  and  under  all  manner  of  disguises,  in 
many   directions.      Lyric    poetry   of    the   true    song-kind    attains    a 


470  CAROLINE   LITERATURE  book  vii 


luxuriance  and  a  charm  never  before  and  seldom  since  attained. 
The  sermon  becomes  one  not  merely  of  the  great  instruments  of 
religion,  but  of  the  great  achievements  of  literature ;  the  masque,  a 
graceful  if  artificial  and  short-lived  kind,  comes  into  bloom.  History 
and  philosophy,  cultivated  sparingly  before,  receive  consummate  treat- 
ment at  the  hands  of  Hobbes  and  Clarendon.  Above  all,  the  drama, 
so  long  postponed,  finds,  in  the  course  of  a  few  years,  expression  in 
almost  every  possible  variety,  and,  though  it  still  has  a  sort  of  after- 
piece or  set  of  afterpieces  to  present  in  Restoration  comedy  and  the 
heroic  drama,  runs  nearly  its  full  course. 

If  in  such  an  abundance,  such  a  riot  almost,  the  principles  of 
measure,  of  order,  of  limit,  are  not  always  sufficiently  attended  to,  there 
can  be  little  wonder.  They  could  be,  for  a  time  at  least,  very  willingly 
spared;  they  would  almost  certainly  have  deprived  us  of  more  than 
they  could  have  given ;  and  those  who  regard  them  with  special 
affection  will  not  find  reason  to  complain  of  their  too  sparing  presence 
for  something  like  150  years,  which  now  lie  before  us  in  the  periods  of 
the  two  following  Books. 


BOOK   VIII 

THE   AUGUSTAN  AGES 
CHAPTER   I 

THE  AGE  OF  DRYDEN  —  POETRY 

The  term  "Augustan  " — Its  use  here — Dryden  —  His  life  —  His  earlier  poems  — 
The  satires,  etc. — The  Fables  —  His  verse  —  Butler— Restoration  lyric  — 
Satires  of  Marvell  and  Oldham 

Industrious  attempts   have   been   made  to  trace   the  origin  of  the 
phrase  Augustan  age  in  reference  to  English  literature.     The  phrase 
itself  has   not   always   been   used   with    the   same   denotation,   being 
sometimes    applied    to    the   whole    period    during  which 
Pope    wrote,   sometimes    limited    to   the  reign    of    Queen  "AugVsl™." 
Anne,  and  sometimes  extended  backwards  so   as   to   in- 
clude Dryden.     This  last  seems  the  best  use  if  the  term  —  which  is  a 
convenient  one  and  not  erroneous  except  by  intention  —  be  employed 
at  all.     For  it  connects  itself  well  with  Johnson's  famous  comparison, 
of   Dryden's    dealings   with    the    English    language   and   literature   to 
those  of  Augustus  w^ith  the  city  of  Rome,  which  he  "  found  of  brick 
and    left  of   marble."      We  do    not    nowadays    consider    Shake.speare 
brick  or  Rowe  marble  ;  but  that  does  not  matter. 

What  is  beyond  controversy  is  that  a  change  of  the  widest  and 
deepest  kind  passed  not  merely  over  but  through  English  literature, 
at  a  time  corresponding  almost  exactly  with  the  Restoration,  and  in 
consequence  of  influences  of  which  for  all  but  forty  years    , 

^         ,  ,  ,^     ,  .      ,     Its  use  here. 

Dryden  was  the  supreme  literary  exponent —  that  the  kind 
of    literature    then    produced    received    its   greatest    polish,   and    came 
nearest  to  its  own  ideal,  in  some  forty  years    more    to   the   death   of 
Pope  —  that  for  a  furtlier  ])eriod  of  not   quite   sixty  years    it  was    in 
office,  though  it  was  gradually  losing  power  —  and  that  it  was  driven 

47 » 


472  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 


from  both,  after  a  preliminary  summons  to  depart  in  the  Lyrical 
Ballads  of  1798,  by  the  triumph  of  Romanticism  in  the  early  years  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  The  history  of  this  literature  will  occupy  us 
during  this  Book  and  the  next,  and  the  present  may  best  be  occupied 
with  the  Augustan  period,  in  the  wide  sense,  of  Dryden,  Pope,  and 
their  times. 

The  causes  and  necessity  of  the  change  have  been  indicated 
already;  the  course  of  it  must  occupy  us  here.  Nor  perhaps  in 
any  period  is  one  single  figure  so  prominent  and  exemplary  as  in  the 

Dryden  ^""^^  P^*"*  ^^  *^'^"  -^"P^  ^^^  nearly  approached  by  others, 
and  his  greatness  was  in  poetry  alone,  for  he  scarcely 
touched  drama,  and  tliough  a  good  prose-writer,  was  only  such  for 
pastime.  But  Dryden  was  the  greatest  poet  of  his  own  day  and 
style  by  such  a  distance  that  no  second  can  be  placed  to  him. 
He  was  the  chief  agent  in  the  shaping  and  in  the  popularising  of 
the  new  prose.  And  if  one  or  two  tragedies  of  others  have  been 
thought,  and  several  comedies  certainly  are,  better  than  any  play  of 
his,  yet  no  one  did  both  so  well,  while  he  also  exceeds  all  in  the 
volume  of  his  dramatic  work  and  in  the  variety  of  its  forms. 

John  Dryden  1  was  born  in  1631  at  Aldwinkle  All  Saints  in 
Northamptonshire,  of  a  family  which  certainly  came  from  the  North, 
and  perhaps  from  beyond  the  Border,  but  which  had  been  settled 
His  life  ^°'  ^°™^  ^"^^  ^"^  ^^^  actual  position  with  estates  and  a 
baronetcy.  He  was  educated  at  Westminster,  and  at 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  His  connections  on  both  sides  were 
Puritan  and  Parliamentary,  and  his  uncle  on  the  mother's  side,  Sir 
Gilbert  Pickering,  was  a  close  friend  of  the  Protector,  whose  death 
Dryden  celebrated  in  verse.  But  it  is  certain  that  he  could  never 
have  been  an  anti-Royalist  at  heart ;  and  when  the  Restoration  came 
he  celebrated  that  too  with  as  much  good-will  as  vigour.  We  know 
extremely  little  of  his  beginnings  in  literature;  but  in  1663,  having 
succeeded  to  a  small  property,  he  married  Lady  Elizabeth  Howard, 
eldest  daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Berkshire,  and  very  soon  afterwards 
was  in  active  practice  as  a  playwright.  In  1670  he  was  made  Poet- 
Laureate  and  Historiographer  Royal  in  succession,  respectively,  to 
Davenant  and  Howell,  but  for  ten  years  more  he  wrote  little  but 
plays.  The  ferments  of  the  Popish  Plot  induced  his  great  jjolitical 
satires.  He  had  a  pension  in  addition  to  his  salaries,  and  his 
enemies  have  held  that  interest  decided  his  change  of  religion  when 
James  II.  succeeded  to  the  throne  and  began  proselytising.  This 
imputation   is    not   only   ungenerous   but    improbable.      Dryden    did 

iThe  standard  edition  of  Dryden  is  Scott's  (18  vols.),  which  has  been  re- 
edited,  with  a  few  additions  and  corrections,  by  the  present  writer.  Mr.  Christie's 
"  Globe  "  edition  of  the  Poems  is  not  likely  soon  to  be  superseded. 


CHAP.  I  THE  AGE  OF   DRYDEN  —  POETRY  473 

much  poorly  paid  work  for  the  court,  drudging  at  translations  and 
writing  The  Hind  and  the  Panther  (the  greatest  poem  ever  written  in 
the  teeth  of  its  subject),  and  when  the  Revolution  came  he  was  faithful 
to  his  cause,  and  lost  everything  but  his  small  private  fortune.  He 
returned  to  play-writing,  and  after  a  time  made  inadequate  but  not 
inconsiderable  gains  by  his  translation  of  Virgil.  His  last  and 
almost  his  best  work  was  contained  in  the  volume  of  Fables,  which 
was  published  (1699-1700)  very  shortly  before  his  death,  from 
mortification  of  the  toe  due  to  gout,  on  ist  May  1700.  He  had 
three  sons,  the  youngest  of  whom  succeeded  to  the  baronetcy. 
Dryden's  change  of  faith,  the  questionable  shape  of  a  good  deal  of 
his  dramatic  writing,  and  other  things,  have  caused  controversy  about 
his  private  character;  but  all  the  available  evidence  leaves  him  a 
very  fair  specimen  of  humanity,  amiable  in  private  life,  extraordinarily 
modest  and  generous  to  others  m  literary  matters,  a  hard  worker, 
sturdy  in  resisting  misfortune,  frank  in  confessing  his  own  faults,  and 
chargeable  with  very  few  except  the  coarseness  and  the  adulation 
which  were  characteristic,  not  of  his  own  personality,  but  of  the 
manners  of  the  time. 

His  intellectual  and  literary  greatness  have  seldom  been  denied, 
though  estimates  of  them  have,  of  course,  varied.  He  did  not  show 
his  great  powers  very  early,  and  indeed  the  amount  of  work  tliat  we 
have  from  him  till  after  his  thirtieth  year  is  extremely  small.  As  a 
boy  he  contributed  to  the  already  mentioned  volume  of  funeral  poems 
on  his  schoolfellow.  Lord  Hastings,  a  piece  in  the  most  extravagant 
"metaphysical"  style,  but  not  without  cleverness;  his  Heroic 
Stanzas  on  Cromwell's  death  (again  showing  careful  attention  to  the 
fashion  of  the  time  in  their  choice  of  the  quatrain  metre  of  Gondihert) 
are  stiff  and  unequal  but  fine  in  parts,  and  already  display  a  certain 
craftsmanship  which  is  very  rare  in  the  work  of  a  beginner. 

The  group  of  his  poems  on  the   Restoration  —  Astrcea  Redux,  a 
poem  on  the  Coronation,  zx\A  one  to  Clarendon  —  is  of  singular  inter- 
est.    All  three  are  written  in  the  couplet,  the  metre  that  Dryden  was 
born  —  not  exactly  to  infroduce,  seeing  that  it  had  been 
introduced  in  its  new  form  by  Waller  and  others  before       poemV.^'^ 
he  was  born,  but  —  to  strengthen,  to  perfect,  and  to  instal 
in  public  favour  for  something  like  a  century  and  a  half.      He  is  not 
yet  at  his  best  in  it,  or  at  anything  near  his  best.     His  touch  is  un- 
sure ;  his  sense  is  sometimes  not  quite  clear ;  and  he  is  often  driven 
to  clumsy  inversions  in  order  to  get  it  expressed  and  concluded   in 
the  distich.      But  the    inimitable   ring  which    distinguishes  his  verse 
from  all  others  —  the  ring  as  of  a  great  bronze  coin  thrown  down  on 
marble  —  appears    already,   with    something  of  the   command   of  easy 
stately  phrase   and  very   much  of  the    "energy   divine"   which   was 


474  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 


justly  attributed  to  him  by  his  best  pupil.  In  his  next,  and  for 
many  years  only,  important  poem  he  relapsed  into  the  quatrain. 
Annus  Mirabilis  (1666)  is  a  poem  which  might  be  taken  as  a  text 
or  series  of  texts  to  show  the  difference  between  the  old  poetry  and 
the  new.  The  form  is  against  it;  the  quatrain  is  meditative  and 
impressionist,  not  historic.  There  are  queer  lapses  into  the  meta- 
physical, oscillations  between  bombast  and  bathos,  which  had  better 
not  be  there.  And  yet,  as  distinctly,  though  after  a  very  different 
fashion,  as  in  the  almost  contemporary  Paradise  Lost  itself,  there  is 
the  "wind  of  the  spirit,"  the  power  of  transforming,  the  evidence  of 
command  of  that  mysterious  instrument,  the  measured  word.  It  is  a 
proof  of  the  greatness  of  Dryden  that  he  knew  Milton  for  a  poet ;  it 
is  a  proof  of  the  smallness  (and  mighty  as  he  was  on  some  sides,  on 
others  he  was  very  small)  of  Milton  that  (if  he  really  did  so)  he 
denied  poetry  to  Dryden. 

Then,  for  fifteen  years  and  more,  Dryden  did  nothing  of  impor- 
tance in  pure  poetry,  and  his  drama  — verse  and  other  — will  be  handled 
two  chapters  hence.  He  broke  out  again  with  the  marvellous  group 
of  satires  above  referred  to  —  Absalom  and  Achitophel 
satiresfetc.  (Part  I.,  November  1681),  The  Medal  (March  1682), 
MacFlecknoe  (October  1682),  and  the  second  part  of 
Absalom  and  Achitophel  (with  important  contributions  from  Dryden, 
though  the  whole  is  not  his),  a  month  later,  with  Religio  Laid  almost 
at  the  same  moment.  In  these  poems  Dryden  showed  himself  in  a 
light  which,  though  not  perhaps  surprising  to  careful  students  of  his 
plays,  could  hardly  have  been  anticipated  by  any  one  who  knew  his 
earlier  poems  only.  In  mere  subject  not  one  of  the  group  is  ab- 
solutely original  — originality  of  the  obvious  kind  is  not  Dryden's  forte. 
But  in  the  treatment,  the  form,  the  real  essence  of  them,  few  things 
more  oi-iginal  have  ever  been  seen  in  English  literature.  His  long 
practice  in  rhyming  plays  had  given  him  an  absolute  command  of  the 
form  of  couplet,  of  which  in  the  Restoration  group  his  grasp  had 
been  uncertain,  and  a  secure  handling  of  the  widest  diversity  of  sub- 
jects inverse.  Nobody — hardly  even  Liicr&tius  —  has  ever  argued  in 
verse  like  Dryden ;  few  have  understood  the  ordonnance  of  a  verse- 
narrative  as  he  has.  But  over  and  above  these  gifts,  Nature  had 
endowed  him  with  a  still  more  special  faculty  for  satiric  and  didactic 
verse  — the  faculty  of  keeping  himself  thoroughly  above  his  subject  in 
the  sense  of  command.  Dryden  has  been  strangely  called  "  phleg- 
matic," from  the  cool  superiority  which  he  observes  in  dealing  with 
the  most  exciting  themes.  He  is  in  reality  no  more  phlegmatic  than 
Shakespeare  himself,  though  he  is  a  lesser  poet  with  lesser  range. 
The  phlegm  of  the  great  passage  on  Life  in  Aurengsebe,  of  the 
"wandering   fires"   in    The   Hind  and  the   Panther,  to   mention   no 


CHAP.  I  THE   AGE   OF   D  R  YD  EN  —  POETRY  475 

others,  is  a  very  curious  humour ;  and  it  were  much  to  be  wished 
that  more  poets  would  run  such  humours  upon  us.  But  Dryden  was 
not  lightly  moved  by  light  things ;  and  while  his  adversaries  howled 
and  gnashed  and  gesticulated,  he  swam  steadily  above  on  an  easy 
wing  pouring  molten  iron  upon  them.  The  controversial  verse  of 
Religio  Laid,  with  its  tell-tale  yearning  for  an  infallible  director,  is 
less  popular  than  the  great  satiric  portraits  of  the  Absalom  pieces,  The 
Medal,  and  MacFlecknoe,  but  it  is  not  less  good.  Perhaps  the  very 
best  of  all  —  magnificent  as  are  the  ''  Zimri,"  the  "  Og,"  the  "  Doeg," 
and  the  whole  of  MacFlecknoe — is  the  "  Shimei"  (Slingsby  Bethel)  of 
the  first  Absalom.  Nowhere  else  is  the  easy  wing-stroke  of  the 
couplet,  at  once  propelling  the  poet  through  upper  air  and  slapping 
his  victim  in  the  face  at  every  beat,  so  triumphantly  and  coolly 
manifested.  These  things  belong,  no  doubt,  to  one  of  the  outlying 
districts  of  poetry,  but  poetry  they  are. 

TJie  Hind  and  the  Panther  in  strictness  belongs  to  this  series  of 
poems,  and  despite  the  not  altogether  happy  and,  at  the  time,  much 
ridiculed  adaptation  of  the  beast-fable  to  the  controversies  of  the 
day,  and  the  extreme  weakness  of  the  central  argument,  it  contains 
some  of  Dryden's  very  finest  things  —  the  magnificent  Confiteor  above 
referred  to  being  perhaps  the  best  of  the  set  passages,  and  the 
description  of  the  Panther  (the  Church  of  England)  — who 

Had  more  of  Lion  in  her  than  to  fear  — 

the  best  perhaps  of  the  single  lines.  But  it  was  preceded  and 
followed  by  much  less  happy  compositions,  on  two  of  which  the  curse 
of  Laureate  verse  lies  something  heavily — Tlirenodia  Augustalis,  a 
Pindaric  on  the  death  of  Charles  IL,  and  Britannia  Rediviva,  a  poem 
in  couplets  on  the  birth  of  the  luckless  Old  Chevalier.  Yet  even  in 
these  the  magical  beauty  of  Dryden's  verse  appears. 

For  some  ten  vears  after  the  Revolution  Dryden  was  too  much 
occupied  with  hackwork  of  various  kinds  —  the  chief  being  the  Virgil'^ 
—  to  produce  much  original,  or  even  semi-original,  poetry ;  but  his 
genius  haiDpily  insi:)ired  him,  just  before  he  died,  to  give    ^,     ^  ,, 

,  .:  .  r  ■  1  T"^  Fables. 

the  most  striking  proof  ever  given  by  any  poet  that  age 
and  ill-health  and  the  unkindness  of  circumstance  had  not  affected 
his  absolute  pre-eminence  over  all  his  fellows.     The  so-called  Fables 
were    chiefly   made    up   of   some    remarkable   paraphrases  —  Dryden 
himself,  with  more  modesty,  called  them  ''  translations  "  —  from  Chaucer 

1  He  had  begun  the  practice  of  translation,  chiefly  in  a  series  of  Miscellanies 
by  himself  and  others,  even  before  the  great  sntircs,  and  dirl,  besides  tlie  Viij^H 
(1697),  much  of  Juvenal  (1693)  and  a  good  deal  of  Ovid  and  Lucretius,  witii  some 
Horace  and  Homer.  It  is  very  great  work  in  its  kind  of  loose  translation-para- 
phrase :  but  one  had  so  much  rather  have  the  originals  I 


476  THE  AUGUSTAN   AGES 


BOOK  VIII 


and  Boccaccio.  But  they  also  contained  an  exquisite  dedication  to 
the  Duchess  of  Orniond,  some  lines  of  which  are  the  very  flower  of 
Dryden's  magnificent  versification ;  a  very  fine  address  to  his  cousin, 
John  Driden  (the  name  had  been  very  variously  spelt,  and  the 
cousins  retained  different  forms),  whose  still  living  sister  Honor  had 
been  his  own  first  love;  Alexander'' s  Feast,  and  other  capital  things. 
Macaulay,  who,  though  politically  and  morally  unjust  to  Dryden, 
retained  the  eighteenth-century  admiration  for  his  literary  genius 
(which  had  been  authenticated  by  the  great  Whig  authority  of  Fox), 
has  put  the  merits  of  the  book  with  equal  brevity,  force,  and  truth  in 
describing  its  verses  as  "such  as  no  other  living  man  could  have 
written." 

We  must  define  and  emphasise  this  a  little,  for  it  is  one  of  the 
most  important  points  of  this  history.  When  Johnson,  not  in  the 
Life  of  Milton  but  elsewhere,  says  that  that  poet  ought  not  to  be 
blamed  for  harshness,  for  he  wrote  as  well  as  his  time 
His  verse,  ^^^j^  allow,  and  would  no  doubt  have  written  more 
smoothly  if  he  had  written  after  Dryden,  too  many  people  nowadays 
laugh  with  pity  or  derision,  as  the  case  may  be.  Johnson  is  indeed 
quite  indefensible,  not  in  preferring  Dryden's  verse  to  Milton's  —  for 
the  things  are  incommensurable,  and  if  a  man  cannot  enjoy  both  and 
can  enjoy  one  he  takes  the  benefit  of  the  statute  De  Gustibus  —  but 
as  making  a  very  gross  historical  error.  Milton's  versification  is 
not  of  an  older  stamp  than  Dryden's ;  it  might  even  plead  that  it  is 
youtiger,  seeing  that  while  Dryden's  verse  is  now  obsolete,  the  other 
is  still  fresh.  The  two  are  not  older  or  younger,  reformed  or  unre- 
formed,  better  or  worse  —  they  are  different;  they  represent  two  inde- 
pendent developments  of  the  same  really  earlier  stage,  the  full-blown 
undisciplined  blank  verse  of  the  middle  and  later  dramatists,  coming 
as  it  did  on  the  heels  of,  or  simultaneously  with,  the  varied  stanza 
metres  of  which  the  Spenserian  is  at  once  the  great  original  and  the 
unquestioned  chief,  and  the  loose  enjambed  couplet  of  which  we  find 
the  last  notable  example  in  Chamberlayne.  Milton,  especially  devoting 
himself  to  the  good  sides  of  these  various  lawlessnesses,  created,  to  an 
extent  not  surpassed  or  sensibly  enlarged  to  the  present  day,  a  form 
of  blank  verse  at  once  infinitely  various  and  extremely  precise, 
capable,  by  the  further  elaboration  of  the  verse-paragraph,  of  being 
made  to  subserve  almost  every  purpose  of  poetry  except  the  lyrical. 

(Dryden,  revolting  from  the  bad  sides,  and  following  the  school  of 
Waller,  rejected  blank  verse  for  a  time  even  for  dramatic  purposes 
(though  in  this  he  recanted),  rejected  it  almost  entirely  for  non- 
dramatic  purposes,  and  produced  a  form  of  the  couplet  which,  if  not 
the  best  vehicle  conceivable  for  all  kinds  of  poetry,  was  at  any  rate  a 
splendid  carroccio  for  invective,  for  argument,  and  for  narrative.     He 


CHAP.  I  THE  AGE   OF   DRYDEN  — POETRY  477 

could  do  much  else.  His  little-read  lyrics  in  the  plays,  and  a  few  out 
of  them,  have  extraordinary  variety,  and  sometimes  come  not  far 
short  of  the  earlier  Caroline  charm.  IJis  Pindarics  (the  best  of 
which  is  the  unequal,  but  in  parts  unequalled.  Ode  to  the  Pious 
Memory  of  Mrs.  Anne  Killigrew)  have  almost  limitless  majesty  and 
no  small  grace.  But  his  comjlet  —  the  couplet  which  he  left  to  none, 
for  Pope,  not  being  abfe^foHmv.  diverged  —  is  undoubtedly  his  greaf 

^tla"ToJaim^ 

For  this,  or  for  some  other  reason,  it  has  been  the  fashion  for  a 
century  to  call  him  prosaic.  "  The  most  prosaic  of  our  great 
poets,"  "  a  classic  of  our  prose,"  and  the  like,  are  the  judgments  of 
critics  who  have  not  the  excuse  of  the  first  revolters  from  his  tradi- 
tion. This  is  idle.  If  the  best  things  in  even  the  Restoration 
pieces  and  Annus  Mirabilis  and  the  Conquest  of  Granada,  much 
more  the  Aurengzebe  patch  and  the  Hind  and  Panther  act  of  humilia- 
tion, and  the  opening  of  Religio  Laid,  and  the  address  to  "The 
daughter  of  the  Rose  whose  cheeks  unite  The  differing  titles  of  the  Red 
and  White,"  as  well  as  a  hundred  hardly  lesser  things  —  the  songs  in 
The  Indian  Et/tperor  and  CEdipus  and  Marriage  a  la  Mode,  the 
singing  flames  in  which  Shadwell  and  Settle  roast  for  ever  —  if  these 
things  be  prose,  why,  then,  we  must  really  have  a  new  dictionary, 
and  poetry,  hard  enough  to  define  as  it  is,  will  become  more  impos- 
sible of  definition  than  ever.  If  there  is  not  in  these  things  the 
transformation  and  sublimation,  by  the  use  of  metrical  language, 
of  ideas  so  that  they  remain  for  ever  fitted  to  transport  and  inspire, 
then  such  transformation  and  sublimation  are  nowhere ;  they  cannot, 
on  anything  but  an  unsafe  criterion  of  will-worship  and  private  judg- 
ment, be  said  to  be  in  the  Te/npest,  in  Comus,  in  Adonais,  in  La  Belle 
Da?ne  sans  Merci.  The  administration  is  different,  but  the  spirit  is 
the  same. 

We  shall  not  use  such  language  again  in  the  present  chapter. 
Dryden  was  not  a  prosaic  poet,  but  he  was  a  poet  of  a  prosaic  time. 
Nor  perhaps  does  this  appear  anywhere  more  distinctly  than  in  tlie 
work  of  Samuel    Butler,^  whose  life  was  about  the  same 

'  1 J  I  Butler. 

length,  since,  though  nearly  twenty  years  older  than 
Dryden,  he  died  just  twenty  years  before  him.  He  was  a  native  of 
Worcestershire,  where  he  was  born  at  Strensham  in  161 2.  He  was 
educated  at  the  cathedral  school  of  the  diocese,  but  he  went  to  no 
university.  Although  details  about  him,  till  his  death  in  1680,  are  not 
exactly  scanty,  they  are  not  very  informing,  and  are  sometimes  ratlier 
contradictory.     During  the  greater  part  of  his  life  he  seems  to  have 

1  Poemt,  ed:  R.  B.  Johnson  ("  Aldine  Poets  ■') ,  2  vols.  London.  1893.  The  prose 
part  of  Thyer's  Genuine  Remains  needs  reprintinfj,  wilh  the  MS.  now  in  the  British 
Museum.     Morley's  Seventeenth  Century  Characters  gives  some. 


478  THE  AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  viii 

filled  quasi-official  or  ministerial  positions  in  the  households  of  divers 
public  or  private  persons,  and  it  was  pretty  certainly  in  one  of  these 
that  he  picked  up  the  facts  for  Hiidibras.  After  the  publication  and 
popularity  of  that  great  satire  he  seems  to  have  been  a  disappointed 
man,  but  even  tradition  makes  himself  to  blame.  The  first  part  of 
Hiidibras  was  published  in  1662,  the  second  next  year,  the  third  not 
till  fifteen  years  afterwards.  He  published  little  else  in  his  lifetime, 
and  the  so-called  "posthumous  works"  are  certainly  for  the  most 
part  spurious.  But  nearly  eighty  years  after  his  death,  in  1759,  Mr. 
Thyer,  Chetham  Librarian  at  Manchester,  issued  Genuine  Remains, 
which  have  an  authentic  pedigree  from  Butler's  friend  Longueville, 
and  would  authenticate  themselves  without  any. 

Butler,  by  some  direct  and  fairly  trustworthy  evidence  and  a 
consensus  of  tradition,  is  said  to  have  been  of  a  saturnine  and  rather 
disobliging  temperament,  which  indeed  is  pretty  obvious  in  his  work. 
But  there  is  absolutely  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Hiidibras  is  animated 
by  personal  spite  at  his  hosts,  masters,  or  companions  during  the 
Commonwealth.  Every  trait,  though  exaggerated  for  the  particular 
purpose,  is  historically  justified.  It  is  clear  that  Butler,  though  by  no 
means  a  very  fervid  pietist  or  "high-flying"  Cavalier,  was  a  convinced 
opponent  of  irregular  "  enthusiasm  "  in  religion,  and  popular  license 
in  the  State ;  and  the  whole  piece  is  treated  with  a  largeness  of 
handling  irreconcilable  with  the  idea  of  a  petty  wiping  off  of  private 
grudges.  He  was  evidently  a  born  satirist,  whose  satire  was  not,  like 
Dryden's,  merely  one  development  of  an  almost  universal  faculty  of 
literary  craftsmanship ;  not,  like  Swift's  later,  a  vain  attempt  to  relieve 
the  passionate  melancholy  and  the  "  savage  indignation "  excited 
by  the  riddles  of  the  painful  earth.  It  was  the  offspring  of  a  keen 
intelligence,  a  not  too  amiable  temper,  and  one  form  of  the  hard,  prac- 
tical, businesslike  mood  which  was  seizing  the  nation  after  its  century 
of  heroic  flights.  His  minor  poems,  "The  Elephant  in  the  Moon," 
the  piece  to  the  Royal  Society  (then  new,  and  much  rallied  by  the 
wits),  his  "  Claude  Duval  "  ode,  his  delightful  dialogue  of  Cat  and 
Puss  ridiculing  the  heroic  plays,  and  many  of  the  meditative  scraps, 
are  excellent ;  but  for  posterity  he  is  the  author  of  Hiidibras. 

This  curious  composition,  in  about  ten  thousand  octosyllabic 
lines,  takes  its  ostensible  theme,  the  adventures  and  misadventures  of 
Sir  Hudibras  and  his  man  Ralpho,  from  Don  Quixote,  and  some 
things  in  its  manner  from  the  great  French  prose  satire  of  the  end 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  the  Satyre  Menippie,  but  in  its  real  essence 
is  quite  original.  The  story,  though  some  of  its  incidents  and 
episodes  are  amusing,  and  have  fixed  themselves  in  the  general 
memory,  is  of  no  importance ;  we  can  see  that  the  author  neither 
cared    about   it    himself    nor    expected    his    readers    to    care.     The 


CHAP.  I  THE  AGE   OF   DRYD EN  — POETRY  479 

characters,  though  trouble  was  taken  to  identify  them,  are  types  and 
nothing  more.  But  the  whole  is  so  constructed  as  to  pour  a  steady 
shower  of  pitiless  ridicule  on  the  Parliamentary  party,  and  as  this 
exactly  suited  the  taste  of  the  nation,  which  was  rejoicing  in  its 
freedom  from  the  sometimes  bloodthirsty  and  always  teasing  tyrants 
who  had  domineered  over  it,  the  popularity  of  the  piece  is  readily 
enough  understood,  while  its  great  human  wisdom  and  concentrated, 
if  not  very  exalted,  power  of  thought  have  made  it  matter  for  more 
than  a  time.  It  is  indeed  of  the  class  of  work  which,  as  has  been  said 
of  something  else,  "invariably  displeases  fools,"  and  sometimes  men 
like  Samuel  Pepys,  who  are  not  to  be  so  called.  Its  bitterness  is 
too  cutting  for  some  tastes ;  its  grotesque  bewilders  or  disgusts 
feeble  folk.  Butler  is,  in  fact,  a  true  "metaphysical"  in  the  way  in 
which  he  produces,  and  heaps  in  the  strangest  juxtapositions,  endless 
scraps  of  lore  and  quips  of  fancy ;  but  there  is  more  of  the  coming 
than  of  the  passing  time  in  the  intense  common  sense  which  under- 
lies, and  (at  no  great  height  certainly)  overarches,  all  his  erudition 
and  all  his  wit.  His  form  too  is  of  the  most  notable,  and  is  a  sort  of 
companion  species-by-itself  to  that  of  Skelton.  The  octosyllable, 
though  capable  of  great  melody,  had  always  been  a  light  and  skipping 
form,  but  he  taught  it  quite  a  new  pace.  There  is  nothing  before 
that  resembles,  while  everything  of  the  kind  that  comes  after  imitates, 
the  Hudibrastic  couplet,  now  soberly  plodding  in  designed  doggerel  to 
suit  the  sense,  and  now  lifting  itself  into  a  sort  of  pirouette  with  one 
of  the  wonderful  final  rhymes  which  have  impressed  themselves  more 
than  anything  else  on  tlie  popular  remembrance.  The  verse  of 
Butler  is  scorn  made  metrical. 

Among  the  few  poets  who  must  be  mentioned  here  with  liryden, 
the  group  of  belated  and  slightly  degraded  Caroline  songsters  holds  the 
most  important  place.  It  consists  of  three  "  persons  of  quality."  the 
Earl  of  Dorset,  Lord  Rochester,  and  Sir  Charles  Sedley,  of  one 
ancestress  of  the  modern  lady-journalist,  Afra  Behn,  and  of  a  vague 
ar^d  shifting  body  of  men  of  letters,  who  sometimes  were  able  to  do 
charming  things,  and  generally  did  things  anything  but  charming. 
Even  Flatman,  even  Bancks,  could  sometimes  turn  out  a  song  or  a 
copy  of  verses  with  something  of  the  fine  rapture,  with  a  good  deal  of 
the  careless-ordered  ease,  which  charm  us  in  their  predecessors  on 
the  other  side  of  "the  flood."  But  even  the  active  and  loving 
efforts  of  Mr.  Bullen  and  others  have  not  extracted  from  them  any- 
thing equal  to  the  best  tilings  of  Dorset,  Rochester,  Sedley,  and 
"Astr.xa,"  and  they  must  therefore  be  regretfully  excluded  from  a 
Short  History. 

A  paragraph  will  give  the  history  of  the  four  excepted  persons, 
and  another    must   suffice   for   their   works.     Charles    Sackville,  sixth 


48o  THE   AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  viii 

Earl  of  Dorset  (the  holders  of  the  title  had  changed  rapidly  since  his 
greater  poetical  ancestor  received  it,  not  three-quarters  of  a  century 
before  he  succeeded),  was  born  in  1637,  not  thirty  years  after  the 
death  of  the  author  of  Gorbodnc,  and,  as  Lord  Buckhurst,  was  known 
not  too  creditably  in  the  early  days  of  the  Restoration,  though  Dryden's 
Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy  shows  how  deep  his  interest  in  literature 
even  then  was.  The  tyranny,  perhaps  not  more  than  the  stupidity,  of 
James  II.  sent  him  into  opposition,  and  he  became  a  great  Williamite, 
but  always  was  faithful  to  Dryden.  He  died  in  1706,  last,  though 
born  first,  of  the  four.  John  Wilmot,  Earl  of  Rochester,  a  still  better 
wit  and  poet,  was  a  worse  man,  being  a  coward,  spiteful,  and  in  almost 
every  way  ungenerous.  He  was  born  in  1647,  and  educated  at 
Wadham  College,  Oxford,  came  to  court  as  quite  a  boy, 
^"lyric!'°"  played  the  typical  Restoration  bully  and  rake  in  all 
points  but  spirit  for  some  fifteen  years,  and  died  just 
after  his  three-and-thirtieth  birthday,  after  being,  it  is  said,  converted 
by  Burnet.  Sedley,  a  better  poet  than  Dorset,  and  not  quite  so  bad 
a  man  as  Rochester,  was  born  at  Aylesford  in  1639,  was  like  Wilmot 
a  Wadham  man,  figured  in  Charles's  court  and  in  outside  orgies  with 
Buckhurst,  accepted  "  Revolution  principles,"  less  it  would  seem  from 
patriotism  than  from  a  grudge  at  James  for  having  debauched  his 
daughter,  the  witty  and  ugly  Countess  of  Dorchester  (Dorset's 
Dorinda),  and  died  in  1701.  Afra,  Aphra,  Aphara,  or  Ayfara  Behn 
is  said  to  have  been  born  at  ,Wye  near  Ashford  in  1640,  but  her 
history  is  most  imperfectly  known.  She  went  to  Guiana  somehow, 
married  a  Dutch  merchant,  was  a  widow  at  si.x-and-twenty,  wrote  both 
plays  and  novels,  which  will  appear  in  the  next  two  chapters,  and 
died  in  1689.1 

This  quartette  lives  and  will  live  by  songs,  not  always  graceful  in 
any  sense,  nearly  always  graceless  in  one  particular ;  but  of  wonder- 
ful ease,  air,  and  fire.  Dorset's  universally  known  "  To  all  you  ladies 
now  on  land,"  and  his  less  popular."  Phyllis,  for  shame,"  with  certain 
charming  epigrams  and  snatches,  the  most  agreeable  of  all,  if  not  the 
most  correct,  being  that  in  praise  of  "  Bonny  Black  Bess,"  have  an 
amiable  and  careless  facility  which  is  extremely  pleasing.  Rochester, 
many  of  whose  pieces,  genuine  or  attributed,  are  so  foul  that  they 
never  appear  in  any  decent  collection,  has  left  others  of  somewhat 
ill-natured  and  rather  roughly  expressed,  but  singularly  shrewd 
criticism,  and  a  handful  of  really  exquisite  songs,  "  I  cannot  change 
as  others  do,"  "My  dear  Mistress  has  a  heart,"  "Absent  from  thee 
I  languish  still,"  "When  on  these  lovely  looks  I  gaze,"  "An  age  in 

1  Dorset  and  the  producible  poems  of  Rochester  are  in  Chalmers;  there  are 
two  last-century  collections  of  Sedley 's  work ;  and  that  of  Afra  Behn  has  been 
reprinted  in  6  vols.  London,  1871. 


CHAP.  I  THE   AGE  OF   DRYDEN  —  POETRY  481 

her  embraces  past,"  and  a  few  others,  while  he  is  at  least  the 
acknowledged  father  of  the  best  epigram  in  the  English  language  — 

Here  lies  our  Sovereign  Lord  the  King. 

Sedley  (often  spelt  "  S/dley "  at  the  time)  has  fewer  good  things,  but 
the  splendid  opening  of  one  of  his  pieces  — 

Love  still  has  something  of  the  sea, 
From  whence  his  mother  rose, 

is  not  ill  followed  up,  and  "  Phillis  is  my  only  joy,"  the  "  Knotting  Song," 
and  others  rank  very  high ;  while  Mrs.  Behn  provides  at  least  one  — 

Love  in  fantastic  triumph  sat  — 

of  quite  bewildering  beauty,  suggesting  the  idea  that  some  imp  of 
poetry  must  have  determined  to  upset  all  generalisations  as  to  the 
verse  of  the  time  by  inspiring  it.  Yet  "Oh  love  that  stronger  art 
than  wine  "  and  others  are  not  much  below  it.  These  pieces,  with  a 
few  from  the  lesser  hands  glanced  at  above,  are  memorable  as  the  last 
echoes  of  the  marvellous  song  concert  of  the  first  half  of  the  century. 
After  the  deaths  of  Dryden  and  Sedley  in  1700  and  1701,  a  hundred 
years  passed  without  anything  like  them  ;  nor  perhaps  has  the  gift  been 
quite  recovered  since. 

Apart  from  these,  from  Dryden  and  Butler,  and  from  the  survivors 
of  the  elder  age,  whether  vocal  like  Milton  or  silent  like  Herrick,  not 
merely  the  five-and-twenty  years  of  Charles's  reign,  but  the  seventeen 
of  his  brother's,  and  of  that  of  William  and  Mary,  are  woefully 
barren  of  poetry.  The  satiric  impulse  which  produced  through 
Dryden  the  greatest  verse-work  of  the  time,  in  the  others  chiefly  served 
to  show  by  how  far  Dryden  himself  outtopped  his  fellows.  The  satires 
attri])uted  to  Marvell  —  divers  "Instructions"  and  Satires  of 
"  Advices  to  a  Painter,"  "  Britannia  and  Raleigh,"  Marvell  and 
"  Dialogue  between  Two  Horses,"  etc.  —  are  partisan  lam-  ^'"' 

poons  of  e.xtraordinary  ferocity  and  not  devoid  of  real  vigour,  but  for 
the  most  part  clumsy  in  form,  following,  whether  designedly  or  not,  the 
roughness  of  Donne,  and  never  advancing  beyond  Cowley  or  Waller. 
John  Oldham  ^  enjoys  a  sort  of  traditional  Tame  (due  to  his  period, 
his  early  death,  and  the  magnificent  eulogy  of  Dryden)  wliich  he 
could  hardly  keep  if  many  people  read  him.  He  was  born  near 
Tetbury  in  1653,  and  went  to  St.  Edmund  Hall.  Oxford,  where  he 
took  his  degree  in  1674.  He  became  usher  in  a  school  at  Croydon, 
where  Dorset,  Rochester,  and  Sedley  are  said  to  have  visited  him, 
having   been    struck    by  his  verses.     They,  or  other  patrons,  recom- 

^  Not  in  Chalmers,  but  very  frequently  reprinted  in  the  late  seventeenth  cen- 
tury.   Also  ed.  Bell,  London,  1854.     I  use  the  sixth  edition,  1703, 
2  I 


482  THE   AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 

mended  him  to  tutorships,  and  he  died  of  the  smallpox  at  Lord 
Kingston's  seat  of  Holme  Pierrepoint,  aged  barely  thirty.  His  chief 
work  was  a  satire,  or  rather  several  satires,  on  the  Jesuits,  which  fed 
or  caught  the  flame  of  the  Popish  Plot  madness  in  1679;  ^^^  he 
wrote  many  other  odes,  satires,  and  translations.  The  roughness 
characteristic  of  Marvell  is  noticeable  also  in  him,  but  he  had  learnt 
from  Dryden's  plays  (he  had  no  time  to  learn  from  his  satires)  to 
clench  the  couplet  with  a  good  hammer-stroke  at  the  end. 

It  is  to  be  feared  that  the  delusion  that  decency  and  dulness  are 
somehow  inseparably  connected  may  have  been  favoured  by  Pope^s 
well-known  compliment  to  Wentworth  Dillon,  Lord  Roscommon  :  1  — 

In  Charles's  days, 
Roscommon  only  boasts  unspotted  bays; 

for  the  absence  of  spot  is  about  the  only  merit  about  them.  The 
Essay  on  Translated  Verse,  which  has  given  him  an  easy  fame,  is  a 
very  respectable  exercise  in  a  kind  of  couplet  which,  early  as  it  is 
(written  1670,  printed  1680),  has  already  made  great  progress  from 
the  massive  vigour  of  Dryden  to  the  smoother  but  weaker  elegance 
of  Pope ;  the  rest  of  him  is  negligible.  Another  noble  bard  of  the 
time,  John  Sheffield,  Earl  of  Mulgrave  and  Duke  of  Buckinghamshire, 
wrote  couplets  inferior  to  Roscommon's,  and  lyrics  very  inferior  to 
Rochester's,  yet  some  of  these  latter  are  not  despicable.  An  Essay 
on  Satire,  which  is  attributed  to  the  joint  efforts  of  Mulgrave  and 
Dryden,  is  too  rude,  as  well  as  mostly  too  rough,  for  the  poet,  and  too 
clever  for  the  peer ;  it  contains  perhaps  the  best  satiric  couplet  in 
the  English  language,  outside  of  Dryden  and  Pope  — 

Was  ever  prince  by  two  at  once  misled, 
False,  foolish,  old,  ill-natured,  and  ill-bred? 

the  "two"  being  the  Duchesses  of  Cleveland  and  Portsmouth. 

The  strange  encomium  of  Johnson  on  The  Choice  of  Thomas  Pom- 
fret  has  excited  the  wonder  of  at  least  three  generations,  and  nothing 
else  of  his  has  even  titular  fame.  Stepney,  a  diplomatist  and  a 
translator,  has  left  little  to  repay  the  explorer  of  him ;  the  four 
monosyllables,  King,  Smith,  Duke,  and  Sprat,  less;  "Granville  the 
polite,"  least.  But  that  friend  of  Dryden  and  Pope  who  is  yoked 
in  the  latter's  couplet  as  "  knowing "  with  Granville,  William  Walsh, 
rises  at  intervals  (especially  in  "Jealousy"  and  the  quaint  "  Despairing 
Lover")  above  his  dreary  class.  His  thought  has  the  unconventionality 
of  the  earlier  time,  and  his  expression,  though  very  unequal,  is  some- 
times not  unworthy  of  it. 

1  Roscommon,  with  all  who  follow,  will  be  found  in  Chalmers.  The  State 
Poems,  3  vols.  1697-1704,  contain  much  notable  vyork  of  this  time,  in  a  range 
beyond  their  title. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE   AGE   OF   DRYDEN  —  DRAMA 

The  stage  at  the  Restoration  —  The  Heroic  play  —  Dryden's  comedies  —  Etherege  — 
Shadwell — Sedley  —  Mrs.  Behn  —  Wycherley —  The  Rehearsal — The  great 
artificial  comedy —  Congreve —  Vanbrugh  —  Farquhar  —  Gibber —  Mrs.  Cent- 
Uvre —  Restoration  tragedy —  Dryden's  Heroic  plays  —  His  blank-verse  plays  — 
His  play-songs  and  prologues  —  Crowne  and  Settle  —  Otway  —  Lee  —  Southerne 
and  Rowe 

The  twenty  years'  deprivation  of  dramatic  entertainments  which  the 
English  people  had  suffered  naturally  did  not  decrease  their  appetite 
for  these.  But  the  plays  which  were  presented  to  them — perhaps 
the  plays  that  they  demanded  —  were  of  kinds  strikingly  -phesta 
different  from  those  which  had  been  in  vogue  before  at  the 
1640.  Not  indeed  that  we  must  assume  a  total  R^^'o""""- 
exclusion  of  the  pre-Restoration  drama  from  the  theatre.  Fletcher 
and  Jonson  long  continued  to  hold  the  at  least  titular  place  of 
greatest  English  dramatists  in  critical  —  perhaps  in  vulgar  —  estimation. 
Shakespeare  himself  was  acted,  and  not  always  in  the  travesties  of 
Ravenscroft,  Davenant,  and  (one  has  to  add)  Dryden.  Others  held 
the  stage  more  or  less,  and  there  was  room  even  for  new  plays  of 
the  old  kind,  such,  for  instance,  as  Chamberlayne's  Love's  Victory^ 
under  its  stage  title  of  Wits  Led  by  the  Nose,  as  late  as  1678.  But, 
as  has  to  be  so  often  repeated  in  literary  history,  facts  of  this  kind 
are  extremely  delusive  when  taken  by  themselves.  What  we  have 
to  look  to  is  the  character  of  the  plays  of  younger  men,  the  theories 
advanced  by  younger  critics,  the  mounting,  in  short,  not  the  retreating, 
tide.  It  is  because  in  literature  ebb  and  flood  always  in  this  way 
overlap,  instead  of  keeping  apart  with  a  clear  interval  between,  that 
so  many  mistakes  are  made.  The  new  currents  did  not  make 
themselves  distinctly  perceptible  immediately,  and  for  a  year  or 
two  the  stage  was  supplied  partly  by  old  hands  like  Davenant  (who, 
however,  was  himself  a  modern)  and  Shirley;  partly  by  intermediate 
persons  like  Wilson,  Tatham,  Lacy,  who  are  undecided  in  style  and 

4«3 


484  THE  AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  vin 

make  no  great  mark  in  literature.^  But  they  became  noticeable,  as 
regards  comedy,  to  some  extent  in  The  Wild  Gallant  of  Dryden, 
which  dates  from  1663,  and  still  more  in  the  Love  in  a  Tub  of 
Etherege,  just  after;  as  regards  tragedy,  in  the  "heroic"  drama 
which  the  first  named  and  others  began  to  put  on  the  stage  before 
long,  and  which  kept  it  for  many  years. 

The  change  in  comedy  was  naturally  less  than  in  tragedy,  for 
all  kinds  of  comedy  diifer  little  and  are  closely  akin.  The  humour- 
comedy  of  Jonson,  indeed,  was  stoutly  kept  up  by  Shadwell  and 
others,  and  was  too  English  a  product  ever  to  pass  away  entirely ; 
and  Dryden  himself  did  not  innovate  so  very  much  on  the  more 
distinctly  romantic  comedy  of  Fletcher.  The  comedy  of  the  Restora- 
tion par  excellence  is  a  kind  copied  to  some  e.xtent  from  French 
and  Spanish  originals,  and  relying,  first,  on  a  more  or  less  definite 
plot,  intrigue,  or  whatever  term  may  be  preferred,  —  secondly,  and 
still  more,  on  witty  dialogue.  But  the  tragedy  of  the  Restoration  was 
a  much  more  peculiar  and  anomalous  phenomenon,  and  it  is  by  no 
means  equally  easy  to  describe  it  in  any  terms  at  once  accurate 
on  the  facts  and  likely  to  meet  with  general  acceptance.  It  used  to 
be  complacently  accepted,  in  common  with  many  other  literary 
symptoms  of  this  special  change,  as  a  mere  imitation  of  French 
models,  fostered  by  the  King's  liking  for  everything  French.  That 
something  in  it  was  due  to  this  is  not  denied ;  but  more  careful,  and 
at  the  same  time  wider-ranging,  criticism  has  long  refused  to  allow  any 
paramount   importance   to    this    origin.       Another   French    influence, 

that   of  the   heroic  romances,  the  most  famous  of  which 
pla"°"^    are   the  work   of  Madeleine   de    Scudery,  has   also   been 

exaggerated,  but  is  also  a  true  cause  in  part.  These 
things,  in  the  originals  and  translated,  had  been  very  popular  in 
England  for  some  time,  had  left  their  mark  on  poetry,  popular  and 
unpopular,  as  has  been  noted  above  in  reference  to  Gondiberi  and 
Pharonnida,  and  were  in  some  cases  actually  dramatised  in  the  heroic 
play.  But  this  again  will  not  do  by  itself,  and  cannot  supply  more 
than  a  small  part  of  the  required  reasons. 

The  greater  part  of  the  real  cause  may  probably  be  found  in 
certain  changes  already  noticed,  and  to  be  noticed  again,  which  were 
now  passing  by  way  of  reaction  over  the  national  literary  taste.  As 
most  of  these  changes  were  in  a  direction  of  increased  sobriety,  it 
may  seem  at  first  contradictory  to  connect  with  them  a  product  like 
the  heroic  tragedy,  which  is  one  of  the  most  extravagant  in  the  whole 

1  All  three  to  be  found  in  Maidment  and  Logan's  Dramatists  of  the  Restoration. 
Wilson,  an  Irish  barrister,  has  no  little  power,  but  throws  it  into  old  forms. 
Other  writers,  older  and  younger  —  Howard,  Killigrew,  Take,  Sir  R.  Fanshawe  — 
would  call  for  notice  if  space  permitted. 


CHAP.  II  THE   AGE   OF  DRYDEN  — DRAMA  485 

history  of  literature.     But   this  is   only  an  apparent  difficulty,   not  a 
real  one. 

This  singular  growth,  which  flourished  specially  for  some  fifteen 
or  twenty  years,  but  did  not  disappear  wholly  from  the  stage  till  long 
afterwards,  so  that  it  furnished  jokes  to  Fielding's  Tom  Thumb  nearly 
three-quarters  of  a  century  after  the  Restoration,  has  for  its  main 
theme  love  aff"airs  and  affairs  of  war,  in  each  of  which  the  heroes  (ably 
seconded  by  the  heroines)  set  common  sense  and  natural  language 
at  defiance ;  and  for  form,  a  system  of  rhymed  decasyllabic  couplets, 
couched  in  the  most  emphatic  style,  and  specially  tending  either  to 
long  harangues  or  to  sharp  interchange  of  single  lines  or  distichs, 
something  after  the  fashion  of  the  stichojuythia  of  the  ancients.  It 
is  probable  that  the  vehicle  had  more  to  do  with  it  than  the  theme, 
though  both  were  curiously  well  suited  for  each  other.  The  couplet 
was  the  darling  of  the  moment,  and  if  this  form  of  it  is  not  good,  no 
other  is  in  English  possible,  for  dramatic  use.  After  the  extraordinary 
shambling  union  of  bad  prose  and  worse  blank  verse  which  has  been 
noticed,  the  neat,  sharply  exploding  couplets  not  unnaturally  gratified 
the  public  ear;  and  rant  as  rant  had  never  been  abhorrent  to  an 
English  audience.  Nay,  as  lending  itself  well  to  recitative,  it  was  a 
kind  of  necessity  to  the  half-operatic  entertainment  ^  which,  as  has  been 
said,  Davenant  cleverly  used  as  a  shoe-horn  to  draw  on  his  plays 
proper.  In  fine,  the  couplet  was  the  mode,  couplet-plays  almost 
naturally  invited  "heroic"  subjects,  and  the  thing  took  shape. 

It  is  curious  and  characteristic  that  Dryden,  though  at  this  time 
he   had    written    very    little,    and   had    chiefly    a    vague    Cambridge 
reputation  of  ability  to  go  upon,  was  in   the   van   of  the   new   play 
movement  with   The  Wild   Gallant.     And  it   is    not  less 
curious,  and  not   less    characteristic,   that  while  the  play      comedks! 
is  not  a  good  one  as  it   stands,  it  was  apparently  worse 
when   it  first   appeared,   and  was  damned.     In  its  later  form,  which 
succeeded   by   the   protection   of   Lady   Castlemaine,   it   is   a  sort   of 
Comedy  of  Humours,  with  a  dash  of  Fletcher,  more  of  the  nondescript 
drama,   which,  as  we  have  seen,    had  been  popular  from   Middleton 
downwards,  and  a   very   little   of  the    new   repartee   and    fashionable 
slang.     Dryden  did  much  better  than  this  in  some  of  his  numerous 
comic  ventures,^  but  it  cannot  be  said  that  his  comedy  was  ever  at 

1  In  1656  Davenant  obtained  leave  to  produce,  at  Rutland  House  in  Alders- 
gate  Street,  an  "  Entertainment  after  the  Nfanner  of  the  Ancients,"  consisting  of  a 
verse  prologue,  and  some  Discourses  by  Diogenes  and  Aristophanes,  a  Parisian,  a 
Londoner,  etc.,  with  songs  and  music.  It  was  immediately  followed  by  The  Siege 
of  Rhodes,  a  heroic  play  in  operatic  form. 

2  The  best  are,  the  comic  part  of  the  tragi-comic  Maiden  Queen,  1667;  The 
Mock  Astrologer,  1668 ;  Marriage  li  la  Mode,  again  tragi-comic,  1672 ;  and 
Amphitryon,  1691. 


486  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  via 

the  level  either  of  his  own  powers  or  of  the  best  performances  of  his 
contemporaries.  His  wit  was  not  light  enough  ;  his  temper  was  too 
kindly ;  and  perhaps  (for,  though  his  birth  was  good  and  he  married 
above  it,  he  seems  always  to  have  been  a  home-keeping  or  tavern- 
haunting  person,  not  desirous  of  gay  society,  nor  shining  in  it)  his 
habits  too  sedentary,  for  the  airy,  malicious  genteel  comedy  which 
Etherege  and  Wycherley  were  to  start,  Congreve  and  Vanbrugh 
were  to  bring  to  perfection.  One  situation,  that  of  the  pair  of  lovers 
(it  is  characteristic  again  that  with  him,  though  with  no  one  else  of 
his  time,  they  might  be  married)  who  are  very  fond  of  each  other 
and  not  really  very  fond  of  any  one  else,  but  who  do  their  very  best 
to  pretend  indifference  or  faithlessness,  he  made  something  like  his 
own.  At  other  times  he  either  went  near  failure,  or  at  any  rate 
achieved  no  striking  success,  and  too  often  he  tried  .to  make  up  for 
the  absence  of  comedy  by  the  presence  of  coarseness. 

For   the   typical    Restoration   comedy   we    must    look    elsewhere. 

"Gentle"  George   Etherege^   by   the    merest   accident   lost   his   due 

when  Wycherley,  Congreve,  Vanbrugh,  and  P'arquhap  were  collected 

^ ,  by  Leigh   Hunt  as  "  Dramatists  of  the  Restoration,"  and 

Etherege.        .,i,  r  ■  ,,-■■,, 

in  the  usual  way,  after  an  mterval,  the  injustice  has  been 
more  than  made  up  to  him.  He  was  born  somewhere  between 
1634  and  1636,  but  as  we  do  not  know  the  date  of  his  birth 
exactly,  so  we  know  nothing  certainly  about  his  extraction  or  his 
education.  We  do  not  even  know  when  he  was  knighted,  but  it 
must  have  been  pretty  late  in  the  reign,  and  quite  early  in  it  we  find 
him  a  courtier,  a  companion  of  Buckhurst,  and  in  1664  author  of 
T/te  Comical  Revenge,  or  Love  in  a  Tub.  Four  years  later  he  wrote 
She  would  if  She  could.  In  1676  he  brought  out  his  best  play,  The 
Man  of  Mode,  or  Sir  Fopling  Flutter,  and  got  into  a  scrape  with 
the  watch  at  Epsom.  In  1685  he  was  appointed  English  Resident 
at  Ratisbon,  an  important  post,  because  the  Diet  of  the  Empire  was 
held  there.  From  this  time  onwards  we  have  letters  of  his,  and  the 
old  story  that  he  died  by  falling  downstairs  vino  gravatus  has  no 
authority ;  it  is  pretty  certain  that  wherever  he  died  it  was  not  at 
Ratisbon,  and  there  is  fair,  though  not  certain,  evidence  that  it  was 
at  Paris  before  February  1691.  In  that  case  he  had  probably 
followed  the  fortunes  of  James  II. 

Etherege's  three  plays  are  very  interesting ;  they  are  decidedly 
clever,  and  they  have  certainly  some  arrears  of  credit  due  to  them  in 
consequence  of  the  priority  too  often  denied  on  the  strength  of  the 
gasconades  of  Wycherley.  But  their  positive  merit  is  perhaps  some- 
what less  than  might  be  gathered  from  the  remarks  of  some  of  their 

1  Ed.  Verity,  I/Dndon,  i888. 


CHAP.  II  THE   AGE   OF   DRYDEN  —  DRAMA  487 

late  panegyrists.  Love  vt  a  Tub  is  at  least  as  formless  a  thing  as 
The  Wild  Gallant  itself,  and,  like  that,  is  a  sort  of  hotch-potch  of 
Jonson,  Fletcher,  and  others,  though,  unlike  that,  it  has  couplet  pas- 
sages. The  serious  part  (for  there  is  a  serious  part)  is  beneath  con- 
tempt ;  we  have  Middleton's  own  fashion  turned  inside  out,  and  worth- 
less tragic  scenes  tied  to  comic  ones  of  some  value.  But  even  these  last 
are  very  unequal,  and  the  title-passages,  those  in  which  a  French  valet 
is  imprisoned  in  a  tub,  are  farce  of  the  lowest.  There  is  a  good  duel, 
and  it  is  to  Etherege's  credit  that  the  cloven  foot  of  Restoration 
comedy  —  the  passionless  and  malevolent  licentiousness  of  too  much 
thereof — does  not  appear.  She  would  if  She  could  is  a  great  advance 
as  a  play,  though  the  less  said  about  its  morals  the  better.  It  is 
thoroughly  spirixed.  The  heroine  is  amusing  but  not  individual ;  her 
girl  companions  are  rather  good,  but  not  better  than  Dryden's ;  the 
Prince  Charming  of  the  piece  has  still  not  descended  to  Restoration 
level.  In  the  third,  Sir  Fopling  Flutter,  the  wit  and  the  composi- 
tion are  again  improved  as  the  ethics  and  aesthetics  are  lowered. 
Dorimant,  the  hero,  has  been  variously  said  to  be  a  study  from 
Rochester  and  from  the  author  himself;  it  seems  pretty  certain  that 
Sir  Fopling  is  a  known  character,  Sir  Car  Scrope,  and  that  Medley  is 
Sedley.  However  this  may  be  (and  it  is  of  small  importance),  the 
piece  is  a  typical  example  of  the  style  by  an  author  who  had  made 
his  debut  earlier  than  any  other  practitioner.  It  has  plenty  of  wit,  a 
considerable  advance  in  stage  merits  on  the  earlier  comedy,  and  a 
much  more  direct  presentation  of  manners. 

In  1668  appeared  two  other  comic  dramatists,  neither  of  whom 
quite  hit  the  new  way  of  comic  writing,  but  both  of  whom,  as  well  as 
a  third,  the  notorious  Mrs.  Behn,  preceded  Wycherley's  certain 
appearance.     Thomas  Shadwell  ^  was  born  of  a  good  Nor-  ^^ 

folk    family   in    1640.      We    know   little   of  his   life,    nor  ' 

any  reason  except  politics  (he  was  a  violent  Whig)  for  the  sudden 
change  of  a  friendship  which  had  certainly  existed  between  him  and 
Dryden  into  the  enmity  which  drew  from  him  the  virulent  though 
ineffective  libel  entitled  The  Medal  of  John  Bayes,  and  provoked 
the  crushing  retorts  of  MacFlecknoc  and  the  "  Og  "  passage  in  the 
second  part  of  Absalom  and  Achitophel.  He  was  rewarded  at  the 
Revolution  with  Dryden's  forfeited  laureateship,  but  died  soon  after- 
wards. Shadwell.  who  had  a  certain  propensity  to  stimulants  not 
merely  alcoholic  (he  is  said  to  have  been  an  opium-eater),  is  said 
also   to   have    been   an    agreeable    companion,    and   of    a   wit   much 

1  The  only  complete  edition  of  Shadwell  (4  vols.  172c)  is  very  scarce  and 
dear,  most  copies  having  perished  in  a  fire.  But  just  after  his  death  some  sets  of 
the  current  copies  of  all  his  plays,  including  the  posthumous  I'olunUcrs,  wcie 
bound  up  in  2  vols.  410,  and  sometimes  occur.     I  use  this  issue. 


488  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  vin 

lighter  in  conversation  than  in  writing.  His  plays,  however,  though 
as  mere  literature  deserving  everything  that  Dryden  has  said  of 
him,  are  yet  by  no  means  contemptible,  and  he  himself  provoked  the 
oblivion  which  has  fallen  upon  them.  Of  his  seventeen  pieces 
the  first,  The  Sullen  Lovers,  both  exemplified,  and  by  its  pref- 
ace explicitly  heralded,  the  style  of  almost  all  —  a  style  closely 
modelled  on  Jonson's,  and  devoted  still  to  the  setting  forth  of 
"  humours,"  very  loosely  compacted  into  a  play.  Besides  his  in- 
ability to  "write,"  Shadwell  has  the  drawbacks  of  a  coarseness, 
excessive  even  for  the  time,  and  an  almost  invariable  inability  to 
achieve  witty  dialogue.  But  by  way  of  setting  to  his  humour  he  had 
the  good  luck  to  fix  upon,  and  the  good  skill  very  fairly  to  achieve,  a 
much  distincter  portraying  of  the  manners,  places,  etc.,  of  the  time 
than  men  far  more  distinguished  simply  as  men  of  letters  have 
managed.  Scott  and  Macaulay  have  been  almost  wholly  indebted 
to  his  Squire  of  Alsatia  (1689)  for  their  pictures  of  that  certainly 
picturesque  if  not  edifying  locality;  Epsom  Wells  (1676)  and  Bury 
Fair  (1686)  give  us  sketches  of  seventeenth-century  watering-places 
and  holiday  resorts,  which  do  not  come  much  behind  those  of  the 
great  novelists  in  merit,  and  long  anticipate  them  in  time.  Shad- 
well's  playhouse  scenes,  for  all  their  clumsy  writing,  have  a  nature 
altogether  different  from  the  brilliant  artificiality  which,  if  it  became 
more  brilliant,  also  became  much  more  artificial  in  the  progress  from 
Etherege  to  Congreve.  If  Shadwell  imagined  little,  he  heard  and 
saw  much,  and  he  enables  us  in  turn  to  see  and  hear  such  things  as 
the  question  and  answer  of  his  fops  about  town  — 

(^•)    What  play  are  they  playing? 
(/f.)    Some  d d  play  or  other. 

We  know  this  to  be  true ;  and  these  truths  relieve  the  bad  con- 
struction, the  want  of  distinct  character,  and  the  clumsy  and  ill-written 
dialogue  of  such  plays  as  T/ie  Miser  (i6j2),  The  True  Widow  (1679), 
The  Humourists  (1671),  The  Virtuoso  (1676),  The  Scowrers  (1691), 
though  when  Shadwell  attempts  original  drama  as  in  The  Royal  Shep- 
herdess, botches  Shakespeare,  as  in  Timon,  tries  the  terrific,  as  in  The 
Libertine  (the  earliest  English  version  of  the  Don  Juan  story),  or 
mixes  politics  and  Irish  humours  in  The  Lancashire  Witches  or  Teague 
O'Divelly  (1682),  it  may  well  seem  to  the  reader  that  Dryden  was 
rather  too  mild  than  too  severe  in  the  immortal  castigations  which 
he  administered  to  his  quondam  friend  and  gratuitous  libeller.  As 
for  Shadwell's  strictly  poetical  qualifications,  they  simply  do  not 
exist. 

Sedley   and   Mrs.   Behn  ^   have   been  mentioned  before  as  far  as 

1  Editions  as  above. 


CHAP,  II  THE  AGE  OF   DRYDEN  — DRAMA  489 

their  lives  and  poems  go ;  their  plays  recall  them  here.  Sedley,  who 
is  selected  in  Dryden's  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy  {vide  post)  as  repre- 
sentative of  the  extreme  French  party  in  dramatic  taste, 
was  also  recognised  by  others  as  one  of  the  best  dramatic  ^  ^^" 
critics  of  the  time;  but  his  actual  plays  are  not  great  things.  The 
Mulberry  Garden,  which  had  the  same  birth-year  as  The  Sullen 
Lovers,  presents  the  nondescript  comedy,  so  often  spoken  of,  charged 
with  the  new  morals,  or  want  of  morals,  of  the  time,  and  attempting 
repartee  and  Molieresque  dialogue.  Bellamira  (1687),  which  made 
its  appearance  very  much  later,  but  seems  to  have  been  of  no  very 
different  time  in  origin,  is  an  adaptation  of  the  Eumidius  of  Terence, 
in  which  the  capabilities  of  the  subject  in  certain  directions  are 
liberally  developed,  and  in  which  there  are  some  smart  speeches. 
But  it  cannot  be  called  a  good  play,  and  in  particular  abuses  the 
license  of  dramatic  improbability  to  the  greatest  possible  extent. 
The  Grumbler  is  even  more  of  an  adaptation ;  and  Sedley's  tragedies 
do  not  deserve  notice  in  the  latter  part  of  this  chapter,  but  show 
that  he  had  not  unlearnt  the  shambling  blank  verse  of  earlier  times. 
Sedley,  a  man  of  fortune  and  fashion,  merely  wrote  because  it 
was  part  of  the  fashion  to  write;  Mrs.  Behn  had  to  write  for  her 
living.  Her  plays  are  not  as  such  by  any  means  so  remarkable  as 
her  poems  Cwhich  mostlv  occur  in  them)  or  her  novels, 

^irr  1-11  •        Mrs.  Behn. 

but  they  are  numerous  and  far  from  despicable,  nor  is 
there  much  justification  for  Pope's  singling  them  out  as  specially 
immoral.  At  the  same  time  Afra,  if  not  much  worse  than  others,  is 
quite  bad  enough,  while,  like  Sedley,  she  requires  no  notice  in  respect 
of  her  serious  or  tragical  work,  though  this  sometimes  gives  occasion 
to  her  finest  lyric.  The  Rover,  or  The  Banished  Cavaliers  (1677- 
81),  a  double  play  in  two  long  parts,  is  generally  most  praised, 
perhaps  because  it  is  really  the  best,  perhaps  because  it  comes  first 
in  the  printed  copies  and  many  readers  do  not  get  farther.  But 
The  City  Heiress  is  also  a  pleasant  incident  play  of  its  own  kind, 
and  The  Town  Fop,  The  Lucky  Chance,  The  Widow  Ranter,  Sir 
Patient  Fancy,  and  others  reveal  themselves  pretty  clearly  by  their 
titles. 

It  must  at  least  be  said  for  William  Wycherley  ^  (whose  reputed 
claims  to  priority,  it  is  fair  to  remember,  we  have  not  from  himself 
but  on  bad  and  late  authority)  that  whether  he  wrote  first  or  not,  he 
certainly  wrote  best  of  the  comic  authors  of  Charles  1 1. 's  reign.  He 
was  the  son  and   heir  of  a  good  old  family  in  Shropshire,  where  he 

1  The  edition  of  Leigh  Hunt,  containing  also  Congreve.  Vanbrugh,  and 
Farquhar,  has  long  been  the  standard  for  this  quartette.  All.  however,  in  whole 
or  in  part,  appear  in  the  "  Mermaid  Scries,"  and  have  also  been  separately 
edited. 


490  THE  AUGUSTAN   AGES  BOOK  viii 

was  born  about  1640.  He  resided  in  France,  where  he  had  the  advan- 
tage of  the  salo7i  of  Julie  d'Angennes,  Duchess  of  Montausier,  who, 
however,  cannot  have  exercised  upon  him  the  purifying 
yc  erey.  jj^^ygj^^^g  attributed  in  reference  to  her  compatriot  wits. 
After  the  Restoration  he  returned  to  England  and  resided  some  time 
at  Queen's  College,  Oxford,  though  he  does  not  seem  to  have  matricu- 
lated ;  and  he  found  himself  probably  more  at  home  at  the  Middle 
Temple.  He  had,  according  to  Pope,  his  friend  later,  already  written 
Love  in  a  Wood;  but  no  statement  of  Pope's  is  ever  to  be  accepted 
without  corroboration,  and  here  we  have  none.  The  play  did  not 
actually  appear  till  1672,  and  attracted  to  Wycherley,  who  was  very 
handsome,  the  spare  attentions  of  Barbara  Palmer,  Duchess  of 
Cleveland,  which  he  shared  with  Marlborough  and  many  others. 
For  some  years  he  was  rather  a  prominent  courtier,  and  he  produced 
The  Gentleman  Dancing  Master  (1673),  The  Country  Wife  (1675), 
and  The  Plain  Dealer  (1677),  in  pretty  rapid  succession.  It  seems 
to  have  been  after  this  that  he  married  the  Countess  Dowager  of 
Drogheda,  a  lady  nobly  born  as  well  as  connected,  handsome  and 
well  dowered.  But  she  is  said  to  have  been  very  jealous,  and  though 
she  left  Wycherley  at  her  death,  not  very  long  afterwards,  all  the  money 
she  could,  the  legacy  brought  him  only  lawsuits  and  a  long  imprison- 
ment for  debt.  As  a  very  old  man  he  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Pope,  succeeded  at  the  death  of  his  father,  who  must  have  been  a 
nonagenarian,  to  the  family  estate,  married  again  and  settled  a 
jointure  on  his  wife,  and  died  immediately  afterwards  in  171 5. 

He  seems  to  have  earned  the   liking  as  well  as  the  admiration  of 
his  contemporaries,  and  while  they  recognised 

The  satire,  wit,  and  strength  of  manly  Wycherley, 

they  do  not  seem  to  have  attributed  to  him  any  of  the  ill-nature  which 
we  see  in  his  own  Manly.  His  ability  is  shown  within  a  rather  small 
compass.  Love  in  a  Wood  is  not  superior,  or  very  little  superior,  to 
most  of  the  comedies  mentioned  in  the  last  few  paragraphs,  and 
though  it  is  unjust  to  call  The  Ge  title  man  Dancing  Master,  as 
Hazlitt  has  called  it,  a  "  long,  foolish  farce,"  it  has  no  great  merit. 
But  The  Country  Wife  and  The  Plain  Dealer  (the  latter  an  extremely 
free  following  of  Moli^re's  Misanthrope')  are  simply  the  strongest  and 
wittiest  plays  of  the  comic  kind  produced  in  England  between  Fletcher 
and  Congreve,  that  is  to  say,  for  more  than  sixty  years.  They  are 
deeply  tarred  with  the  Restoration  brush  of  coarseness,  so  much  so 
that  even  the  next  century,  little  troubled  as  it  was  with  squeamish- 
ness,  had  to  adjust  the  plot  of  The  Coutitry  Wife  to  more  decent 
and  savoury  conditions.     Nor  have  they  any  prominent  merit  of  con- 


CHAP.  II  THE  AGE  OF   DRYD EN  — DRAMA  491 

struction  ;  it  has  been  said  that  no  plays  of  this  period  have.  But 
Wycherley  has  made  great  progress  in  the  type-character  of  his 
French  originals  over  all  his  contemporaries ;  he  has  some  very 
original  figures,  such  as  the  Widow  Blackacre  of  The  Plain  Dealer. 
And,  above  all,  he  has  discovered  and  put  in  practice,  to  no  small 
measure  and  extent,  the  particular  forte  of  his  own  kind  in  his  own 
time.  Etherege,  Sedley,  even  Dryden,  though  it  was  out  of  his 
way,  had  all  been  trying  to  hit  off  the  smart  repartee  and  sparkling 
dialogue  which  Moli^re  had  given  in  French.  But  Wycherley  was 
the  first  who  did  this  really  well  and  pretty  constantly.  It  is  true 
that  the  fault  of  the  style  makes  its  appearance  with  the  merits.  It 
cannot  be  said  that  the  action  of  The  Country  Wife,  to  take  the  earliest 
instance,  at  all  requires,  or  is  to  any  appreciable  degree  helped  by, 
the  hit-or-miss  witticisms  which  Horner  and  his  friends  allow  them- 
selves for  pages  in  the  very  first  scene  of  the  very  first  act.  But  in 
hardly  any  Restoration  play  have  we  any  better  action,  and  here  we, 
at  any  rate,  have  the  tongue-fence  to  amuse  ourselves  with  instead. 

Some  of  the  writers  chiefly  noticeable  as  tragedians  wrote  comedies, 
but  hardly  anything  of  theirs  deserves  actual  notice  except  the  Sir 
Courtly  Nice  o{  Crovine.  {vide  infra).  But  there  is  one  other  famous 
comic  work  of  the  reign  of  Charles  II.  which  must  be      ,    „  , 

II         -1  .     ,  •     ^»-.7       »-.    J  71     ^    ^       \  •!  1    The  Rehearsal. 

dealt  with,  and  that  is  The  Rehearsal^  (1671),  attributed 
to  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  but  pretty  certainly  the  work  in  the  main 
of  coadjutors,  who  included  even  the  Roman  hand  of  Butler  himself. 
From  the  first  the  piece,  which  was  for  years  on  the  stocks,  was 
meant  to  attack  a  Laureate,  whence  the  name  Bayes,  but  Dryden 
was  not  Laureate  at  the  time  that  it  was  begun,  and  it  was  aimed  at 
Davenant.  Nor,  though  there  are  undoubted  strokes  at  Dryden 
personally,  is  he  responsible  for  all  the  things  ridiculed  in  it.  The 
play  is.  in  fact,  a  cento  of  extracts  or  parodies  from  heroic  tragedies 
strun:r  together  and  attached  to  a  roughly  sketched  scenario  of  the 
same  heroic  kind.  The  idea  is,  of  course,  not  entirely  new,  but  had 
never  been  carried  out  in  quite  the  same  way,  and  naturally  caused 
a  great  deal  of  amusement.  It  has  been  twice  imitated  in  very 
])opular  pieces,  the  Tovi  Thumb  of  Fielding  and  the  Critic  of  Sheridan, 
and  though  the  latter  is  certainly  even  better  than  The  Rehearsal, 
The  Rehearsal  itself  is  admirably  good. 

The  glory,  however  —  a  glory  by  no  means  unmixed  with  shame  — 
of  this  Restoration  drama  was  not  reached  till  long  after  the  Restora- 
tion itself,  and  by  a  set  of  men  whose  knowledge  of  the  brilliant  brutal 
ways  of  that  time  was  mostly  traditional  and  literary.  There  is  much 
less   reality   about    Congreve,    Vanbrugh,   and    Farquhar   than    about 

1  Ed.  Arber. 


492  THE   AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  viii 

Shadwell  and  Sedley ;    and  it  is  this  which  gave  such  validity  as  it 

has  to  the  whimsical  attempt  of  Charles  Lamb  to  excuse  their  want 

The  great     ^^  decency  and  of  morals  in  every  sense.     But  in  fact  no 

artificial      excuses   are   possible,   and   the    least  valid   of  all  is  that 

come  y.  ^y}-,j(,]-|  attempts  to  shield  them  under  the  mantle  of  the 
classics.  The  actual  license  of  Aristophanes,  in  some  directions  of  act 
and  word,  is  very  much  beyond  that  of  Congreve  and  Vanbrugh.  But 
Aristophanes  does  not,  like  Vanbrugh  and  Congreve,  make  faithless- 
ness a  distinction  and  brutality  an  order  of  merit.  On  this  point 
there  can  be  no  •'  transaction "' ;  but  having  pronounced  on  it,  we  may 
proceed  to  do  justice  to  the  literary  merit  of  these  authors,  which  in 
some  ways  is  of  almost  the  highest  degree.  Their  forte  is  still  not 
composition,  which  in  all  the  three  (in  Vanbrugh  perhaps  least)  is 
weak,  but,  as  before,  in  the  amusing  nature  of  the  scattered  scenes 
and  characters  and,  far  more  than  before  or  ever  again,  in  the  un- 
ceasing salvo  of  verbal  wit  which  rings  through  their  best  pieces. 

William  Congreve,  the  greatest  of  the  three  in  their  special 
greatness,  was  a  cadet  of  a  good  Staffordshire  family  seated  at  a 
place  whence  it  took  its  name,  but  was  born  (February  1670)  in 
Yorkshire,  at  a  house  near  Leeds  which  belonged  to  his 
mother's  uncle.  His  father,  a  soldier,  became  a  land- 
agent  in  Ireland,  and  Congreve  was  educated  at  its  then  best  grammar 
school,  Kilkenny,  and  at  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  whence  he  passed 
to  the  Middle  Temple  in  London.  He  began  in  literature  with  a 
prose  tale,  Incognita  (1692),  which  there  have  been  few  to  read  and 
not  a  soul  to  praise,  but  soon  submitted  his  first  play.  The  Old 
Bachelor^  to  Dryden,  who  praised  it  highly,  put  it  perhaps  a  little 
into  stage  shape,  and  got  it  acted  in  January  1693.  Within  the 
same  year,  for  Congreve  certainly  had  the  precocity  which  Wycherley 
perhaps  affected,  came  The  Double  Dealer.  Love  for  Love  came  in 
April  1695,  Tlie  Mourning  Bride  two  years  later,  and  The  Way  of 
the  World  m  1700.  This  last,  for  what  reason  it  is  difficult  to  con- 
ceive, was  not  successful,  and  Congreve,  who  had  already  been 
annoyed  by  the  protest  of  Jeremy  Collier  {vide  infra')  against  his 
style,  left  the  stage  never  to  return.  He  received  valuable  Govern- 
ment places,  wrote  a  masque  or  two  and  some  very  excellent  lyrics 
in  the  artificial  style,  and  died  in  1729,  leaving  most  of  his  money 
to  Henrietta,  Duchess  of  Marlborough. 

Congreve's  tragedy  will  have  its  place  later ;  his  four  comedies 
advance  with  a  singularly  even  and  rapid  progression.  The  Old 
BacJielor  is  not  much,  if  at  all,  better  than  Wycherley,  and  its  hero 
(not  the  title  hero),  Vainlove,  is,  with  a  young  man's  exaggeration, 
made  to  outdo  all  the  other  heroes  from  Dorimant  downward,  whom 
he  copies,  in  loveless  and  joyless  debauchery.     The  Dojible  Dealer  is 


CHAP.  II  THE   AGE   OF   DRYDEN  — DRAMA  493 

a  very  great  improvement,  though  it  is  almost  more  of  a  tragi-comedy 
than  a  comedy,  and  might,  indeed,  with  very  slight  alteration  of 
incident  and  hardly  any  of  language,  have  come  to  the  sanguinary 
end  which  it  very  nearly  reaches  in  fact.  The  characters  of  Lady 
Touchwood  and  of  Maskwell,  her  nephew  and  gallant,  have  a  touch 
not  merely  of  villainy  but  of  sombre  sullenness  about  them,  which 
cannot  but  be  felt  as  rather  out  of  place ;  indeed,  it  is  in  this  play 
and  in  The  Way  of  the  World,  much  more  than  in  The  Mourning 
Bride,  that  Congreve  shows  the  tragic  power  he  certainly  possessed. 
This  shadow  entirely  disappears  from  Love  for  Love,  which  is  all 
pure  comedy,  albeit  behind  some  of  the  merriment  there  is  little  real 
mirth.  Probability  and  strict  stage  construction  are  still  as  much 
to  seek  here  as  elsewhere,  and  no  one  of  the  characters  is  a  whole 
live  personage  like  those  of  Shakespeare  in  the  drama  before,  and 
those  of  Fielding  in  the  novel  later.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  there 
is  hardly  one  who,  as  a  personage  of  artificial  comedy,  is  not  a  triumph, 
from  Sir  Sampson  Legend,  the  testy  father,  though  his  sons  Valentine 
(spendthrift  and  rake,  but  a  better  fellow  than  most  of  them)  and 
Ben,  the  simple  sailor,  who  was  now  becoming  a  stock  stage  figure ; 
through  the  sisters  Foresight  and  Frail,  whose  simultaneous  discovery 
of  each  other's  slips  is  one  of  the  capital  moments  of  English  comic 
literature ;  and  the  foolish  astronomer.  Foresight ;  and  Tattle,  the 
frivolous  beau  ;  and  Jeremy,  the  impossibly  witty  ser^'ant ;  and  Angelica, 
giving  us  the  contemporary  notion  of  a  heroine  who  is  neither  heartless 
nor  a  fool;  and  Prue,  the  hoyden.  All  these  are,  for  purely  theatrical 
flesh  and  blood,  perfect  triumphs  in  their  kind,  and  they  move 
throughout  in  a  perfect  star-shower  of  verbal  fireworks. 

Yet  Congreve  had  not  exhausted  himself.  The  Way  of  the 
World,  though  in  some  points  it  returns  to  the  mixed  and  semi- 
tragic,  or  at  least  serious,  cast  of  77/1?  Double  Dealer,  is  a  better-knit 
play  than  Love  for  Love,  and  contains  in  Millamant,  the  coquettish 
heroine,  the  queen  of  all  her  kind.  Congreve  has  indeed  borrowed 
the  lay  figure  for  her  —  and  something  more  —  from  an  excellent  play 
which  nobody  reads,  Dryden's  Marriage  h  la  Mode,  but  he  has  given 
her  a  tenfold  portion  of  air  and  fire,  and  indeed  left  nothing  to  be 
done  in  the  same  direction.  Lady  Wishfort,  too,  is  another  masterly 
personage,  and  the  more  sinister  figures  of  Fainall  and  Mrs.  Marwood 
are  full  of  power,  which  indeed,  in  one  way  or  another,  few  of  the 
characters  lack.  What  none  of  them  lack  is  wit,  the  mere  writing 
of  the  play  being  better  than  that  of  Lj)ve  for  Love  itself. 

Sir  John  Vanjjrugh,  at  least  the  rival  of  Congreve  at  his  best,  but 
far  more  unequal,  was  born  no  one  seems  quite  to  know  where  or 
when.  He  himself,  perhaps  in  joke,  said  that  the  place  was  the 
Bastille,  and  he  was  certainly  much  abroad,  tliough  his  family  .seems 


494 


THE   AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viil 


to  have  been  long  transferred  from  the  Netherlands  to  England. 
The  date  is  supposed  to  have  been  about  1666.  He  was  a  soldier, 
a  herald  (he  became  Clarencieux  King-at-Arms),  and 
Vanbrugh.  jj^^jgj.jy  ^  ^,g,.y  ^yell-known  architect,  Blenheim  and  Castle 
Howard  being  only  the  greatest  of  his  performances  in  this  line,  from 
which  some  structural  advantages  have  been  good-naturedly  argued 
to  his  plays.  We  hear  positively  of  him  first  in  1695,  when  he  was 
appointed  by  Evelyn  secretary  to  the  Greenwich  Hospital  Commission  ; 
and  two  years  later,  in  1697,  his  first  play,  T/ie  Relapse,  appeared. 
Next  year  came  The  Prorwked  Wife,  and  the  last  on  which  his 
reputation  rests,  The  Confederacy,  in  1705.  Vanbrugh  wrote  several 
others,  but  they  were  mostly  translations  or  adaptations  from  Moliere 
and  Boursault,  and  of  little  value,  though  his  unfinished  fonniey  to 
London  has  stronger  points.  He  was  knighted  in  1714,  at  the 
coming  of  the  Hanoverians,  and  died  in  1726. 

It  is  a  little  odd  that  The  Relapse  is  an  avowed  continuation  of  a 
play  by  another  dramatist,  Colley  Cibber  (see  below),  produced  the 
year  before,  and  entitled  Love's  Last  Shift.  Vanbrugh  kept  the 
characters,  but  treated  them  in  a  style  to  which  Cibber  (who  himself 
acted  in  the  sequel)  had  no  pretensions.  Lord  Foppington  (the  Sir 
Novelty  Fashion  of  the  earlier  play)  is  the  last  and  by  far  the  best  of 
the  line  begun  by  Sir  Fopling  Flutter ;  indeed,  he  forms  a  better  pair 
to  Congreve's  Millamant  than  anything  of  Congreve's  own  ;  and  his 
final  resignation  to  his  brother  of  the  bride  of  whom  that  cadet  has 
cheated  him,  "  Dear  Tam,  since  things  are  thus  fallen  aut,  prithee, 
give  me  leave  to  wish  you  jay  !  I  do  it  de  bon  ccear,  strike  me 
dumb!  You  have  married  a  woman  beautiful  in  her  person, 
charming  in  her  airs,  prudent  in  her  canduct,  canstant  in  her  inclina- 
tions, and  of  a  nice  marality,  split  my  windpipe!"  reaches  the  sub- 
lime of  the  comic.  The  Provoked  Wife  and  The  Confederacy, 
though  a  little  less  witty,  are  perhaps  better  as  plays,  and  certainly 
more  original.  Sir  John  Brute,  the  hero  of  the  first-named,  has  been 
very  highly  praised,  and  deserves  the  praise,  with  the  limitations 
already  made,  that  he  is  rather  a  type  than  an  individual,  and  that 
his  life  is  stage  life.  The  Confederacy  is  the  most  uniform,  the  best 
moving,  and  perhaps  the  best  charactered,  of  all  Vanbrugh 's  plays, 
and  it  is  particularly  noticeable  for  the  author's  having  dared  to  make 
It  a  middle-class  play  throughout.  The  lords  and  baronets  so 
common  in  the  Restoration  drama  vanish,  to  be  replaced  by  a  pair 
of  money-scriveners  (like  the  fathers  of  Milton  and  Gray),  their  wives 
and  families,  a  dealer  in  old  clothes  and  money-lending,  and  her  son, 
etc.  But  with  the  loss  in  gentility  there  is  a  gain  in  liveliness,  and 
Corinna,  the  heroine,  if  still  a  little  stagey,  has  stage  life  to  the  full. 
George  Farquhar,  the  last  and  youngest  of  the  trio,  was  the  son 


CHAP.  II  THE  AGE   OF   DRYDEN  — DRAMA  495 

of  a  clergyman,  and  was  born  at  Londonderry  in  1678.  As  his  first 
comedy,  Love  and  a  Bottle,  was  produced  the  year  after  Vanbrugh's 
Relapse,  he  was  on  a  level  with,  and  almost  in  advance  of, 
the  rest  of  his  group  in  early  writing.  He  had  previously  '"^^  ^^' 
been  an  undergraduate  of  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  an  actor  (he  is 
said  to  have  left  the  stage  because  he  nearly  killed  a  brother  actor  by 
accident  in  a  stage  duel),  and  an  officer  in  the  army ;  nor  did  he  give 
up  this  latter  profession  till  just  before  his  death,  which  happened  in 
his  thirtieth  year.  He  had  married,  and,  it  is  said,  had  experienced 
one  of  the  tricks  so  common  on  the  stage  of  his  time,  being  deceived 
by  his  wife  as  to  her  fortune.  But  he  is  also  said  to  have  in  no 
way  punished  her  for  her  deceit ;  indeed,  the  general  tradition  of  him 
is  of  a  good-natured  and  amiable,  though  slightly  feather-brained, 
person.  This  tradition  was  possibly  founded  on,  and  is  certainly  not 
out  of  harmony  with,  the  seven  plays  which  (with  some  miscellanies  in 
prose  and  verse)  he  left  behind  him.  For  these  plays  are  much  more 
good-natured  than  those  of  Congreve  and  Vanbrugh,  though  there  is 
looseness  enough  in  their  morality.  They  also  exhibit  a  steady 
improvement,  which,  considering  the  author's  youth  at  his  death, 
makes  it  probable  that  he  would  have  done  things  even  better  tlian 
the  Beaux-Stratagem  had  he  lived.  Lo7'e  and  a  Bottle,  the  first,  is 
no  great  thing,  being  almost  undistinguishable,  except  that  it  has  a 
little  more  of  the  new  wit,  from  many  plays  of  many  writers.  T/ie 
Constant  Couple,  or  a  Trip  to  the  Jubilee,  and  Sir  Harry  Wildair, 
two  plays  connected  after  a  fashion  in  which  the  time  took  pleasure 
as  first  and  second  part,  and  presenting  some  resemblances  in  scheme 
to  Cibber  and  Vanbrugh's  pair,  have  more  merit.  But  they  probably 
owed  most  of  their  popularity  with  their  own  and  succeeding  genera- 
tions to  the  impudent  ease  with  which  the  favourite  actress,  Peg 
Woffington,  in  man's  clothes,  played  Sir  Harry.  The  Incofistant  and 
The  Way  to  win  Him  are  far  from  achieving  the  excellence  of  the 
last  pair,  7 he  Recruiting  Officer  and  The  Beaux-Stratagent.  There 
is  a  vividness  and  gusto  about  the  scenes  of  the  first,  and  the  parts  of 
Captain  Plume  and  his  sergeant  Kite,  which  at  least  does  not  dis- 
courage the  supposition  that  Farquhar  drew  on  his  personal  experiences 
in  recruiting  and  country  quarters ;  though,  if  "  Silvia "  be  the 
damsel  who  deceived  him,  his  magnanimity  was  certainly  not  small. 
The  Beaux-Stratagem,  which,  though  not  much  to  boast  of  from  the 
moral  point  of  view,  is  one  of  the  least  morally  objectionable  plays  of 
the  whole  set,  also  deserves  the  repute  it  has  retained  above  almost 
all  of  them  by  the  liveliness  of  the  incidents  and  dialogues,  the  happy 
humour-characters  of  the  servant  Scrub  and  Boniface  the  rascally 
landlord,  the  ingenious  imjiudence  of  Archer,  and  tlie  well-written 
parts  of  Squire  and  Mrs.  Sullen. 


496  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  BOOK  viil 

The  protest  of  Jeremy  Collier  (see  next  chapter)  either  produced, 
or  more  probably  coincided  with,  a  certain  change  of  public  taste  in 
comedy,  and  though  the  plays  from  1700  onwards  are  by  no  means 
remarkable,  as  a  rule,  for  squeamishness,  they  are  not  merely  freer 
from  "immorality  and  profaneness,"  but  distinctly  humaner  in  tone, 
than  those  of  the  forty  years  between  1660  and  1700.  They  are  also 
much  worse  as  literature.  Those  of  Steele  and  Addison  had  best  be 
noticed  with  other  works  of  their  respective  writers,  but  two  drama- 
tists who  belong  to  both  periods  —  to  the  earlier  in  general  style,  to 
the  later  in  a  certain  modification  of  the  ranker  features  of  the 
Restoration  play — may  be  despatched  here.  One  of  them,  indeed, 
Colley  Cibber,^  has  been  mentioned  already,  and  will  be 
mentioned  yet  again  in  connection  with  Pope.  He  was 
born  in  1671,  the  son  of  a  sculptor  of  much  note  and  some  merit, 
and  became  an  actor  and  playwright  early,  as  well  as  later  Poet- 
Laureate,  being  also  long  manager  of  Drury  Lane.  The  usual  edition 
of  Cibber''s  works  contains  sixteen  plays,  but  he  is  said  to  have 
written  nearly  double  that  number.  Love's  Last  Shift  itself.  The 
Careless  Husband,  and  -The  Nonjuror  (an  adaptation  of  Tartuffe) 
are  the  best  known  of  them.  Most  are  fairly  lively,  but  hardly  any 
is  really  literature. 

Very  similar,  though  a  little  better  at  their  best,  are  the  nineteen 

pieces  of  Susannah  Centlivre,^  who   is   believed   to   have  been  born 

about    1680.      She   was   the   daughter    of  a   Lincolnshire   gentleman 

named  Freeman,  but  seems  to    have  passed  her  girlhood 

Mrs.  Centlivre.  .  .  \  ,  i  o  u 

in  poor  circumstances,  and  as  an  orphan.  She  was 
thrice  married,  her  third  husband  being,  as  her  admiring  female 
biographer  calls  him,  "  a  French  gentleman."  Of  him  history 
records  that  he,  being  a  connoisseur  in  cookery,  obliged  King  William 
and  Queen  Anne  by  condescending  to  superintend  their  kitchen  as 
yeoman,  whence  he  is  indeed  called  by  some  a  cook.  She  died  in 
1722.  The  best  of  her  plays  are  The  Btisybody  and  A  Bold  Stroke 
for  a  Wife,  from  the  last  of  which  comes  at  least  one  universally 
known  and  quoted  phrase,  "  the  real  Simon  Pure."  They  are  nearer 
literature  than  Gibber's,  but  they  are  chiefly  interesting  because  they 
show  the  change  of  taste.  The  theme  is  still  intrigue,  but  it  is 
almost  always  unsuccessful. 

The  tragic  authors  of  the  period  and  their  tragedies  occupy  a 
position  on  the  whole  less  important,  though  distinctly  curious.  With 
all  their  faults,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  comedies  like  Love  for 
Love,  The  Confederacy,  and  The  Beaux-Stratagem  mark  in  certain 
directions   an   advance   upon   all    English    comic    work   before   them, 

1  Dramatic  Works,  4  vols.  London,  1760. 

8  Works,  3  vols.  London,  1761 ;  reprinted,  1872. 


CHAP.  II  THE  AGE   OF  DRYDEN  — DRAMA  497 

except  that  of  Shakespeare,  with  which  they  do  not  compare.     On  the 
other  hand,  All  for  Love  and  Venice  Preserved,  not  to  mention  others, 
do  come  into  pretty  direct  competition  with  Hamlet  and 
Macbeth,    and    are,   with    all    their    merits,    inferior    not   ^"agedy?" 
merely  to  these,  but   to  many  others.     The   difference  is 
not  in  the  least  surprising.     For  poetry  is  not  necessary  to  comedy, 
and  is  absolutely  necessary  to  tragedy.     And  it  is  precisely  in  poetry 
that   the  second   half  of  the  seventeenth   century  is  inferior   to   the 
first. 

The  tragedy  of  the  time  divides  itself,  with  the  usual  overlapping, 
into   two    parts  —  the    Heroic    drama,   already   discussed,    which   was 
triumphant   between  1660  and    1680,  and   did   not  entirely  disappear 
between    1680   and    1700;    and   the   blank-verse   tragedy,     Dryden's 
altered    in    spirit    rather    than    in    intention     from    that      Heroic 
"  before   the   flood,"  which  was   not   quite   absent   in   the 
first  time,  and  which   prevailed   once  more  in  the  second.     In   both 
periods  and  in  both    kinds  the  mighty  craftsmanship  of  Dryden  led 
the  way.  and  despite  the  traditional  repute  of  Venice  Preserved,  it  is 
impossible  here  to  admit  that  any  examples  surpassed  The  Conquest 
of  Granada  in  the  first  kind,  and  All  for  Love  in  the  second. 

The  Rival  Ladies,  which  is  Dryden's  first  serious  play,  and  which 
followed  The  Wild  Gallant  at  no  great  interval,  is  neither  wholly 
tragic  nor  wholly  comic,  neither  whqlly  rhymed  nor  wholly  blank 
verse  and  prose.  But  the  Indian  Emperor  (1665),  following  an 
Indian  Queen,  in  which  he  had  helped  his  brother-in-law,  Sir  Robert 
Howard,  was  his  first  distinct  and  original  venture  wholly  in  the  new 
style.  The  Maiden  Queen  (1667)  is  a  blend  of  tragic,  or  at  least 
serious,  heroics  and  comic  prose.  But  Tyrannic  Love,  or  The  Royal 
Martyr  (1669),  a  dramatisation  of  the  legend  of  St.  Catherine,  first 
exhibited  the  heroic  style  in  perfection.  The  rants  of  the  Emperor 
Maximin  and  the  preposterous  character  of  some  of  the  incidents 
were  bywords  even  in-  their  own  day,  but  the  splendid  rhetoric  of 
the  best  passages,  the  rattling  single-stick  play  of  the  rhyming 
dialogue,  and  the  really  noble  sentiment  of  much  of  it,  almost  excuse 
the  enthusiasm  of  audiences  for  a  style  full  of  the  most  glaring  faults. 
This  is  still  more  the  case  with  the  two  parts  of  The  Conquest  of 
Granada  (1670),  which  brought  tlie  kind  to  its  highest  perfection, 
purged  it  of  some  of  the  absurdities  which  were  not,  as  most  were, 
inherent,  and  certainly  contains  many  of  the  best  pieces  of  declama- 
tion, and  not  a  few  of  not  the  worst  pieces  of  poetry,  in  the  English 
language. 

The  Rehearsal  came  out  very  shortly,  but  it  did  not  in  the  least 
"kill"  heroics,  which  continued  to  flourish.  For  a  time,  indeed, 
Dryden   chiefly  wrote    comedies    or    tragi-comedies ;    but    the    most 

2K 


498  THE   AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  viii 

curious  of  all  his  experiments,  the  "  tagging "  of  Paradise  Lost 
into  a  drama,  Tlie  State  of  Innocence,  which  is  half  an  opera  and 
more  than  half  a  Heroic  play,  shows  the  undiminished  popularity  of 
the  style.  And  in  1675  appeared  the  extremely  fine  Aiirengzebe, 
still  heroic.  This,  however,  contains  both  indirect  evidence  and  a 
direct  confession  that  the  author  was  tiring  of  rhyme,  the  latter  in  a 
statement  of  the  prologue,  and  the  former  throughout,  in  the  constant 
preference  of  overlapped  or  enjambed  lines  to  the  strict  couplet. 
Nothing  can  better  show  Dryden's  literary  peculiarities  both  in  strength 
and  weakness  than  the  fact  that,  when  he  turned  from  rhyme  to  blank 
verse,  he  actually  took  a  play  of  Shakespeare's  for  something  more 
than  the  canvas  of  his  new  attempt.  It  is  true  that  in  the  identity 
of  subject  of  All  fo?-  Love  and  Antony  and  Cleopatra  we 
verse  pfays.  i^iust  not  see  too  much.  Not  merely  was  it  the  habit  of 
the  time  to  refurbish  old  work,  not  merely  had  Dryden 
himself  a  peculiar  theory  about  what  he  called  "translation,"  but 
from  the  very  infancy  of  the  Elizabethan  drama  itself  it  had  been 
the  almost  invariable  habit  to  refashion  older  plays.  The  really 
extraordinary  thing  in  All  for  Love  is  not  that  it  follows  Antotty 
and  Cleopatra,  but  that,  in  following,  it  keeps  so  far  from  plagiarism ; 
not  that  its  kind  is  inferior  to  Shakespeare's,  but  that  it  achieves  such 
excellence  as  it  does  in  that  kind.  The  fact  is  that  it  is  a  great, 
and  a  very  great,  play,  with  more  of  the  earth  and  less  of  the  air  in 
it  than  in  its  model.  It  stands  on  an  entirely  different  footing  from 
the  travesty  of  Troilus  and  Cressida,yN\\\c}i\  followed  it  in  1679;  but 
the  scenes  which  Dryden  contributed  to  Lee's  CEdipus  and  Duke  of 
Guise  contain  some  of  his  very  best  work.  When  his  apparent  ruin 
at  the  Revolution  drove  him  back  to  the  stage,  the  first  play  he  wrote, 
in  1690,  was  the  very  fine  tragedy  of  Don  Sebastiafi  (which  the  older 
criticism  put  at  the  head  of  his  work  in  this  kind,  though  nowadays 
All  for  Love  is  mostly  preferred)  ;  and  while  his  last  play  of  all.  Love 
Triumphant,  was  a  tragi-comedy,  the  last  but  one,  Cleonienes,  was  a 
pure  tragedy  and  a  fine  one. 

Dryden's  all  but  invariable  primacy  was  also  well  displayed  in 
two  adjuncts  to  the  drama  of  the  time,  one  of  which  it  possessed  in 
common  with  that  of  the  last  age,  while  the  other  was  more,  though 
still  not  quite,  peculiar  to  it.  The  first  of  these  consisted  of  the  songs 
with  which  it  was  still  customary  to  intersperse,  and  here,  if  he  no- 
where quite  equals  the  surpassing  gems  of  Sedley  and  Mrs.  Behn, 
he  has  a  much  larger  number  of  very  high  average  quality.  The 
other  lay  in  the  Prologue  and  Epilogue,  which,  occasional  if  not 
rare  before  1640,  became  after  1660  one  of  the  most  regular  and 
popular  appurtenances  of  plays.  The  fashion  was  no  doubt  much 
helped  by  the  introduction  of  women  on  the  stage,  for  the  prologues 


CHAP.  11  THE   AGE   OF   DRYDEN  — DRAMA  499 

and  epilogues   were   usually,    though    not   invariably,   spoken   by  the 
prettiest  and  most  favourite  actresses.     By  degrees   it   became   cus- 
tomary for  novices,  or  those  who  were  not  confident   in     jjj^   1 
their   own   powers    of  verse    (these    pieces   were   all    but     songs  and 
invariably  in  the  smartest  style  of  the    new   couplet)    to    ^'^°  og"<=s. 
get  friends,  for  love  or  for  money,  to    help  them    out,  and  Dryden's 
own  scanty  income  was  eked  in  no   small   degree  by  sums  thus  re- 
ceived,  while   his   prologues  and   epilogues   to   his   own   and   others' 
plays  make  a  very   considerable  section  of  his  work.     Their  matter 
is  more  unequal  than   their  form,  for,  being  addressed  specially  ad 
vulgus,  they  offered  too  great  temptation  to  aim  at  popularity  first  of 
all ;  and  the  political  savagery  of  some  of  these  pieces,  the  license  of 
the  language  and  imagery   in  others,  must   have   counted   for   not   a 
little  in  his  sense  of  the  necessity,  if  not  the  adequacy,  of  the  anti- 
thetic excuse  formulated  by  Johnson  later  — 

For  we  that  live  to  please  must  please  to  live. 

Dryden's  earliest  and  longest-lived  rival,  or  rather  contemporary, 
in  tragedy  was  John  Crowne  —  "starch  Johnny  Crowne,"  as  Rochester 
called  him  from  some  real  or  imputed  primness.  Crowne  ^  was  a 
Nova  Scotian,  and  is  thought  to  have  been  born  as  early 
as  1640,  and  to  have  died  as  late  as  1705.  He  supplied  "^Scufe."" 
the  stage  for  nearly  thirty  years  with  some  eighteen 
plays,  the  best  of  which  is  the  adapted  comedy  of  Sir  Courtly  Nice, 
already  mentioned,  and  said  to  have  been,  like  other  good  plays  and 
poems,  due  to  the  suggestion  of  Charles  himself.  Crowne  was  once 
utilised  by  Rochester's  spite  to  vex  Dryden,  his  masque  of  Calisto  being 
preferred  to  something  of  the  Laureate's  for  a  court  entertainment. 
He  wrote  a  rhymed  tragedy,  Caligula,  as  late  as  1698,  and  had 
an  inclination  rather  to  the  tragic  than  to  the  comic  muse.  But  he 
is  the  least  notable  of  all  the  tragic  writers  of  the  time  except  one, 
putting  merely  insignificant  figures  out  of  question.  This  one  is 
Elkanah  Settle,  the  "Doeg"  of  the  second  part  of  Absalom  and 
Achitophel.  In  the  early  furore  for  heroic  plays.  Settle,  who  was 
born  in  1648,  produced  in  1673  one  entitled  The  Empress  of  Morocco, 
which  was  thought  by  the  younger  sort  quite  to  put  Dryden  in  the 
shade,  and  was  printed  with  elaborate  engravings.  It  is  curious  that 
Dryden,  losing  for  once  his  usual  Olympian  indifference,  joined 
Crowne  and  Shadwell  (the  very  man  whom  he  was  afterwards  to 
couple  with  Settle)  in  attacking  The  E»iprcss.  Settle  wrote  much 
else,  became  city   poet   and  a  puppet-show   keeper,  and  died  at   an 

1  Among  Maidment  and  Logan's  Dramatists  of  the  Restoration,  4  vols.  Edin- 
burgh, 1873. 


Soo  THE  AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  viii 

advanced  age  in   1724,  half  pitied,  half  jeered  at,  by  the  wits  of  the 
next  generation. 

Somewhat  younger,  and  very  much  better,  were  three  other 
dramatists  who  with  Dryden  exhibit  the  tragic  abilities  of  Charles  II. 's 
time  at  the  best  —  Otway,  Lee,  and  Southerne.  Their  merits  as  play- 
Wrights  follow  the  order  of  their  birth,  though  Lee  is  far 
the  best  poet  of  the  three.  Thomas  Otway  ^  was  born 
in  165 1.  He  was  the  son  of  a  Sussex  clergyman,  and  cannot  have 
been  ill  off,  since  he  entered  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  as  a  gentleman 
commoner.  But  the  stage  had  more  attraction  for  him  than  the 
Church,  though  he  was  quite  a  failure  as  an  actor,  and  for  the 
moment  turned  to  the  army,  where  he  obtained  a  cornetcy,  as  some 
say,  though  others  supposed  him  only  to  have  enlisted.  He  certainly 
served  more  than  one  campaign.  But  the  theatre  continued  to 
exercise  its  fascination,  which  was  made  stronger  in  his  case  by  the 
charms  of  Mrs.  Barry,  a  beautiful  actress,  who  appeared  in  his  first 
play,  Alcibiades.  He  seems  to  have  had  Rochester  for  a  rival,  and 
certainly  had  him  for  a  libeller.  In  1676  he  followed  Alcibiades 
with  Don  Carlos,  a  rhyming  play  of  some  merit  in  its  kind,  and  then 
turned  to  adaptations  from  the  French  and  rubbishy  comedies.  But  in 
1680  he  produced  one  of  his  two  great  plays.  The  Orphan,  with  a 
Cains  Marias  which  is  less  good,  and  in  1682  his  masterpiece, 
Venice  Preserved.  Three  years  later,  having  in  the  interval  written 
a  bad  comedy.  The  Atheist,  he  died  miserably,  it  is  said  by  choking 
himself  after  semi-starvation. 

His  misfortunes,  however,  like  Chatterton's,  have  perhaps  helped 
his  fame.  Both  in  his  own  time,  during  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
even  beyond  it,  Monimia  and  Belvidera,  the  heroines  of  The  Orphan 
and  of  Venice  Preserved,  were  among  the  most  favourite  parts  both 
with  tragic  actresses  and  their  audiences,  while  Venice  Preserved  at 
least  has  kept  to  the  present  day  a  traditional  reputation  as  the  best 
tragedy  out  of  Shakespeare,  the  only  tragedy  of  great  merit  subse- 
quent to  the  Restoration,  and  so  forth.  It  is  perhaps  fortunate  for 
Otway  that  the  validity  of  these  praises  is  not  often  tested  by  reading. 
There  is  certainly  pathos  in  both  plays,  and  a  good  deal  of  diffused 
tragic  passion  of  various  kinds.  Nor  should  the  utter  worthlessness 
of  the  comic  or  semi-comic  parts  of  Venice  Preserved  be  charged 
heavily  against  Otway.  But  that  prosaic  element  which  is  such  a 
favourite  objection  to  the  time  seems,  to  some  at  least,  to  appear  here 
more  than  it  does  in  Dryden,  more  than  it  does  in  Lee.  Otway's 
verse  has  resonance  but  no  melody,  his  sentiment  pathos,  but  neither 
refinement  nor  strangeness,  nor  always  strict  tragic  quality.     Above 

1  Works,  3  vols.  London,  1757. 


CHAP.  II  THE  AGE  OF   DRYDEN  — DRAMA  501 


all,  neither  in  sound  nor  in  sense  has  he  any  suggestiveness.  The 
declamation  of  Dryden  and  the  rant  of  Lee  pass  in  many  passages 
into  poetry ;  it  is  difficult  to  put  the  finger  on  a  single  one  of  Otway's 
of  which,  putting  the  mere  appeal  to  sentiment  aside,  as  much  can  be 
said.  With  the  elocution  of  the  "  star,"  the  beauty  of  the  actress,  the 
accompaniment  of  the  theatre,  he  may  thrill ;  in  the  study,  and  read, 
he  does  not. 

On  that  side,  indeed,  of  the  drama  which  is  not  literature  but  stage- 
craft, Otway  has  very  strong  appeals.  It  has  been  noticed  by  the 
late  Mr.  Roden  Noel  ^  that  even  his  comedies  are  much  better  con- 
structed, and  present  a  much  more  coherent  fable  to  the  audience, 
than  most  of  the  plays  of  the  time.  And  this  is  still  more  the  case 
vi'ith  his  two  great  tragedies.  Unpresentable  as  is  The  Orphan  to  a 
modern  audience,  its  pathos  is  perfectly  true  and  just  in  itself,  and 
much  more  tragic  than  that  of  Venice  Preserved.  Castalio.  one  of 
the  two  brothers  who  are  in  love  with  Monimia,  has  brought  upon 
himself  the  punishment  which  he  receives  in  the  deceit  practised  on 
her  by  the  other  brother  Polydore,  first  by  his  own  braggart  and 
libertine  sneers  at  marriage,  which  make  Polydore  take  dishonour- 
able designs  for  granted,  and  secondly  by  stealing  a  march  upon 
Polydore  himself.  So  too  in  Venice  Preserved,  though  the  unamiable 
and  exaggerated  rant  of  the  time  appears  in  the  character  of  Pierre 
throughout,  though  Belvidera  is  stagey  to  the  last  degree,  and  Jaffier 
seems  quite  unreasonably  to  vent  wrath  for  the  ruin  which  is  due  to 
his  own  folly  on  the  world  at  large,  yet  Otway  has  throughout  a  fast 
hold  on  his  audience. 

It  is  on  the  literary  side  that  he  fails.  His  verse  is  not  merely 
harsh  and  unmusical :  he  is  deeply  aflfected  by  the  slovenly  collo- 
quialisms and  degradations  of  style  which,  as  we  shall  see  in  the 
next  chapter,  were  at  this  time  jeopardising  English  style  altogether, 
and  which  Dryden  was  almost  alone  in  resisting.  This  drawback  is 
of  itself  almost  fatal.  In  the  dying  speech  of  Monimia.  the  climax  of 
one  of  the  most  heartrending  scenes  and  situations  to  be  found,  out- 
side the  greatest  examples  of  Elizabethan  tragedy,  there  occurs  this 

distich  — 

Speak  well  of  me,  and  if  thou  hear  ill  tongues 
Speak  evil  of  my  fame,  donU  hear  me  wronged. 

To  any  one  with  an  ear  this  "  don't "'  (which  cannot  be  helped  away 
by  resolving  it  into  "do  not"  with  a  slur)  means  simply  gnashing  of 
teeth. 

But  even  this  is  not  so  fatal  as  tlie  astounding  absence  in  Otway 
of   poetical   expression   to   suit   his    poetical   sentiment.       In    ail    the 

1  In  his  "  Mermaid  "  edition  of  Otway,  London,  1888. 


502 


THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 


famous  passages  of  Venice  Preserved,  that  between  Jaffier  and  Pierre, 
the  scaffold  scene,  and  the  rest,  I  cannot  remember  one  phrase,  one 
"jewel  five  words  long,"  that  gives  the  sudden  blaze  proper  to  poetry. 
In  The  Orphan  there  is  nothing  better  than  Polydore's  speech  as 
he  drops  his  sword  and  runs  on  his  brother's  — 


Now  my  Castalio  is  again  my  friend; 


and  though  this  is  adequate  and  passable,  we  cannot  help  thinking 
how  not  merely  Shakespeare,  but  half  a  dozen  others,  Middleton, 
Webster,  Fletcher,  Tourneur,  Ford,  even  Shirley,  would  have  phrased 
it,  nay,  how  Dryden,  and  not  only  Dryden,  among  Otway's  own  con- 
temporaries, would  have  been  equal  to  the  occasion. 

The  stars  of  Lee  ^  were  not  much  more  auspicious  than  Otway's 
own,  though  they  spared  him  the  touch  of  squalor  which  lies  on  the 
luckless  bard  of  Belvidera.  Nathaniel,  generally  known  as  Nat,  Lee 
was  born  in  1655,  the  son  of  a  clergyman  in  Hertford- 
shire, and,  like  his  great  collaborator  Dryden,  was 
educated  at  Westminster  School  and  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 
He  too  became  an  actor  early,  and  turned  from  acting  to  play-writing. 
But  his  mind  was  soon  clouded  by  insanity ;  he  was  for  years  at 
intervals  an  inmate  of  the  madhouse,  and  when  he  died,  it  is 
said  from  injuries  received  in  a  drunken  squabble,  at  the  age  of 
thirty-seven,  in  1692,  he  was  probably  as  much  mad  as  drunk. ^ 
He  was  only  twenty  when  his  first  play,  Nero,  came  out.  It  is  heroic, 
but  bastard-heroic,  the  rhymes  being  not  continuous,  but  interspersed 
with  passages  of  blank  verse  and  prose.  Sophonisba,  the  next,  on 
a  subject  which  seems  to  have  had  a  sort  of  hereditary  attraction  for 
all  the  more  boisterous  sort  of  tragedians,  is  entirely  in  rhyme,  as  is 
Gloriana,  or  the  Court  of  Augustus  Ccesar,  produced  in  the  same 
year.  Next  year,  1677,  gave  the  Rival  Quee7is,  and  the  next  again 
Mithridates.  Both  these  plays,  which  were  the  most  popular  of  the 
author  (the  "  Rival  Queens,"  Statira  and  Roxana,  continuing  for 
many  years  to  be  favourite  characters  on  the  stage),  were  in  blank 
verse,  with  no  prose,  and  with  rhyme  only  used  now  and  then  in  the 
old  way  at  the  end  of  scenes,  or  to  top  speeches  where  a  clap  was 
expected.  Some  of  Lee's  very  best  work  is  to  be  found  in  CEdipus, 
where  he  worked  with  Dryden  on  a  very  fair  level.  The  other 
combination  of  the  two  in  the  Duke  of  Guise  was  not  quite  so 
successful,  though  the  play  contains  fine  things.  In  the  rest  of 
Lee's  work,  which  is  wholly  confined  to  tragedy,  and  which  comprises 

1  Works,  3  vols.  London,  1734. 

2  Another  story  is  that  he  escaped  from  his  keepers  on  a  snowy  night,  and 
died  of  exposure. 


CHAP.  II  THE   AGE   OF   DRYDEN  — DRAMA  503 

Theodosius,  the  Princess  of  Cle^e.  the  Massacre  of  Parts,.  Ccesar 
Borgia,  and  Coiistuiitijie  the  Great,  his  defects  are  perhaps  more 
obvious  than  his  merits.  But  as  his  best  work  is  not  free  from  the 
former,  so  the  latter  are  perceivable  even  in  his  worst. 

On  the  whole,  Lee  has  been  more  harshly  judged  than  any  other 
English  dramatist.  His  foible  for  rant  early  became  a  byword,  and 
was  no  doubt  exaggerated  by  the  knowledge  of  his  madness.  The 
form  in  which  he  wrote  at  least  part  of  his  works  —  the  heroic  rhymed 
tragedy  —  is  the  very  worst  in  the  world  for  bringing  out  the  contrast 
of  bombast  and  bathos,  which  Dryden  himself  by  no  means  very 
often  escapes,  and  to  which  all  others  succumb.  Lee's  excitable 
brains  were  not,  and  could  not  be  expected  to  be,  critical ;  indeed,  he 
flings  out  fine  things  and  foolish  things  with  equal  indifference,  or 
rather  with  equal  enthusiasm.  Lastly,  it  must  be  confessed  that  he 
comes  far  below  Otway,  or  rather  hardly  enters  into  competition 
with  him,  either  as  a  constructor  of  plots  or  a  creator  of  situa- 
tions. There  certainly  is  pathos  in  Lee,  but  it  is  chiefly  given  him 
by  his  stories,  or  by  a  gift  to  be  noticed  presently,  not  by  his  power 
of  appealing  directly  to  the  sympathy  of  the  audience.  His  plots  and 
his  characters  are  all  framed  with  a  view  to  rapid  superficial  effect  of 
sound  and  fury,  and  they  nish  across  the  stage  in  successive  blasts 
which  leave  the  spectator,  or  indeed  the  reader,  not  quite  uninterested, 
not  by  any  means  cold,  and  not  even  wholly  contemptuous  even  of 
the  flatnesses  and  frigidities.  But  they  make  no  appeal  to  symi)athy ; 
and,  but  for  the  one  reserved  point  again,  they  are  too  unreal  to 
inspire  terror. 

That  one  reserved  point,  however,  is  that  Lee  is  a  poet.  It  is 
not  merely  that  his  versification,  though  unequal,  is  far  better  than 
Otway's.  It  is  that  he  has  the  faculty  (as  the  greatest  critics  have 
been  driven  to  express  it)  of  saying  things  "in  a  poetical  way."  His 
finest  passage  of  all  —  one  in  Mithridates  on  Death  —  is  not,  any  more 
than  the  finest  passages  of  others,  absolutely  original  in  thought. 
He  may  have  got  it  from  Raleigh,  he  may  have  got  it  from  Marston, 
with  whom  he  has  at  least  the  connection  that  they  both  write 
Sophonisbas.  But  he  has  put  it  for  himself  and  made  it.  or  re- 
made it,  poetry.     Again  take  — 

To  the  driven  air  my  flying  soul  is  fastened. 

Nobody  but  a  poet  could  have  put  '-  driven  "  and  '-  flying  "  where  they 
are.     Otway  never  would  have  thought  of  it.     And  again  — 

Oh  pity  that  so  fair  a  star  should  be 
The  child  of  night. 

He  not  only  has  the  word,  "the  lovely   chance-word,"   as    he   says 


504  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 

somewhere  himself,  but  he  can  arrange  it  in  verbal  and  rhythmical 
arrangement,  perfect  in  sense  and  sound. 

Thomas  Southerne  —  the  chief  tragic  dramatist  of  the  reign  of  Anne 
—  though  a  lesser  man  than  either  Otway  or  Lee,  still  claims  place  by 
right,  and  Nicholas  Rowe  perhaps  by  tradition.  After  Rowe,  no  one 
who  owes  his  place  in  literature  to  drama  will  come  in 
and  Rowe!  ^^^  ^^^Y  ^^^^  Sheridan,  though  a  few  men  of  distinction  in 
other  ways  also  wrote  for  the  theatre,  and  a  few  play- 
wrights pure  and  simple  may  find  corners  somewhere. 

Southerne  ^  was  an  Irishman  by  birth,  though  not  by  extraction, 
and  was  born  in  Dublin  county  in  the  year  1659.  Trinity  College 
received  him  and  sent  him  to  the  Middle  Temple,  whence,  like  other 
playwrights  of  the  time,  he  proceeded  not  merely  to  play-writing,  but 
to  service  for  a  time  in  the  army.  Although  possessed  of  an  eye  to 
the  main  chance  —  Pope's  well-known  couplet, 

Tom,  whom  Heaven  sent  down  to  raise 
The  price  of  prologues  and  of  plays, 

glances  on  the  one  hand  at  Dryden's  having  doubled  his  tariff  for 
prologue-furnishing  in  the  case  of  Southerners  Loyal  Brother,  on  the 
other  at  the  profits  which  the  young  dramatist  himself  made  —  as  well 
as  of  literary  talent,  he  was  liked  and  respected  by  three  generations 
of  men  of  letters,  from  Dryden,  who  was  on  as  good  terms  with  him 
as  with  Congreve,  through  the  Addison  and  Pope  set,  till  nearly  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  he  died  at  a  great  age  in 
1746,  having  made  the  acquaintance  of  Gray. 

Rowe,  whose  translation  of  Lucan  obtained  the,  at  first  sight, 
astounding  sentence  from  Johnson  that  it  is  "one  of  the  greatest 
productions  of  English  poetry,"  was  of  a  good  Devonshire  family, 
but  was  born  in  Bedfordshire  in  1673,  his  father  being  a  lawyer  of 
some  note.  Nicholas  was  sent  to  Westminster,  but  not  to  any  uni- 
versity, his  father  thinking  it  better  for  him  to  enter  the  Middle 
Temple  at  once,  that  he  might,  it  may  be  supposed,  avoid  the  snares 
of  the  Muses.  Yet,  if  he  escaped  the  fate  of  Otway  and  Lee,  it  was 
not  because  Oxford  and  Cambridge  had  no  part  in  him,  but  because 
he  had  independent  means  to  which  his  father's  death  gave  him  early 
access,  and  because,  instead  of  the  rough  days  of  Charles  or  the 
rougher  ones  of  "Grub  Street,"  the  palmy  time  of  Anne  and  the 
earliest  George  fell  to  his  lot.  He  was  five-and-twenty  when  his  first 
play,  the  Ambitious  Stepmother,  appeared,  and  he  followed  it  up  with 
Tamerlane  (a  glorification  of  "The  Deliverer,"  for  Rowe  was  a  Whig), 
1702,  and  the  Fair  Penitent,   1703.     Jane  Shore,  which   had   been 

1  Works,  2  vols.  London,  1721. 


CHAP.  II  THE   AGE   OF   DRYD EN  — DRAMA  505 


preceded  by  others,  appeared  in  17 14.  Rowe  was  made  Poet- Laureate 
at  the  accession  of  George  I.,  and  received  two  or  three  other  and 
more  profitable  posts,  one  of  which,  the  surveyorship  of  the  London 
Customs,  brought  him  nearer  Chaucer  than  his  verse.  He  died  in 
1718.     Pope  said  he  had  no  heart ;  others  speak  well  enough  of  him. 

Johnson's  description  of  Rowe's  plays,  which  is  not  so  extravagant 
as  his.  encomium  of  the  Pharsalia,  admits  that  there  are  not  in 
them  "any  deep  search  into  nature,  any  accurate  discriminations  of 
kindred  qualities,  or  a  nice  display  of  passion  in  its  progress.  All  is 
general  and  refined.  But  his  reputation  comes  from  the  reasonable- 
ness of  some  of  his  scenes,  the  elegance  of  his  diction,  and  the  suavity 
of  his  verse."  The  elegance  of  all  but  the  best  Queen  Anne  diction, 
and  the  suavity  of  all  but  all  Queen  Anne  verse,  have  long  palled, 
and  Rowe  is  therefore  much  forgotten ;  nor  need  he  perhaps  be 
disinterred.  Congreve's  one  tragedy  is  more  often  consulted  to  see 
what  is  the  context  which  Johnson  praised  so  highly  than  for  any  other 
reason.  Few  need  go  farther.  Southerners  two  masterpieces.  The 
Fatal  Marriage  (1694)  and  Oroonoko  (1696),  are  perhaps  more  un- 
known still,  despite  the  traditional  fame  of  great  actresses  in  Isabella 
and  Imoinda,  the  constant  references  in  contemporary  and  rather  later 
literature  to  both,  and  the  jokes  made  on  the  unlucky  second  title  of 
The  Fatal  Marriage.  They  have  much  less  elegance  of  diction  than 
the  work  of  either  Rowe  or  Congreve,  but  much  greater  tragic  quality ; 
being,  in  fact,  Otway  a  little  further  prosed. 

The  Appius  and  Virginia  of  John  Dennis,  the  critic;  the  Dis- 
tressed Mother  of  Addison's  friend  Philips ;  the  Phadra  and  Hip- 
polytiis  of  his  other  friend,  "  Rag  "  Smith,  owe  such  shadowy  repute  as 
they  have  to  accident,  and  in  the  two  latter  cases  to  Addison's  not 
unamiable  habit  of  steadily  puffing  his  friends.  None  of  them,  nor 
any  tragedy  written  for  generations  afterwards  for  the  stage,  has  real 
merit.^ 

1  A  dramatic  growth  of  this  time,  the  Opera,  derived  partly  from  the  Masque, 
partly  from  the  "  entertainments "  of  Davenant,  deserves  notice.  Dryden,  here 
as  usual,  gave  remarkable  examples  of  it  —  Albion  and  Albanius  {1685)  and  King 
Arthur  (1691)  — while  most  of  his  contemporaries  down  to  D'Urfey  affected  it 
more  or  less.  By  degrees  the  serious  and  "heroic"  Opera  gave  place,  in  tiie 
eighteenth  century  more  particularly,  to  the  comic,  the  partialities  of  Rich  the 
manager,  and  the  immense  success  of  Gay's  Beggar's  Opera,  helping  this  deter- 
mination not  a  little.  The  type  produced,  or  gave  a  home  to,  some  excellent 
songs,  but  was  otherwise  not  of  much  literary  moment. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE  AGE   OF   DRYDEN  —  PROSE 

Tendency  of  Restoration  prose  —  Its  pioneers  —  Cowley's  prose  —  Dryden  — 
Temple  —  Tillotson  —  Halifax  —  Sprat  —  The  Royal  Society  and  style  —  Bun- 
yan —  His  four  chief  things  —  The  English  Rogue —  Thomas  Burnet  —  Glan- 
vill — The  Diarists — Evelyn — Pepys — Roger  North  —  Minors  —  Locke  — 
Degradation  of  style  at  the  close  of  the  century  —  L'Estrange  —  Collier  — 
Tom  Brown —  Dunton 

In  the  last  two  chapters  the  tone  of  the  history  has  had  to  be  too 
often  apologetic.  In  poetry  nothing  but  Dryden's  own  work  and  a 
few  songs  by  others  was  added  to  our  really  precious  possessions ;  in 
drama  the  best  tragedies  have  to  be  praised  by  allowance ;  and  though 
the  best  comedies  need  none  in  point  of  wit  —  and,  indeed,  in  that 
respect  occupy  a  position  unsurpassed  and  hardly  approached  —  they 
are  far  from  invulnerable  in  point  of  construction,  and  absolutely  at 
the  mercy  of  their  critics  in  tone,  temper,  and  even  presentation  of 
nature. 

In  the  third  department,  that  of  prose-writing,  the  age  can  hold 

its  head  far  higher.     It  is  true  that  here  also  we  cannot  give  it  that 

absolute  supremacy  which  some  other  periods,  in  this  or  that  depart- 

Tendency  of  ^nent,  may  claim.     We  cannot  say  that  its  prose  is  in  all 

Restoration    ways  and  for  all  purposes  the   best  prose ;    we  may  and 

^^'^^  '  must  admit  a  regretful  looking  back  to  the  prose  of 
Browne  and  Milton,  or  a  consolatory  looking  forward  to  the  prose  of 
Shelley  and  Landor ;  we  must  confess  that  here  as  everywhere  the 
fall  of  the  poetic  spirit,  the  neap  of  inspiration,  the  preference  of  the 
merely  practical  and  the  merely  prosaic,  is  apparent.  But  there  is  to 
be  set  against  these  things  a  great  practical  achievement.  Until 
1660  it  cannot  be  seriously  maintained  that  England  possessed,  or 
ever  had  possessed,  a  prose  style  suited  for  those  miscellaneous  and 
average  purposes  which,  after  all,  prose  is  chiefly  meant  to  subserve. 
Of  the  style  of  no  earlier  English  writer  except  Hooker  can  it  be  said 
that  it  is  even  conceivably  applicable  at  once  to  plain  narrative,  to  argu- 
mentative exposition,  to  the  handling  of  practical  business.     We  only 

506 


CHAP,  m  THE   AGE  OF  DRYDEN  — PROSE  507 

know  it  in  the  second  of  these  functions,  and,  admirable  as  it  is  there, 
we  cannot  quite  tell  how  it  might  have  adapted  itself  to  the  others. 
Of  all  other  styles  we  can  say  positively  that  for  this  or  that  or  the 
other  function  of  general  prose  they  were  very  plainly  unfitted.  Until 
Ascham,  the  language  was  not  fully  stored  with  words,  not  fully  fur- 
nished with  syntactic  practice.  The  plain  Elizabethan  styles  were 
too  classical  and  not  elegant  enough ;  the  elaborate  Elizabethan 
style  could  never  have  got  a  plain  tale  told  plainly.  The  stately 
pregnancy  of  Bacon,  the  labyrinthine  windings  of  the  Anato/ny,  the 
quips  of  Fuller,  the  dreamy  harmonies  of  Browne,  could  never  have 
been  adapted  to  novel-writing,  to  scientific  exposition,  to  historical, 
political,  and  philosophical  writing  without  rhetoric.  And  of  all  such 
styles  it  remained  fatally  true  that  when  they  were  not  very  good  they 
were  pretty  sure  to  be  very  bad. 

There  are,  here  as  elsewhere,  the  usual  disputes  over  the  exact 
initiation  of  the  change,  and  here  as  elsewhere  the  old  caution  that 
"accuracy  must  not  be  expected"  is  the  true  one.  The  manifesto 
of  the  change  is  no  doubt  an  often  quoted   passage  Mn  ^ 

^.,        ^o.  ,        TT-   ,  \~    ,7        r,         1   Its  pioneers. 

Bishop  (not  yet  Bishop)  Sprat's  History  of  the  Royal 
Society  (1667).  But  the  change  itself  is  manifest  in  the  work  of  a 
group  of  men  —  Dryden,  Tillotson,  Temple,  Halifax  — who  were 
Sprat's  elders  by  five  or  six  years.  And  from  these  it  has  been 
until  lately  customary  to  single  out  Tillotson,  partly  on  the  authority 
of  a  by  no  means  decisive,  and  not  certainly  authentic,  statement  of 
Dryden's  to  Congreve  that  he  had  been  influenced  by  Tillotson, 
partly  from  the  fact  that  Tillotson,  the  first  Whig  divine  of  impor- 
tance, and  a  great  apostle  of  toleration,  common  sense,  and  other 
eighteenth-century  catchwords,  or  (if  we  may  coin  a  much-needed 
term)  czXch-thingSy  was  popular  with  Addison  and  the  Queen  Anne 
men  generally.  But  we  have  examples  of  Dryden's  prose  at  a  time 
when  it  is  next  to  impossible  that  he  could  have  been  influenced  by 
Tillotson ;  the  change  is  evident  in  the  work  of  Cowley  and  others 
earlier  still ;  and  on  the  whole  it  is  far  safer  and  far  more  philo- 
sophical to  take  it  as,  like  other  literary  evolutions  or  revolutions,  a 
"flying  spirit  on  the  driven  air,"  generally  diffused  and  felt  by  many 
if  not  by  all,  rather  than  as  a  deliberately  caused  product  of  this  or 
that  person's  idiosyncrasy,  or  study,  or  simple  desire  of  innovation. 

Cowley  has  just  been  mentioned,  and  his  case  is  a  notable  one. 
His  small   handful  of  extremely  pleasant  Essays  displays 
many  of  the  characteristics  of  the  new  prose,  but  it  is  most       I'^oll^ 
noteworthy  that  they  seem  to  date  from  the  close  of  his  life 
and  after  the  Restoration.     In  his  most  brilliant  piece,  ihc  Discourse 

•  1  It  may  be  found  in  Sir  H.  Craik's  English  Prose  Specimens,  iii.  271. 


5o8  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viu 


concerning  Oliver  Cromwell  (1661),  old  and  new  jostle  each  other  in 
a  fashion  ahnost  startling,  and  the  colour,  form,  and  fire  of  the 
sinister  angel  who  defends  the  Protector  contrast  with  the  almost 
eighteenth-century  correctness  of  some  passages.  As  in  verse, 
Cowley  is  the  Janus  of  the  time,  but  his  forward  face  is  that  which  is 
here  the  most  noticeable. 

What  is  certain  is  that  Dryden  himself  again  heads  this  list  as 
easily  as  he  does  the  others,  and  with  the  same  masterly,  unobtrusive, 
but  far-reaching  craftsmanship.  The  immediate  stimulus  to  prose 
composition  in  his  case  was  the  interest  which  he  felt  in 
^  '  dramatic  criticism ;  and  the  immediate  models  (for,  as  we 
have  seen,  he  always  took  a  model  if  he  could)  were  Corneille's  prose 
examens  of  his  printed  plays.  But  somewhere  about  1665  he  seems 
to  have  begun,  and  while  absent  from  London  at  his  father-in-law's 
seat  at  Charlton  to  have  finished,  a  much  more  important  thing  than 
any  of  these,  the  famous  Essay  of  Dratnatic  Poesy,^  which  has  been 
more  than  once  mentioned,  and  the  cardinal  position  of  which  in 
English  literary  history  has  been  more  and  more  clearly  recognised. 
For  it  is  not  only  the  manifesto  of  heroic  plays,  not  only  an  extremely 
subtle  and  competent  exposition  of  divers  views  as  to  the  different  kinds 
of  drama,  not  even  only  a  declaration,  less  one-sided  than  those  which 
were  afterwards  to  be  made  by  the  century  that  followed,  of  the 
"  correct "  notion  of  poetry,  and  of  literature  generally ;  it  is  a  model 
of  the  new  prose,  newer  even  than  Cowley's,  and  removed  almost  by 
centuries  from  the  style  of  such  still  living  men  as  Browne  and 
Milton.  It  contains,  besides  remarks  on  Fletcher  and  Jonson  of 
only  less  excellence,  that  magnificent  criticism  which  by  itself  sets 
Dryden  almost  at  the  head,  in  place  as  in  time,  of  modern  English 
critics,  and  vindicates  England  once  for  all  from  the  silly  charge  of 
having  been  taught  by  foreigners  to  admire  Shakespeare.  Moreover, 
to  complete  the  value  of  the  thing,  we  have  at  least  three  separate 
editions  of  it,  which  Dryden  seems  to  have  carefully  superintended  at 
different  times  of  his  life,  and  which  allow  us  to  see  the  gradual 
progress  of  the  movement  that  he  himself  directed.  In  the  earliest 
form  'there  are  not  a  few  vernacularities  which  —  by  no  means  always 
for  the  better,  but  always  in  the  same  direction  of  correctness, 
elegance,  approximation  to  a  certain  general  form  of  prose-writing  — 
are  altered  in  the  later.  One  of  the  most  noteworthy  of  these  is  the 
alteration  of  the  old  English  idiomatic  position  of  the  preposition  at 
the  end  of  the  sentence  —  "Such  arguments  as  the  fourth  act  of 
Pompey  will  furnish  me  with,"  to  "those  with  which  the,  etc.,  will 
furnish  me  " ;  "  writ "  becomes  "  written  "  ;  a  word  occurring  too  soon 

1  To  be  found  in  Scott's  Works  and  Malone's  Prose  Works  of  Dryden,  and 
separately  edited  by  T.  Arnold  (Oxford,  1889). 


CHAP.  HI  THE  AGE  OF   DRYDEN  — PROSE  509 

after  previous  use  of  it  is  changed  for  another ;  colloquialisms  grow 
fewer;  the  grammar  throughout  is  corrected  and  straightened. 
These  things  are  interesting  not  only  because  they  show  the  direc- 
tion of  the  general  literary  current,  but  also  as  a  protest  against  that 
exaggeration  and  degradation  of  the  plain  style  itself  which,  as  we 
shall  see,  set  in  during  the  later  years  of  Dryden's  own  life,  and 
necessitated  the  further  "  correctness  "  of  Addison  and  Swift. 

Dryden's  remaining  prose  works  are  very  considerable,  but 
except  his  translations  (mostly  hackwork  in  the  Roman  Catholic  or 
Royalist  interest)  they  almost  entirely  take  the  form  of  essays,  and 
no  doubt  powerfully  influenced  the  general  taste  for  that  class  of 
composition.  The  last  — the  Preface  to  the  Fables  —  is  almost  as 
much  the  capital  example  of  his  style  in  prose  as  the  Fables  them- 
selves are  of  his  style  in  verse.  And  there  is  no  doubt  that  for 
strictly  prosaic  purposes  this  style  is  one  of  the  most  admirable  in 
English  —  correct,  but  not  in  the  least  thin  or  tame ;  with  a  vocabu- 
lary itself  almost  daringly  enriched  from  foreign  tongues,  and  .seldom 
hesitating  at  an  archaism  or  a  colloquialism  when  necessary,  but 
thoroughly  organised  and  ''  in  hand " ;  of  extraordinary  ease  without 
either  over-facility  or  slipshodness ;  forcible  without  the  slightest 
effort,  eloquent  without  declamation,  graceful  yet  thoroughly  manly. 
That  there  are  purposes  for  which  it  would  not  suffice,  charms  which 
it  does  not  possess,  atmospheres  which  it  cannot  give,  is  all  perfectly 
true.  But  Dryden  does  not  pretend  to  give  us  these  things :  he  gives 
us  what  he  has,  and  we  can  go  elsewhere  for  what  he  has  not. 
Meanwhile  the  purposes  for  which  his  own  style  is  suited  are  perhaps 
more  numerous,  and  the  purposes  for  which  it  is  distinctly  unsuited 
fewer,  than  in  the  case  of  any  other  English  prose-writer,  save  only 
Southey. 

Sir  William  Temple  was  a  slightly  older  man  than  Dryden, 
having  been  born  in  1628.  He  was  a  native  of  London,  but  had 
connections  with  Ireland,  where  his  father  was  Master  of  the  Rolls. 
He  was  educated  at  Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge,  and  ^^^  ^^ 
fell  in  love  early  with  Dorothy  Osborne,  daughter  of  the 
Royalist  governor  of  Guernsey,  who  wrote  him  some  of  the  most 
charming  letters  in  English,  and  whom  he  afterwards  married,  though 
after  much  opposition,  for  his  own  party,  or  rather  his  father's,  was 
the  Parliamentary.  After  the  Restoration  he  fell  into  political, 
especially  diplomatic  employment,  was  sent  to  Munster,  negotiated 
the  Triple  Alliance,  and  did  much  other  work,  in  the  later  years 
of  Charles  he  was  tried  in  home  jxjlitics.  but  was  less  fortunate,  being 
perhaps  too  squeamish  and  certainly  too  timid.  For  tiie  last  twenty 
years  of  his  life,  which  ended  unhajipily  in  1699  (having  been  preceded 
by  that  of  his  wife  and  son,  the  latter  in  very  painful  circumstances), 


5IO  THE   AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  viii 

he  lived  in  retirement  at  Sheen  and  Moor  Park  in  Surrey,  acting 
sometimes  as  the  adviser,  though  never  as  the  minister,  of  William 
of  Orange,  harbouring  Swift  and  "  Stella,"  mixing,  not  too  happily 
for  himself,  in  the  "  Ancient  and  Modern "  dispute,  and  gardening. 
Temple's  works  ^  are  mainly  occasional,  and  the  best  of  them  are 
letters  and  essays ;  for  he,  like  all  his  fellows,  shows  the  strong  bent 
of  the  time  towards  the  essay  form.  His  style,  at  its  best  extremely 
engaging,  manifests  the  new  form  —  plain,  but  carefully  balanced 
and  polished.  From  the  agreeable  nature  of  the  subjects,  and  the 
air  of  gentlemanly  but  not  too  patronising  condescension  which 
it  displays,  it  exercised  great  influence  on  a  generation  which  thor- 
oughly respected  "  quality."  Once  (in  the  thousand  times  quoted 
close  of  his  Essay  on  Poetry)  Temple  went  higher  than  Dryden, 
higher  than  any  one  of  his  own  school,  in  developing  the  music  of 
prose ;  in  the  context  of  this  and  in  many  other  places  he  goes  very 
high. 

John  Tillotson^  was  a  Yorkshire  man,  the  son  of  a  violently 
Protestant  clothier,  and  was  born  in  1630.  He  was  educated  at 
Clare  Hall,  Cambridge,  took  orders,  and  after  the  Restoration  ap- 
peared as  a  Presbyterian  at  the  Savoy  Conference,  but 
was  no  extremist  and  did  not  ''  go  out."  As  preacher 
of  Lincoln's  Inn,  prebendary  of  St.  Paul's,  and  then  Dean  of  it,  he 
acquired  a  great  reputation  for  eloquence  as  well  as  for  moderate 
liberalism  —  as  we  should  now  call  it  —  in  politics  and  theology.  But 
he  was  highly  respected  by  all  parties  during  the  reigns  of  Charles 
and  James,  and  he  forfeited  this  respect  with  the  Tories,  not  by  his 
Whiggery,  but  by  accepting  Sancroft's  archbishopric  despite,  it  would 
appear,  his  own  better  reason  and  conscience.  He  died  in  1694.  It 
was  mainly  because  the  older  style,  in  the  hands  of  South,  Bajrrow, 
and  other  great  preachers,  kept  hold  of  the  pulpit  longer  than  of 
other  departments  of  pro.se,  that  Tillotson  acquired  his  reputation  for 
style.  Those  who  go  to  him  now  for  that  quality  will  probably  be  a 
good  deal  disappointed.  He  is  very  fairly  clear  and  easy;  but  he 
has  neither  the  strength  and  variety  of  Dryden,  nor  the  music  of 
Temple,  nor  the  crisp  elegance  of  Halifax. 

With  respect  to  the  last  named  it  is  proper  to  observe  that  the 
work  3  in  virtue  of  which  he  appears  here,  though  there  is  no  reason- 
able doubt  of  his  authorship  of  it,  is  not  attributed  to  him  on  certain 
documentary  evidence.  George  Savile,  who  was  born 
of  an  old  Yorkshire  family  in  1633,  and  succeeded  to 
a  baronetcy  at  eight  years  old,  became  a  member  of  Parliament  at 
the  Restoration.     He  received  a  peerage  as  Lord  Savile  and  Viscount 

1  4  vols.  London,  1757. 
3  Works,  10  vols.  London,  1820.  ^  Miscellanies,  London,  1704. 


CHAP.  Ill  THE  AGE   OF   DRYDEN  — PROSE  511 

Halifax  eight  years  later,  was  a  great  opponent  of  Shaftesbury  and 
supporter  (though  in  a  moderate  or  "trimming"  fashion)  of  the 
Crown,  and  was  successively  promoted  to  be  Earl  and  Marquess. 
In  the  reign  of  James  II.  he  was  strongly  in  opposition,  and  held 
important  positions  in  the  interim  government  and  in  William's 
first  ministry,  but  retired  and  died  in  1695  as  a  private  person. 
Halifax's  political  importance  is  known  to  all  readers  of  Macaulay, 
and  he  is  traditionally  reputed  as  one  of  the  greatest  parliamentary 
speakers  of  his  own,  or  any,  time.  But  his  literary  fame  rests  upon 
a  little  volume  of  Miscellanies  containing,  besides  Advice  to  a 
Daughter  and  some  minor  things,  four  political  tracts  which  had 
been  issued  between  1680  and  1690,  entitled  respectively.  The 
Character  of  a  Trimmer,  Letter  to  a  Dissenter,  The  Anatomy  of  an 
Equivalent,  and  Catitiotis  for  the  Choice  of  a  Parliafnent-man.  Of 
these  the  first  had  been  earlier  attributed  to  Sir  William  Coventry, 
and  the  second  to  Sir  William  Temple ;  but  the  style  of  the  whole  is 
extremely  homogeneous  and  quite  different  from  anything  of  Temple's, 
while,  published  as  the  Afiscellanies  were  within  a  decade  of  Halifax's 
death,  it  seems  extremely  improbable  that  the  attribution,  if  incorrect, 
would  not  have  been  challenged. 

They  are  all  exceedingly  important  documents,  showing  first  that 
inclination  to  the  essay  —  to  the  short,  forcible,  not  inelegant,  and  yet 
first  of  all  popular,  treatment  of  manageably  limited  subjects,  which 
was  such  a  feature  of  the  time ;  and  secondly,  the  progress  which  was 
being  made  in  the  elaboration  of  a  style  suitable  to  such  treatment 
in  the  special  department  of  politics.  It  may  be  observed,  from  a 
comparison  of  many  instances,  that  irony  is  an  almost  inseparable 
accompaniment  and  ornament  of  the  plainer  styles.  For  it  not  only 
does  not  require,  but  is  positively  repugnant  to,  flowing  and  florid 
periods,  involved  construction.s,  and  the  like,  and  it  gives  the  salt  and 
savour  of  which  the  plain  style  is  in  especial  need.  Accordingly 
there  is  irony  in  Cowley,  and  plenty  of  it  in  Dryden.  But  Halifax's 
variety  is  different  from  that  of  either  of  his  forci-unners — drier, 
more  antithetic  with  a  quiet  antithesis,  more  suggestive  of  a  "  word 
to  the  wi.se."  Not  that  Halifax  by  any  means  scorns  a  flight  now 
and  then  —  there  is  in  the  Character  of  a  Trimmer  a  passage  on 
Truth  beyond  doubt  suggested  by  the  famous  text  on  that  subject  in 
the  Areopagitica  (which  Halifax  was  almost  or  quite  old  enough 
to  have  read  at  the  time  of  its  publication),  and  very  well  w^rth  com- 
paring with  it.  But  these  things  are  not  his  staple;  that  is  the 
statement  of  the  case  to  the  plain  man  in  a  jilaiii  way,  yet  with  sucli 
a  shrewdness  and  pungency  as  may  give  satisfaction  to  those  who.se 
wits,  though  plain,  are  not  absolutely  sluggish.  For  political 
purposes  such  a  style  is  the  most  valuable  of  all,  and  Halifax,  beyond 


JI2  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 

all  doubt,  showed  the  way  to  the  greater  but  fiercer  and  less  equable 
genius  of  Swift. 

Thomas  Sprat,  as  was  observed  above,  is  more  noticeable  for 
the  distinctness  with  which  he  puts  the  new  demand  than  for  any 
particular  dexterity  that  he  shows  in  following  it.  He  was  a  Devon- 
shire man,  born  in  1636,  and  went  to  Wadham  College, 
^'^^ '  Oxford,  where  the  example  of  the  Warden  Wilkins  may 
have  taught  him  the  excellency  of  making  the  best  of  both  parties. 
He  wrote  a  Pindaric  Ode  in  honour  of  Cromwell's  death,  but  when 
the  Restoration  came  he  promptly  took  orders  and  became  chaplain 
to  Buckingham,  his  duties  in  that  function  being  traditionally  sup- 
posed to  have  included  participation  in  the  Re]iearsal.  Science  being 
fashionable,  he  became  a  man  of  science,  and  in  1667  published  his 
History  (it  was  then  a  short  one)  of  the  Royal  Society,  taking  in  that 
respect  rather  the  views  of  Dryden,  whom  he  was  libelling,  than  of 
Butler,  who  joined  in  the  libel.  He  was  a  great  friend  of  Cowley, 
whose  life  he  wrote  in  Latin  and  English,  made  a  smart  reply  to  a 
certain  Sorbiere,  a  Frenchman  who  had  travelled  in  England,  and 
became  Canon  of  Windsor  in  1680,  and  Bishop  of  Rochester  in 
1684.  His  record  under  James  was  not  too  creditable,  but,  very 
luckily  for  him,  he  was  made  the  object  under  William  of  a  ridiculous 
charge  of  plotting  by  two  professional  perjurers,  and  reaped  a  good 
deal   of  credit   from    his    manner   of  clearing   himself.      He   died   in 

1713- 

Sprat  no  doubt  heartily  sympathised  with,  as  he  most  ingeniously 

expressed,  the  public  demand  for  a  popularised  style.     He  represents 
the   Royal   Society   as  "  most   solicitous   against   the   luxury   and   re- 
™  dundance    of    speech,"  as   "  beholding    with    indignation 

Royal  Society  how  many  mists  and  uncertainties  these  specious  tropes 
an  sty  e.  ^^^  figures  have  brought  on  our  knowledge."  He 
protests  against  "  this  vicious  abundance  of  phrase,  this  trick  of 
metaphors,  this  volubility  of  tongue."  He  calls  it  a  *'  beautiful 
deceit,"  and  declares  that  the  Society  has  "  a  constant  resolution  to 
reject  all  the  amplifications  and  digressions  of  style."  They  have,  he 
says,  exacted  from  all  their  members  "  a  close,  naked,  natural  way  of 
speaking  —  positive  expressions,  clear  senses,  a  native  easiness, 
bringing  all  things  as  near  the  mathematical  plainness  as  they  can, 
and  preferring  the  language  of  artisans,  countrymen,  and  merchants 
before  that  of  wits  or  scholars."  And  he  practises  what  he  preaches, 
though  without  forgetting  scholarship.  But  we  shall  see,  as  we  survey 
the  progress  of  prose  letters  during  the  last  forty  years  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  that  by  degrees  this  language  of  artisans,  countrymen, 
and  merchants  was  very  near  swamping  literary  English  altogether, 
and  that  it  had,  again  and   again,  in  ways  as  different  as  those  of 


CHAP.  Ill  THE  AGE  OF   DRYD EN  — PROSE  513 

Addison  and  Swift,  of  Johnson,  Burke,  and  Gibbon,  to  be  lifted  bodily 
out  of  its  "  naked  natural  way  "  lest  it  should  display  all  the  bareness 
and  ugliness  of  savagery. 

At  such  a  period  almost  all  writers  are  interesting  to  the  historical 
student  of  literature,  because  we  look  to  see  how  the  change  expresses 
itself  in  them.  And  this  particular  period  is  more  than  usually  so, 
because  a  good  deal  of  the  unconquerable  individuality  of  the  earlier 
part  of  the  century  survives  in  it,  and  prevents  monotony.  After 
Addison  everybody  tries  to  write  like  Addison ;  after  Johnson  almost 
everybody  tries  to  write  like  Johnson.  But  after  Dryden  everybody 
does  not  yet  try  to  write  like  Dryden  ;  the  common  influence  is  upon 
them,  but  they  express  it  in  different  ways. 

In  perhaps  the  very  greatest  prose-writer  of  the  time,  next  to 
Dryden  himself,  the  particular  epoch-tendency  shows  itself  but 
partially,  and  in  ways  socially  differentiated.  Like  Latimer,  like 
Cobbett,  his  two  chief  analogues  in  English  prose-writing, 
John  Bunyan  ^  is  less  of  his  time  in  purely  literary  ""^  "' 
respects  than  of  himself.  Had  there  been  no  Puritanism  he  would 
have  been  different,  or  perhaps  would  have  been  nothing  at  all,  as 
Latimer  might  have  been  had  there  been  no  Reformation,  and 
Cobbett  had  there  been  no  Reform,  in  their  respective  airs.  But 
like  them  he  would  always  have  been  chiefly  himself.  He  was  born 
at  Elstow  in  Bedfordshire  in  the  year  1628,  observing  the  date,  be 
it  noticed  —  the  late  twenties  and  early  thirties  —  of  all  these  men. 
He  certainly  served  in  the  wars  of  Rebellion,  but  whether  as  a  rebel 
or  a  loyalist  cannot  be  made  out.  He  was  "converted,"  married 
early,  and  began,  in  the  time  of  the  Commonwealth,  to  write 
against  the  Quakers.  After  the  Restoration  he  was  arrested  for 
unlicensed  preaching,  and  wrote  a  good  deal.  He  had  license  for  a 
time,  but  was  again  arrested,  and  is  said  then  to  have  written  the 
Pilgrim's  Progress,  the  first  part  of  which  was  published  in  1678. 
In  the  last  years  of  his  life  he  was  not  much  molested,  and  died  in 
1688.  His  work  is  very  voluminous,  but  that  part  of  it  which  belongs 
to  literature  is  chiefly  composed  of  his  masterpiece,  which  was  com- 
pleted in  1684,  of  the  Holy  IVar  (1682),  of  the  Life  and  Death  of 
Mr.  Bad/nan  (1680),  and  periiaps  of  the  earlier  Grace  Abotiuding 
(1660). 

Bunyan  had  no  classical  education,  and  it  is  improbable  tliat  he 
read  at  all  in  the  work  of  any  of  his  famous  prose  contemporaries. 
But  he  was  a  member  of  the  first  generation  which  had  the  unmatched 
English  of  the  Authori.sed  Version  by  heart,  he  could  supply  whatever 
was  wanting   there   by  his  knowledge  of  the  vernacular,  and  he  had 

1  Ed.  Offor,  3  vols.  London,  n.d. 
2L 


514  THE  AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  vill 

literary  fire  enough  in  him  to  have  played  a  great  part  in  any  age, 
merely  by  adapting  his  genius  to  the  current  literary  forms.  He  was 
a  born  novelist,  but  the  prose  novel  was  not  in  any  honour  at  the 
time  of  his  life,  nor  for  many  years  after  his  death,  and  if  he  wrote  it, 
it  was  because  he  must.  And  he  could  have  been  an  admirable 
dramatist,  indeed  his  stories  are  the  nearest  to  the  drama  of  all 
the  great  things  of  the  kind  in  English.  He  is  a  great  auto- 
biographer;  he  might  have  written  great  histories  and  still  greater 
accounts  of  discovery  of  countries.  He  is  not  a  great  reasoner, 
though  no  ill  one  on  his  premises  and  in  his  method ;  nor  (being  born 
when  he  was)  a  great  poet.  But  he  could  see  everything  that  was 
within  the  range  of  his  sight,  and  tell  what  he  saw  infallibly ;  he  had 
an  admirable  wit,  and  one  of  the  greatest  gifts  of  phrase  —  of  picking 
up  the  right  word  or  the  right  half-dozen  words  —  that  man  has  ever 
had. 

In  the  four  great  books  above  selected,  as  well  as  more  or  less  in 

all  his  work,  Bunyan  exhibits  these  gifts  variously.     Grace  Abounding 

has  the  interest  of  autobiography,  and  though  there  can  be  no  doubt 

that  the    inveterate    Puritan   habit   of  pious    exaggeration 

chieFthings.    i^"*  describing  a  man's  own  shortcomings  is  there,  yet  it  is 

made  compatible  with  astonishing  literary  perfection.     In 

the  seventeenth  century  this  passionate  humility  (or  as  some  unkind 

judges   have  taken  it,  this  form  of  spiritual   pride   which    insists    on 

being,  if  a  sinner  at  all.  the  chief  of  sinners)  meets  us  at  every  turn, 

and  it   has   been   sufficiently   common   since.     But   it   is   exceedingly 

rare  to   find   it   presented   with    such   unconscious   yet   complete  and 

Shakespearian  artistry. 

The  Holy  War  is  a  much  more  ambitious  composition,  though 
indeed  ambition  is  an  incorrect  word,  for  that  quality  is  quite  absent 
from  Bunyan.  But  while  in  Grace  Abounding  there  is  no  deliberate 
literary  form,  the  personal  confession  and  the  religious  purpose  not 
obliging  the  author  to  select  any,  here  the  important  and  difficult 
form  of  the  allegorical  romance  is  deliberately  attempted.  As  usual, 
Bunyan's  direct  models  here,  and  still  more  in  the  Pilgrini's  Progress, 
have  been  hunted  after  with  more  zeal  than  wisdom.  He  may  have 
had  such ;  the  Progress  is  certainly  very  close  to  Deguileville  ^  (see 
p.  136)  in  parts.  The  universal  fondness  for  allegory  in  mediaeval 
times  had  been  nowhere  stronger  than  in  England.  The  Renais- 
sance, as  the  Faerie  Quecne  shows,  had  only  changed  the  manner,  not 
the  nature,  of  the  tendency,  and  the  omnipotence  of  the  Bible 
among  Bunyan's  class  at  this  time  had  intensified  it  yet  further. 
But  in  the  Holy  War  Bunyan  has  not  co-ordinated  his  religious  and 

1  See  The  Ancient  Poem  of  Guillaume  de  Guileville  (the  "de"  should  be 
doubled),  ed.  N.  Hill  and  others,  London,  1858. 


5»5 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   AGE   OF   DRYDEN  — PROSE 

literary  senses  as  he  has  in  the  Pilgrim's  Progress,  and  he  probably 
did  not  intend  to  do  so.  The  piece  is,  like  everything  of  his,  fault- 
lessly written  in  its  own  style,  and  abounds  with  fine  passages.  But 
the  subject  is  both  too  vast  and  too  vague  for  the  particular  treatment, 
and  except  for  the  gusto  with  which  the  old  soldier  tells  of  the 
military  operations  against  Mansoul,  the  personal  note  is  wanting,  or 
at  best  emerges  fitfully. 

Although  it  may  seem  strange  that  the  astonishing  literary 
excellence  of  the  Life  and  Death  of  Mr.  Badman  should  have  ever 
escaped  any  competent  critic,  yet  it  may  be  doubted  whether  many 
people  knew  it  till  the  late  Mr.  Froude  did  justice  to  it  fifteen  or 
twenty  years  ago.^  It  is  not  a  very  long  dialogue  between  Mr.  Wise- 
man and  Mr.  Attentive,  divided  into  chapters,  and  recounting  the 
ungodly  but  successful  life  of  a  hero  who  is  the  very  opposite  of 
Christian.  It  has  been  most  unnecessarily  and  unreasonably  regarded 
as  a  sort  of  third  part  by  contrast  of  the  Progress  (which  would  argue 
an  artistic  sense  in  Bunyan  as  weak  as  we  know  his  to  have  been 
strong),  and  as,  in  part  at  least,  a  second  autobiographical  fiction  — 
which  refutes  itself.  But  to  foist  "problems"  into  a  story  of  such 
perfect  clearness  is  quite  unpardonable.  The  style  is  perhaps 
Bunyan's  best  —  less  vivid  than  that  of  the  Pilgrim'' s  Progress,  but 
with  even  more  of  the  special  excellences  of  prose.  Although  Mr. 
Badman  deserves  his  name  with  almost  superhuman  thoroughness, 
yet  Bunyan  entirely  escapes  sheer  exaggeration,  and  even  resists  the 
temptation  to  end  with  a  lurid  death-bed.  Nay,  though  his  sense  of 
poetical  and  moral  justice  will  not  let  him  represent  Badman  as 
prosperous  to  the  very  end,  yet  he  does  not  insist  overmuch  on 
worldly  retribution.  Short  as  it  is,  the  piece  is  abundantly  diversified 
with  episodes  and  ornament  —  that  story  of  "old  Tod,"  told  in  twenty 
lines,  and  told  perfectly,  which  Mr.  Browning  has  characteristically 
amplified  and  exaggerated  into  "■  Ned  Bratts,"  being  only  one  of 
them.  There  are  very  strong  suggestions  of  Thackeray  (who  had 
pretty  certainly  read  it)  in  Mr.  Badman,  and  it  is  scarcely  an 
exaggeration  to  say  tliat,  this  once  printed,  the  English  Novel  in  its 
most  cliaracteristic  form,  as  opposed  to  the  Romance,  was  founded. 
The  little  book  itself  is  indeed  rather  the  scenario  in  dialogue  of  such 
a  novel  than  the  novel  itself,  but  all  the  essentials  are  there.  From 
Bunyan  to  Defoe  (who  must  have  known  his  predecessor  well)  there 
is  only  a  slight  development  of  method,  with  a  considerable  drop  in 
style ;  from  Bunyan  here  to  Richardson  and  Fielding  the  advance  is 
very  much  slighter  than  it  looks. 

The   allegorical    form   and   the   strongly  religious   purport   of  the 

1  In  his  monograph  on  Bunyan  for  the  "  English  Men  of  Letters"  Series. 


5i6  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 

Pilgrivi's  Progress  itself  have  made  some  demur  to  its  being  ranked 
as  certainly  a  link,  and  perhaps  the  very  original  link,  starting  the 
chain  of  the  greater  English  novel ;  but  this  seems  to  be  a  somewhat 
unnecessary  scruple.  A  religious  novel  is  still  a  novel,  and  though 
allegory  is  an  old  form  of  fiction,  and  the  novel  proper  a  comparatively 
new  one,  we  must  not  rule  out  allegories  as  such  from  the  latter 
class. 

Indeed,  if,  discarding  arbitrary  axioms,  we  confine  ourselves  to  the 
real  qualities  of  the  novel,  we  shall  find  it  very  hard  to  discover  one 
which  is  not  eminently  present  in  the  Pilgrini's  Progress.  It  has 
a  sufficient  and  regular  plot  in  each  of  its  parts,  the  two  being  duly 
connected  —  a  plot  rather  of  the  continuous  or  straight-line  than  of 
the  interwoven  or  circular  order,  but  still  amply  sufficient.  The 
action  and  interest  of  this  plot  are  quite  lavishly  supported  by 
character;  indeed,  the  Pilgriitt's  Progress  is  the  first  prose  work  of 
fiction  in  which  this  all-powerful  tool,  which  had  hitherto  been  chiefly 
used  by  the  dramatist,  and  to  a  less  intense,  but  more  extensive, 
degree  by  the  poet,  was  applied.  And  Bunyan,  with  a  bound,  came 
very  near  perfection  in  it.  There  is  hardly  a  trace  (except  in 
characters  like  Evangelist,  where  it  is  proper)  of  the  misty  generality 
which  we  find  in  the  Holy  War.  Everybody  —  from  main  characters 
like  Christian  and  Greatheart  and  Mercy  to  mere  sketches  like 
Atheist  and  By-ends  and  Brisk,  and  the  delectable  person  who  de- 
scribes the  party  at  "  Madam  Wanton's,"  where  they  "  were  as  merry 
as  the  maids"  —  is  alive.  The  description  and  the  dialogue  are  used 
to  further  the  narrative,  in  the  precise  way  in  which  novel  differs 
from  drama  —  the  description  being  given  by  the  author,  not  by  the 
characters  or  the  stage  directions  —  and  are  mixed  and  tempered 
with  an  art  only  inferior  to  that  shown  in  the  projection  of  character 
which  they  help.  If  we  are  told  that  the  Pilgrint's  Progress  is  not 
a  novel,  it  will  be  proper  to  ask  what  is  a  novel,  that  having 
obtained  an  admitted  example  we  may  compare  it  with  Bunyan's 
work. 

The  Pilgrint's  Progress  has  long  been,  and  it  may  be  hoped  will 
always  be,  well  enough  known  in  England.  But  for  something  like 
four  generations  after  its  first  appearance,  its  popularity,  though 
always  great,  was,  so  to  speak,  subterranean  and  almost  contraband. 
It  is  probable  that  even  when  it  was  most  sniffed  at  by  academic 
criticism,  it  was  brought  by  means  of  nursemaids  to  the  knowledge 
of  children.  But  it  was  not  till  quite  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  or  even  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth,  that  it  was  made 
free  of  the  study  as  it  had  long  been  of  the  cottage  and  the  nursery. 
Orthodoxy  objected  to  Bunyan's  dissent ;  dissent  to  his  literary  and 
artistic  gifts ;    latitudinarians  to  his  religious  fervour ;    the  somewhat 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   AGE   OF   DRYDEN  — PROSE  517 

priggish  refinement  of  Addisonian  and  Popian  etiquette  to  his  ver- 
nacular language  and  his  popular  atmosphere ;  scholars  to  his  sup- 
posed want  of  education.  And  so  the  greatest  prose-book  of  the  late 
seventeenth  century  in  English  had,  for  nearly  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years,  the  curious  fate  of  constantly  exercising  influence  without  ever 
achieving  praise,  or  even  notice,  from  those  whose  business  it  was  to 
give  both.     A  curious  fate  certainly,  but  not  an  unenviable. 

The  reluctance  to  acknowledge  the  place  of  Bunyan  in  the  history 
of  the  novel  has  perhaps  partly  accounted  for  the  undue  importance 
sometimes  attached  to  work  so  infinitely  inferior,  not  merely  in 
moral  respectability  but  in  literary  value,  to  his  as  that  of 
Richard  Head,  the  author  of  the  English  Rogue?-  This  '^\jg£"'' 
book  does  possess  a  certain  historical  value.  It  forms 
a  definite  link  between  the  pamphlet-novels  of  the  Elizabethan  time 
in  the  wide  sense  and  (through  the  novelettes  of  Afra  Behn) 
the  work  of  Defoe.  It  represents  the  first  elaborate  attempt  to 
transplant  the  Spanish  picaresque  novel,  and  such  French  imitations 
of  it  as  SoreKs  Francion,  into  English ;  and  it  is  also  interesting  as 
embodying  the  attractions  of  representation  of  foreign  countries  and 
manners  with  those  of  the  delineation  of  manners  at  home.  It  shows 
further  that  extremely  strong  vernacular  and  popular,  not  to  say 
vnalgar,  element  which  we  have  had,  and  shall  have,  to  notice  so 
often  in  this  particular  period.  But  it  has  hardly  any  intrinsic 
merit ;  and,  if  it  had  not  followed  the  moral  license  of  its  origmals,  it 
may  be  questioned  whether  it  would  have  had  many  readers  or  any 
panegyrists.  For  its  want  of  decency  is  almost  the  only  feature  which 
takes  it  out  of  the  commonplace ;  it  hardly  attempts  plot,  unless  the 
rudimentary  device  of  making  the  hero  occasionally  meet  with  persons 
he  has  met  before  may  be  dignified  by  that  name ;  it  has  no  merits 
of  dialogue  or  description,  and  it  is  entirely  wanting  in  the  virtue 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  Bunyan  possesses  in  so  eminent  a  degree  — 
the  virtue  of  character-drawing. 

Thomas  Burnet  and  Joseph   Glanvill  are  the  chief  exponents  of 
the  gorgeous  style  in  prose,  who  were  born,  later  than  Dryden  himself, 
in   the   seventeenth    century.      Burnet   (who   must   be   very  carefully 
distinguished   from    his   namesake   Gilbert)  was   a   York- 
shire   man,    and     his    birth-year    was     1635.       He    was      Burnet! 
educated    at     Northallerton     Grammar     School     and     at 
C^are    Hall,    Cambridge,  whence   he    moved    to   Christ's  and   became 
Fellow  of  that   College   in   1657.     He   took   his  share  of  University 
work,  but  also  travelled  much  abroad  as  a  private  tutor,  and  in  1685 

1  4  vols.  London,  1665,  sq.  Reprinted  recently,  London,  n.d.  Head,  who  was 
a  person  of  some  education,  and  a  copious  bookseller's  hack,  is  responsible  only 
for  the  first  part  of  it. 


5i8  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 

he  became  Master  of  the  Charterhouse.  He  had  already  published 
in  Latin  (1680)  and  English  (1684)  his  Theoria  Sacra,  with  its  sequel 
the  De  Conflagratione,  and  he  did  little  else  in  literature,  though  he 
did  not  die  till  171 5.  His  position  at  the  Charterhouse  gave  him 
the  opportunity,  which  he  duly  took,  of  resisting  James  Il.'s  attack 
on  the  Church.  Burnet's  book  ^  is  a  fanciful  explanation  of  cosmogony 
and  cosmolysis,  in  which  the  Deluge  is  the  great  event  in  the  past  and 
the  final  conflagration  the  great  event  of  the  future.  From  this  point 
of  view  it  is  chiefly  interesting  as  an  attempt  to  combine  the  nascent 
interest  in  physical  science  with  the  expiring  tendency  to  imaginative 
romance.  Something  of  the  same  mixture  appears  in  the  manner, 
for  there  are  touches  of  the  vernacularity,  and  even  the  meanness, 
which  was  invading  style.  But  on  the  whole  the  older  magnificence 
prevails,  and  Burnet  has  a  just,  though  probably  rather  a  vague, 
repute  as  commanding  real  eloquence  of  description,  marred  at  times 
by  a  tawdriness  which  reminds  us  that  we  are  in  the  half-century  of 
Lee,  not  in  that  of  Shakespeare,  but  showing  in  prose  not  a  little  of 
the  redeeming  splendour  which  Lee  shows  in  verse. 

Glanvill,  whom  the  echoing  magnificence  of  a  sentence  from 
him,  prefixed  to  Poe's  Ligeia,  may  have  made  known  to  many  more 
than  have  read  him  in  his  originals,  was  born  at  Plymouth  in  1636, 
went  to  Oxford  in  1652,  took  orders  at  the  Restoration, 
became  Vicar  of  Frome,  F.R.S.,  and  Prebendary  of 
Worcester,  and  died  in  1680.  His  Scepsis  Scieftttjica,'^  an  extended 
edition  of  the  earlier  Vanity  of  Dogmatising  (1661),  appeared  in 
1665  ;  Saddncistnus  Tritimphatus,  a  defence  of  belief  in  witches,  in 
1666;  and  Essays  in  1678.  Glanvill  is  a  weaker  and  less  poetical 
Browne,  upon  whom  it  is  probably  not  wrong  to  suspect  that  he 
modelled  himself.  He  has,  as  a  rule,  neither  the  power  nor  the 
music  of  Sir  Thomas,  but  sometimes  he  comes  not  too  far  oflf. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  divisions  of  prose  at  the  time  is 
that  supplied  by  the  Diarists  and  Memoir-writers,  of  whom  Samuel 
Pepys  occupies  a  position  unparalleled  in  English,  if  not  in  any 
^,    ^.    .        tongue,  with    Evelyn   and    Roger   North  for  considerable 

The  Diansts.  ,  ,  ,,  iri  •  r^-      t    ■, 

seconds,  and  no  small  number  or  other  writers  —  Sir  John 

Reresby,  Abraham  de  la  Pryme,  the  somewhat  earlier  Mrs.  Hutchin- 
son, Lady  Fanshawe  (indeed,  the  letter-writers  proper  might  be  here 
included),  and  others  to  follow.  But  Pepys,  Evelyn,  and  North  are 
those  who  have  hold  on  history. 

The  two  first  were  friends,  but  Evelyn,  far  less  distinctly  original  as 
a  writer,  was  the  elder  in  years  and  by  far  the  higher  in  social  position. 
He  was  born  at  the  family  seat  of  Wotton,  in  Surrey  (of  which,  with 

1  7th  edition,  2  vols.  London,  1759. 

2  Edited  by  John  Owen,  London,  1885. 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   AGE   OF   DRYDEN  — PROSE 


519 


other  property  at  Sayes  Court,  Deptford,  he  was  afterwards  to  be 
possessor),  in  1620,  went  to  school  at  Lewes,  and  to  college  at  Balliol, 
but  was  just  young  enough  to  escape  actual  participation 
in  the  Civil  War.  He  was  a  consistent  Royalist,  and  ^ey"- 
married  the  daughter  of  a  still  stronger  one.  Sir  Richard  Browne. 
But  Evelyn  was  no  Quixote,  and  was  not  molested  during  the  Common- 
wealth. Both  at  that  time  and  afterwards  he  devoted  himself  to 
gardening  and  arboriculture  (of  which  his  well-known,  if  not  now  much 
read,  Sylva  was  the  outcome),  physical  science  (he  was  an  early  member 
of  the  Royal  Society),  and  a  good  many  other  matters.  He  was  a 
fervent  Anglican  and  faithful  to  monarchical  principles,  though  the 
dissoluteness  of  the  Restoration  gave  him  no  small  grief.  He  was 
nearly  eighty-seven  when  he  died,  in  1706,  and  his  work,  published 
and  unpublished,  was  very  large.  But  even  the  Sylva  has  long 
ceased  to  be  read,  and  the  books  most  likely  to  keep  his  name  in 
remembrance,  his  Diary'^  and  his  Memoir  -  of  Margarcc  Blagge  (Mrs. 
Godolphin),  were  not  published  till  more  than  a  century  after  his 
death . 

The  interest  of  these  arises  chiefly  from  their  ma'tter.  In  them 
and  in  all  his  work  Evelyn's  style  is  that  of  a  thoroughly  cultivated 
gentleman  who,  on  the  one  hand,  has  had  the  full  education  of  his 
time,  and  on  the  other  is  familiar  with  the  language  of  its  best  society. 
But  he  has  little  idiosyncrasy  of  composition  or  expression.  He  has 
neither  the  splendour  of  the  old  style  nor  the  precision  and  telling 
point  of  the  new.  But  in  the  little  book  giving  the  life  and  letters 
of  Margaret  Blagge  (the  first  wife  of  Godolphin_  tlie  Lord  Treasurer 
to  be,  who  passed  unscathed  through  the  contaminations  of  Whitehall, 
where  she  was  a  maid  of  honour,  and  died  in  the  prime  of  her  youth 
and  beauty),  a  half-platonic,  half-paternal  affection  has  suffused  warmth 
and  colour  over  Evelyn's  usually  ratlier  tepid  and  neutral  fashion  of 
writing.  And  the  Diary,  though  there  are  many  more  amusing  books 
of  the  kind,  is  justly  famous  for  the  fulness,  variety,  and  fidelity  of 
its  record.s,  while,  not  very  rarely,  in  such  passages  as  the  well-known 
account  of  the  Great  Fire,  and  the  still  better  known  one  of  Whitehall 
just  before  the  death  of  Charles  H.,  the  subject  once  more  rouses  the 
writer  to  real  strength  and  effect.  But  even  then  he  is  hardly 
individual. 

There  is  no  more  individual  writer  in  English  than  Samuel  Pepys, 
his    friend,    though    Evelyn    patronised    Pepys,    as    Pepys    patronised 
Dryden.      He   was    born    in    1635,   of  a   family   settled    in 
the     district    of    Cambridge    and    Huntingdon,    and,    as 
was  not  uncommon  in  the  seventeenth  century,  touching  the  peerage 

1  Ed.  Bray,  2  vols.  4(0.  (2n(J  ed.  i8iq),  and  in  divers  forms  since. 
*  First  published  by  Samuel  Wilberforcc,  and  reprinted  since. 


520  THE   AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  viii 

and  the  landed  gentry  on  one  side,  retail  town  trade  and  the  lower 
middle  class  on  the  other.  His  connection  with  Montague,  after- 
wards Earl  of  Sandwich,  was  the  foundation  of  Pepys's  fortunes, 
which,  after  being  very  humble  before  the  Restoration,  were  mightily 
bettered  by  his  appointment  to  the  post  of  Clerk  of  the  Acts  of  the 
Navy.  He  was  Secretary  of  the  Admiralty  later,  and  Member  of 
Parliament ;  and  though  he  lost  his  positions,  once  at  the  Popish 
Plot  time  and  finally  at  the  Revolution,  he  always  enjoyed  a  great 
reputation  as  a  scholar,  virtuoso,  and  expert  in  matters  naval.  In 
fact,  though  he  was  not  much  (he  was  somewhat)  superior  to  the 
loose  ideas  of  his  time  as  to  what  was  and  what  was  not  malversa- 
tion of  public  money,  Pepys  was  far  more  diligent,  able,  and 
patriotic  than  most  of  his  fellows.  He  seems  to  have  been  in  more 
than  conventional  phrase  "  universally  respected  "  up  to  his  death  in 
1703.  He  left  to  his  college,  Magdalene,  at  Cambridge  (his  school 
was  St.  Paul's),  an  invaluable  collection  of  books,  including  ballads 
and  old  MSS.,  of  which  he  was  one  of  the  earliest  collectors;  and 
his  Mevioirs  relating  to  the  State  of  the  Navy  (1690)  was  and  is  a 
very  meritorious  production.  Even  his  letters,  of  which  we  have 
considerable  numbers,  ^  though  as  yet  no  complete  printed  collection, 
present  him  in  no  other  light  than  that  of  a  man  of  business  with 
rather  versatile  tastes  for  music,  science,  and  (in  part)  literature,  but 
of  no  special  idiosyncrasy  either  of  genius  or  character. 

In  1825,  however,  Lord  Braybrooke,  whose  family  was  connected 
hereditarily  with  Magdalene,  published  in  part  a  Diary  "^  which  Pepys 
had  included  in  his  bequest  to  that  society.  It  had  been  kept  in 
cipher  by  the  author  for  about  ten  years  from  a  period  just  before 
the  Restoration,  till  anxiety  about  the  state  of  his  eyes  broke  it  off, 
and  probably  the  death  of  his  wife  checked  its  resumption.  She  was 
Elizabeth  St.  Michel,  a  pretty  girl  and  of  gentle  French  extraction, 
but  penniless,  ill-educated,  apparently  (though  it  must  be  admitted 
she  was  sorely  tried)  of  no  very  sweet  disposition,  frivolous,  and  un- 
refined. They  had  made  a  boy-and-girl  marriage,  and,  though  a  most 
unfaithful  husband,  he  seems  to  have  been,  with  perhaps  one  interval, 
never  quite  out  of  love  with  her.  The  Diary  was  published  by  Lord 
Braybrooke  with  very  large  omissions ;  fifty  years  afterwards  part  of 
these  were  supplied ;  and  twenty  years  later  again  the  whole,  with 
some    verbal    blanks,  pudoris    causa,    was    issued.      The    successive 

1  Chiefly  to  be  found  in  Life,  Journals,  and  Correspondence  of  Samuel  Pepys, 
ed.  Smith,  2  vols.  London,  1841,  which  also  contains  the  Tangier  Diary.  By  some 
mischance  or  misconduct  the  bulk  of  the  letters  did  not  reach  Magdalene,  and  are 
scattered,  while  many,  no  doubt,  are  lost. 

2  The  latest  and  completes!  (but  still  not  quite  complete)  edition  is  that  of  Mr. 
H.  B.  Wheatley,  London,  1893-96,  8  vols,  of  text,  with  a  9th  of  index,  etc.,  to 
follow. 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   AGE   OF   DRYDEN  — PROSE  521 

revelations  have  considerably  blackened  Pepys's  character,  and  have 
increased  the  surprise  of  those  who  can  afford  any  surprise  at  a 
constantly  renewed  phenomenon,  that  he  should  have  not  merely 
written  but  preserved,  and  with  extraordinary  precautions  insured 
the  preservation  of,  the  document.  But  they  have  rather  increased 
than  lessened  the  estimate  of  his  peculiar  genius.  In  the  place  of, 
or  rather  inside  of,  the  decorous,  diligent  official  and  virtuoso  who 
was  for  forty  years  respected  by  the  scrupulous  Evelyn,  and  who 
majestically  congratulates  Dryden  on  the  comfort  afforded  to  Pepys  by 
his  Good  Parson,  '"after  the  sight  of  so  many  lewd  originals,"  we  have 
an  almost  entirely  different  person.  The  interest  in  some  literature, 
in  science,  in  music,  in  art,  remains ;  the  diligence  is  seen  to  have 
been  by  no  means  merely  affected ;  the  shrewd  business-sense,  and 
even  the  determination  that,  though  Pepys  shall  be  well  paid  for 
serving  the  King,  yet  the  King  shall  not  be  ill-served,  remain.  But 
likewise  many  strange  new  things  appear.  We  find  a  man  insatiable 
of  scandalj  petty  pleasures,  frivolities  of  dress,  and  the  like ;  intensely 
selfish  and  sometimes  even  brutal,  though  good-natured  in  the  main ; 
the  arrantest  of  snobs;  stingy  to  his  wife  and  lavish  to  himself;  a 
thorough  libertine,  and  resorting  to  the  specially  bad  trick  of  using  his 
official  position  to  gratify  his  libertinage ;  sometimes  almost  cowardly, 
constantly  jealous,  petty  in  every  way. 

Yet  we  never  dislike  Pepys,  and  we  seldom  despise  him.  Nor 
is  this  merely  due  to  the  fact  that  every  rational  person  remembers 
and  allows  for  the  bearing  of  a  certain  text  about  casting  the  first 
stone.  It  is  due  first  to  the  fact  that  Pepys  is  intensely  human; 
secondly  to  the  fact  that  within  his  limits  (and  they  are  many  and 
sharply  drawn,  so  that  he  could  not  like  Shakespeare,  could  not  like 
Butler,  could  appreciate  neither  poetry  nor  humour  at  the  best  of 
either)  he  was  intensely  sensitive  to  impressions ;  most  of  all  to  the 
fact  that,  for  whatsoever  reason  —  perhaps  because  of  the  utter  absence 
of  restraint  and  respect  of  persons  —  he  can  express  these  impressions 
as  no  one  else  has  done.  The  Diary  deals  literally  with  the  entire 
occupations  of  a  busy  life  for  nearly  ten  years.  Nothing  is  too 
small,  nothing  too  mean,  hardly  anything  even  too  disgusting,  for 
Pepys  to  record;  he  does  not  know  what  tedium  means,  and  yet  — 
an  almost  unique  instance  —  he  never  produces  it.  His  innumerable 
morning  draughts  and  evening  suppers ;  the  oaths  which  at  times 
interfered  with  them  ;  the  books  which  he  so  diligently  bought,  if  he 
did  not  always  taste  them  ;  his  more  or  less  unlawful  amusements ; 
his  friendships;  his  enmities;  his  very  official  business  — all  these 
things  and  many  others  acquire  in  passing  under  his  hands  a  sort 
of  varnish,  or,  more  properly  speaking,  a  sort  of  saturation  of  immor- 
tality.     It    is    impossible    to    define    with    any   accuracy    how    this   is 


^22  THE  AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  via 


communicated.  Part  may  be  due  to  the  short,  stenographic  expression 
necessitated  by  his  cipher,  to  the  constant  shock  of  surprise  at  his 
astounding  frankness,  to  the  raciness  which  his  observation  of  the 
actual  fashion  of  speech  of  the  time  imparts.  But  there  is  a  residuum 
which  cannot  be  accounted  for  by  any  of  these  things,  or  by  the 
interest,  intrinsic  or  accidental,  of  his  subjects ;  and  this  residuum  is 
genius.  About  genius  the  less  said  the  better.  To  acknowledge  it 
and  enjoy  it  is  always  the  better  part  of  criticism. 

The  most  interesting  of  the  Memoir-writers,  next  to  Pepys  and 
Evelyn,  —  indeed,  more  interesting,  if  less  important,  than  the  latter, 
—  is  Roger  North,  a  younger  son  of  a  family  which  made  no  small 
show  in  history  and  politics  during  the  sixteenth,  seven- 
Roger  North,  ^ggj^^j^^  ^^^  eighteenth  centuries  in  England.  Roger 
was  born  "about"  1650  (for,  copious  as  he  is,  he  neglects  dates 
strangely),  and  lived  till  1733,  most  of  his  written  work  being  the  fruit 
of  his  later  years.  It  consists  of  Lives'^  of  himself  and  his  three 
brothers  (the  Lord  Keeper  Guildford,  Dr.  John  North,  Master  of 
Trinity,  and  Sir  Dudley,  the  Turkey  merchant),  and  of  the  Examen,^ 
an  important  Tory  vindication  of  the  proceedings  of  Charles  II.'s 
reign  against  the  incoming  Whiggery  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The 
Lives  are  the  more  interesting;  but  the  whole  is  written  in  a  curious 
and  very  piquant  style,  strangely  free  from  any  of  the  new  classicism, 
but  as  strangely  crossed  between  the  older  conceit  and  the  new  slang. 
North  is  Harrington  plus  L'Estrange ;  he  will  write  "  This  was  nuts 
to  the  old  lord,"  "That  flowed  in  on  him  like  an  orage^'  "The 
Common  Pleas  thought  to  have  nicked  them,"  with  no  fear  of  Dryden 
earlier  and  Addison  later,  and  much  as  his  collateral  ancestor  Sir 
Thomas  would  have  done.  Which,  together  with  the  interesting 
things  he  has  to  say,  gives  him  no  mean  position.  He  liked  painting 
and  yachting  as  well  as  the  toughest  quillets  of  the  old  law,  and  was 
altogether  a  character. 

Many  other  writers  have  obtained  a  more  or  less  secure  footing 
in  histories,  more  or  less  elaborate,  of  English  literature  as  represent- 
ing the  prose  of  this  time.     The  great,  but  never  fully  co-ordinated 
or  developed,  powers  of  Andrew  Marvell  showed  themselves 

Minors.  j^  j^jg  ^^^^^^  ^^^  mainly  satiric,  stage  in  prose  as  well  as 
inverse.  Algernon  Sidney  (i620?-83)  has  received  for  his  literature 
some  of  that  bounty  of  praise  which  in  politics  has  turned  a  venal 
partisan  into  a  martyred  patriot;  but  the  genius  of  his  family  was 
not  entirely  lost  in  him.  George  Fox  (1624-90),  the  first  of  Quakers, 
has  been  rightly  selected  as  a  sort  of  "prose  Bunyan."  The  platitudi- 
nousness  of  the  Honourable  Robert  Boyle   (1626-91)  celebrated,  or 

J  Ed.  Jessopp.  3  vols.  London,  1890.  ^  4to,  London,  1740. 


CHAP.  Ill  THE  AGE  OF   DRYDEN  —  PROSE  523 

rather  immortalised,  by  Swift,  is  an  unintentional  reduction  to  the 
absurd  of  the  qualities  which  Sprat  insisted  on  as  necessary  to  the 
scientific  man.  Anthony  [a]  Wood  (1632-95),  author  of  the  great 
Athenae  Oxotiienses,  was  a  Pepys  who  bestowed  upon  his  mother 
University  and  her  notables  and  notabilia  what  the  diarist  devoted  to 
dinner,  and  supper,  and  the  wives  of  shipwrights  in  the  Deptford 
yard,  and  taverns,  and  theatres,  and  the  Navy  accounts.  And 
Anthony's  senior,  survivor,  friend,  but  inferior,  John  Aubrey  (1626-97) 
was  still  more  like  Pepys,  and  has  preserved  much  of  such  gossip  as 
we  have  about  great  and  small  men  of  his  own  time  and  a  little  before. 
Edward  Stillingfleet  (1635-99)  ^^^.s  a  strong  divine  and  scholar,  with 
a  style  inadequate  to  his  learning  and  his  logic.  Gilbert  Burnet  (1643- 
171 5)  was  a  Whig  Clarendon,  without  the  genius  and  the  art.  The 
Scots  prose  of  the  time  is,  despite  the  decadence  of  Scottish  litera- 
ture, not  unworthily  represented  by  Sir  George  Mackenzie  (1636-91), 
a  great  lawyer  and  statesman,  an  old-fashioned  but  vivid  writer,  and, 
as  we  know  both  from  Dryden  and  his  own  writings,  an  excellent 
critic;  and  by  Fletcher  of  Saltoun  (1653-1716),  whose  personality  is 
embalmed  by  his  saying  or  quotation  about  the  ballads  of  a  nation ; 
and  by  his  not  quite  senseless  crotchet  about  enslaving  beggars.  Of 
all  these  it  would  be  interesting,  but  is  impossible,  to  say  more  here ; 
but  something  in  detail  must  be  added  of  John  Locke,  and  a  few 
words  about  the  growth  of  periodicals  and  the  vulgarisation  of  style 
towards  the  close  of  the  century,  especially  as  shown  in  L'Estrange, 
Collier,  Dunton,  and  "  the  facetious  Tom  Brown." 

Locke  was  born  at  Wrington  in  Somerset,  under  the  shadow  of 
the  Mendips,  in  1632.  He  too,  like  South  and  Dryden,  was  a 
pupil  of  Busby's  at  Westminster,  and,  like  South,  he  went  to  Christ 
Church.  He  availed  himself  of  his  studentship  to  settle  ^^^^^ 
down  there  in  the  study  of  medicine  and  philosophy. 
He  lost  this  quiet  haven  through  his  friendship  with  Shaftesbury, 
but  he  had  means  and  was  able  to  live,  chiefly  abroad,  till  the 
Revolution  restored  him  and  provided  him  with  divers  offices,  espe- 
cially a  Commissionership  of  Trade  and  Plantations.  He  had  pub- 
lished Letters  on  Toleration  before  the  expulsion  of  James,  but  his 
principal  works,  the  great  Essay  on  the  Human  Understanding  and 
the  Treatise  of  Government,  Ti^^^^iX^A  just  afterwards  in  1690,  and  the 
Thoughts  on  Education  in  1693.     He  died  in  1704.1 

With  the  matter  of  Locke's  work,  important  as  it  is.  we  have 
here  little  or  nothing  to  do.  It  concerns  us  mainly  as  showing  the 
degradation,  the  general  lowering  of  thought  and  ideal,  which  has  so 

1  There  is  no  goorl  complete  edition  of  Locke,  thouRli  there  are  several  lasi- 
century  collections.  The  Kssay  can  be  found  cheaply  in  Mohn's  Library,  and  with 
all  necessary  apparatus  in  Professor  Campbell  Fraser's  edition. 


524  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 

much  to  do  with  the  changes  of  literature  at  this  time.  Locke  has 
abundance  of  common  sense  ;  he  is  not  (whatever  his  followers  may 
have  been)  irreligious ;  he  is  kindly  and  not  ungenerous  in  tone  and 
sentiment ;  nor  does  it  appear  that  he  himself  desired  any  violent 
changes  in  Church  or  State.  But  he  is  wholly,  and  in  a  slightly  un- 
pleasant sense,  practical.  If  he  objects  to  innate  ideas,  it  is  not  so 
much  because  his  acuteness  perceives  certain  obvious  difficulties  in 
admitting  them  as  because  they  are  above  his  range,  out  of  his  ken, 
something  that  does  not  come  within  the  almost  (not  quite)  pure 
sensationalism  of  his  thought.  If  in  the  same  way  he  objects  to  the 
high-flying  theory  of  hereditary  and  absolute  monarchy,  it  is  not 
merely  because  absolute  monarchy  has  been  abused,  or  merely  be- 
cause he  sees  objection  to  it,  but  because  it  is  again  "  too  high  "  for 
him,  because  its  poetical  and  romantic  attractions,  as  well  as  the 
logical  merits  of  its  theory,  which  appeal  even  to  a  person  so  little 
poetical  as  Hobbes,  are  quite  out  of  his  plane  and  orbit.  Yet  again, 
if  he  objects  to  the  older  and  classical  education,  it  is  because  it  is 
in  danger  of  interfering  with  business,  because  it  puts  flighty  notions 
into  men's  heads.  No  very  great  figure  of  the  age  really  expresses  its 
banality  as  does  Locke.  The  eyes  of  Dryden  are  still  caught  by 
the  brave  translunary  things  which  all  great  poets  must  perceive ; 
the  fresh  attraction  of  the  then  novel  mathematical  and  physical  dis- 
coveries inflames  Barrow  earlier  and  Newton  later ;  there  is  an 
intoxication  of  satire  in  Butler,  an  intoxication  of  God,  and  of  human- 
ity, and  of  the  unseen  in  Bunyan,  a  kind  of  intoxication  of  physical 
pleasure  and  amusement  even  in  Pepys.  But  Locke  is  nothing  if 
not  sober :  he  is  eminently  of  such  stuflf  as  dreams  are  not  made  of. 

And  the  style  is,  once  more,  the  very  man.  It  would  be  grossly 
unjust  to  despise  Locke  as  a  writer ;  his  merits  of  clear  apperception 
and  presentation,  of  exact  adjustment  of  the  method  of  appeal  to 
the  person  appealed  to,  the  range  and  fertility  of  his  illustration,  the 
cogency  of  his  attack  if  the  general  principles  of  it  are  granted,  the 
absence  of  pretension  and  quackery  —  these  are  things  too  rare  and 
too  good  in  themselves  not  to  receive  due  acknowledgment.  But  it 
is  certainly  not  wrong  to  see  in  him  literary  (we  need  say  nothing 
more  of  his  philosophical)  influences  which,  while  they  may  have 
been  valuable  at  the  time  as  helping  to  clear  away  some  things  once 
good  and  great,  but  now  in  their  decadence,  helped  to  bring  about 
worse  things  in  time  to  come.  To  no  single  man  is  that  obstinate 
Philistinism  of  thought  and  expression,  which  is  the  besetting  sin  of 
eighteenth-century  literature,  due  so  much  as  to  Locke.  The  dignity, 
indeed,  of  his  subject,  his  genuine  learning,  his  modesty,  his  in- 
tellectual acumen,  kept  him  from  being  actually  vulgar.  But  he  was 
the  cause  of  infinite  vulgarity  in  others,  and  his  style  of  itself  incurs 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   AGE   OF   DRYDEN  — PROSE  525 

the  fatal  word.  Not  merely  every  spark  of  imagination,  not  merely 
every  flight  of  fancy,  but  almost  every  flourish  and  curvet  of 
rhetoric,  humour,  sympathy,  sense  of  the  double  sides  of  things,  are 
excluded  from  Locke's  handling. 

He  was,  however,  saved  by  his  very  matter-of-factness,  even  more 
than  by  his  possession  of  scholarship,  from  the  extreme  degradations 
of  style  which  appear  in  the  periodical  and  controversial  writers  of  the 
close  of  the  century.  The  newspaper  came  slowly  into 
form  ;  but  it  came,  and  it  necessarily  helped  to  exaggerate  o^f^style'at" 
this  degradation.  It  had  to  appeal  to  society  at  large,  the  close  of 
■and  society  at  large,  both  high  and  low,  had  the  mind  to 
s^eiicanailler.  Coarseness  ruled  from  Wliitehall  to  Whitefriars  ;  court- 
ier, citizen,  vagabond,  had  alike  lost  the  last  glimpse  of  anything 
unvulgar.  L'Estrange,  a  Tory,  a  gentleman,  and  even  something 
of  a  scholar,  writes  mere  Billingsgate  sometimes,  and  mere  vernacular 
familiarity  always.  Jeremy  Collier,  a  very  learned  man,  a  sound 
theologian,  and  a  sincere  and  formidable  defender  of  morality,  has  no 
more  dignity  in  his  style  than  L'Estrange  himself.  Tom  Brown,  the 
University  Bohemian,  and  John  Dunton,  the  middle-class  shopkeeper, 
vie  with  each  other,  not  indeed  in  technical  impropriety,  but  in  what 
can  only  be  c'i.W^di  commonness  of  expression — in  a  way  of  writing 
which  is  not  merely  easy  but  vulgarly  slipshod,  not  merely  vernacular 
but  (once  more)  vulgar.  Some  little  must  be  said  about  eacli  of 
them,  for  they  are  notable  people  in  literary  history,  which  has  not 
always  done  them  justice ,  but  the  same  taint  is  upon  them  all. 

Sir  Roger  L'Estrange,  the  eldest  of  the  group  and  the  highest  in 
position,  was  born  as  early  as  161 6,  of  the  family  of  the  L'Estranges 
of  Hunstanton,  in  Norfolk,  and,  like  his  father  Sir  Hamon,  was  a 
zealous    and    active    Royalist    in    the     Rebellion     itself.    ,  ,^ 

.  ,  .        .        ,     ,  .  .  ,  L  Estrange. 

After  the  Restoration  he  mamtained  his  service,  but 
changed  his  weapon,  becoming  Gazetteer  and  Censor  of  the  Press, 
writing  and  editing  many  newspapers,  the  Public  Intellii^enccr,  the 
Observatot\  and  so  forth,  and  long  surviving  the  downfall  of  the 
Stuarts.  He  even  saw  their  partial  restoration  in  the  person  of 
Anne,  for  he  did  not  die  till  1704,  at  the  age  of  nearly  ninety.  Out- 
side periodicals  and  controversial  pamphlets,  L'Estrange's  work  was 
almost  entirely  translation,  wliich  indeed  gave  surprisingly  large 
employinent  to  writers  at  this  time,  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest. 
Joscplius,    Seneca,    Cicero,    Quevedo,'   and    .r^isop    were    among    the 

1  The  translation  of  Qucvcdo's  Visions  was  one  of  the  most  popular,  and  is  one 
of  the  most  cluiracioristic,  of  L'Estrange's  books.  Soon  after  it  appeared,  and  in 
the  hurly-l)urly  of  the  Dutch  in  the  Medway,  on  91)1  June  1667,  l'ei)ys  exiolli-d  it  as 
"  the  best  [translation]  he  ever  saw,"  and  thought  it  impossible  even  to  believe  that 
it  could  be  a  translation.  It  reached  its  tenth  edition  in  1708.  It  is  lively  enough, 
and  not  immoral,  but  coarse  almost  beyond  belief. 


526  THE   AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  viii 

'  motley  subjects  of  his  efforts  in  this  kind.  L'Estrange  had  a  vigorous 
intellect  and  a  very  ready  and  deft  pen,  which  wounded  his  Whig 
adversaries  very  sorely,  and  caused  them  greatly  to  cry  out.  But 
he  did  much  to  introduce  the  colloquialism  which  distinguishes  all  the 
group,  and  against  which,  in  the  next  chapter,  we  shall  find  Swift 
openly  protesting,  and  Addison  working  by  contrary  example. 

Jeremy  Collier,  though  as  good  a  Tory  as  L'Estrange,  was  a  very 
different  person  and  a  much  younger  man.  He  was  not  born  till 
1650,  was  educated  at  Caius  College,  Cambridge,  and  had  for  a  time 
a  living  in  Suffolk,  being  subsequently  Lecturer  at  Gray's 
Inn.  He  not  merely  "went  out"  as  a  Nonjuror  at  the 
Revolution,  but  was  thrown  into  prison  for  his  Legitimist  writings,  and 
all  readers  of  Macaulay  know  the  appearance  he  made  at  the  execu- 
tion of  Friend  and  Parkyns.  He  lived  till  1726,  doing  a  great 
deal  of  work,  including  an  Ecclesiastical  History  of  Great  Britain 
(1708-14)  ;  and  under  Anne  he  might  have  had  good  preferment,  which 
with  a  loyalty  to  principle  very  rare  in  his  time,  and  not  common  in 
any,  he  declined.  But  he  lives  in  literature  chiefly  by  his  famous 
Short  View  of  the  Frofaneness  and  Inimorality  of  the  English  Stage, 
published  in  1698,  and  already  referred  to  in  the  dramatic  chapter 
of  this  Book.  The  solid  justice,  despite  the  not  infrequent  crotchet 
and  extravagance,  of  the  View  cannot  be  denied ;  and  though  its 
ability  has,  for  rhetorical  purposes,  been  a  little  heightened  by 
Macaulay,  it  is  very  considerable.  But  its  chief  interest,  besides  the 
effect  it  had  on  the  drama,  is  the  evidence  it  gives  of  the  above- 
mentioned  colloquialism.  Collier,  academic  or  nothing,  is  also  as 
full  of  familiar  contractions  and  cant  phrase,  as  little  regardful  of 
formal  and  scholastic  graces,  as  any  gutter-scribbler  of  the  time. 

Thomas  (always  called  Tom)  Brown,  though  little  can  be  said  for 
the  morality  of  his  life  and  writings,  is  a  person  of  more  importance 
in  literary  history  than  has  usually  been  allowed  him.  He  was  born 
(1663)  at  Shiffnal  in  Shropshire,  and  was  well  educated, 
going  to  Christ  Church,  Oxford.  His  conduct  obliged  him 
to  leave  his  first  employment  of  teaching,  for  which  he  probably  had 
very  little  taste,  and  from  about  1688  to  his  early  death  in  1704  he 
produced  a  profusion  of  miscellanies  in  various  forms,  always  ingenious 
as  makeshifts  for  the  periodical,  and  very  often  directly  leading  to  that 
periodical  itself.  The  great  essayist  who  immediately  followed  him 
owed  more  to  him  than  might  be  imagined,  and  in  not  a  little  of  his 
work,  especially  in  his  Amuse/nents,  Serious  and  Comical,  which 
attempt  an  early  "  London  from  day  to  day,"  there  is  a  vivid- 
ness of  manners  which  anticipates  the  best  of  the  later  novelists. 
Any  form  that  was  popular  suited  Tom ;  he  wrote  many  letters  and 
dialogues  in  the  fashion  of  French  imitations  of  Lucian ;  lue  took  up 


CHAP.  Ill  THE  AGE   OF   DRYD EN  — PROSE  527 

John  Dunton's  Athenian  Oracle  with  a  "  Lacedaemonian "  imitation 
which  was  much  more  amusing ;  and  he  wrote  poems,  squibs,  trans- 
lations, every  sort  of  Hght  work,  with  no  small  scholarship,  with 
abundance  of  wit  and  humour,  but  unluckily  with  a  contempt  of 
decency  beside  which  even  the  dramatists  of  his  time  look  modest. 
The  collections  ^  of  his  work  vary  in  bulk  and  contents,  and  it  is 
probable  that  critical  authentication  of  them  is  impossible. 

The  last  of  the  four,  John  Dunton,  possessed  perhaps  the  least 
purely  literary  capacity,  but  is  not  the  least  important  in  history. 
He  was  born  in  1659,  and  was  descended  from  a  line  of  clergymen, 
but  was  recalcitrant  to  the  succession,  and  became  a 
bookseller.  In  1682  he  married  Elizabeth  Annesley, 
"  dear  Iris,"  daughter  of  a  Nonconformist  divine  of  some  fame,  and 
sister  of  Mrs.  Samuel  Wesley  and  Mrs.  Defoe.  Dunton  was  a 
strong  Whig,  a  man  with  a  genius  for  "  rambling,"  which  carried 
him  to  America  and  to  the  Continent,  and  deeply  bitten  with  the 
mania  of  the  time  for  "  Projects,"  of  which  his  brother-in-law 
Defoe  has  left  an  interesting  memorial  in  his  Essay  thereon. 
Dunton's  most  remarkable  Project  that  took  effect  was  the  already 
mentioned  Athenian  Mercury,  collected  and  selected  in  book  form 
later  as  the  Athenian  Oracle,  which  anticipated  on  a  magnificent 
scale  the  "answers  to  correspondents"  not  yet  quite  obsolete.  His 
most  important  book  was  his  Life  and  Errors,  2  a  book  which  only  its 
long-windedness,  and  the  fact  that  its  author's  eccentricity  here  and 
there  diverges  into  clear  madness,  exclude  from  the  brief  list  of 
English  autobiographies  of  the  first  class.  After  the  death  of  "  dear 
Iris"  he  married  "dear  Valeria,"  a/wj- Sarah  Nicholas,  an  heiress; 
but  this  union  was  less  happy.  He  wrote  and  partly  published  a 
great  amount  of  matter,  a  pamphlet  against  Harley  and  St.  John, 
Neck  or  Nothing,  being  the  chief  item,  and  died  as  late  as  1733,  in 
obscurity  and  (apparently)  distress.  He  is  much  less  colloquial  than 
those  who  have  been  mentioned  before  him,  but  is  full  of  the  curious 
domestic  detail  which  also  distinguishes  the  time,  especially  in  Non- 
conformist writing;  and  he  furnishes  us  with  abundant  and  some- 
times interesting  particulars  about  booksellers,  printers,  authors, 
divines,  and  public  men  generally. 

1 1  use  one  in  4  vols.  Dublin,  1778. 

2  Ed.  Nichols,  2  vols.  1818.  The  Athenian  Oracle,  Athenian  ."r/or/,  etc..  and 
their  follower,  the  British  Apollo,  voluminous  collections  of  question  and  answer, 
are  useful  and  not  unamusing  documents.  Those  who  fear  to  phmnc  at  larKO  into 
them  may  content  themselves  with  a  well-edited  selection  from  the  first-named  by 
John  Underhill,  London,  1892. 


CHAPTER    IV 

QUEEN   ANNE  PROSE 

Swift — His  life  —  His  verse  —  His  prose  —  His  quality  and  achievement  —  The 
Essayists  —  Steele — His  plays  —  Addison's  life — His  miscellaneous  work  — 
His  and  Steele's  Essays — Bentley  —  Middleton  —  Arbuthnot  —  Atterbury  — 
Bolingbroke  —  Butler  and  other  divines  —  Shaftesbury  —  Mandeville  — 
Berkeley  —  Excellence  of  his  style  —  Defoe 

John  Dunton,  the  eccentric  bookseller  mentioned  at  the  close  of 
the  last  chapter,  refers  to  a  certain  "scoffing  Tubman,"  with  whose 
identity  neither  he,  extensive  and  peculiar  as  was  his  knowledge  of 
literary  London,  nor  almost  any  one  else,  was  then 
acquainted.  The  reference  is,  of  course,  to  the  Tale  of  a 
Tub,  published  anonymously  in  1704  —  the  first  great  book,  either 
in  prose  or  verse,  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  in  more  ways  than 
one  the  herald  and  champion  at  once  of  its  special  achievements  in 
literature.  Jonathan  Swift,^  its  author,  one  of  the  very  greatest 
names  in  English  literature,  was,  like  his  connections  Dryden  and 
Herrick,  a  plant  of  no  very  early  development.  He  had  been  born  as 
far  back  as  1667,  and  his  earlier  literary  productions  had  been  confined 
to  wretched  Pindaric  odes,  some  of  them  contributed  to  Dunton's 
own  papers,  and  drawing  down  upon  him  that  traditional  and 
variously  quoted  sentence  of  his  great  relative,  "Cousin  Swift,  you 
will  never  be  a  [Pindaric]  poet,"  which  is  said  to  have  occasioned 
certain  ill-natured  retorts  on  Dryden  later.  Swift's  origin,  like  his 
character  and  genius,  was  purely  English,  but  an  accident  caused 
him  to  be  born  in  Dublin,  and  other  accidents  brought  about  his 
education  in  Ireland.  His  father  died  before  his  birth,  and  his 
mother  was  very  poor ;  but  his  paternal  uncle  paid  for  his  education 
at  Kilkenny  Grammar  School  and  Trinity  College,  Dublin.  He 
entered  Trinity  very  early,  in  1682,  and   seems  to  have  been  neither 

1  Swift's  Works  have  been  frequently  collected,  but  never  quite  satisfactorily. 
The  best  edition  is  still  Scott's ;  but  a  new,  cheap,  and  useful  one  has  been  begun 
in  Bohn's  Library.  All  Lives  have  been  superseded  by  Sir  Henry  Craik's  —  ist  ed. 
in  I  vol.  London,  1883;  new  ed.  in  2  vols.  London,  1894. 

528 


CHAK  IV  QUEEN   ANNE    PROSE 


529 


happy  nor  successful  there,  though  there  may  have  been  less  disgrace 
than  has  sometimes  been  thought  in  his  graduation  speciali gratia^  and 
not  by  the  ordinary  way  of  right,  in  1686. 

He  was  still  under  twenty,  and  for  some  years  found  no  better 
occupation  than  a  secretaryship  in  the  house  of  his  distant  connection, 
Sir  William  Temple.  In  1694  he  went  to  Ireland,  was  ordained, 
and  received  a  small  living,  but  in  two  years  returned  to 
Temple,  in  whose  house  he  met  "Stella,"  Esther  John-  "'^ ''f^- 
son,  his  lifelong  friend  and,  as  seems  most  probable,  latterly  his 
wife.  Temple  died  in  1699,  leaving  Swift  a  small  legacy  and  his 
literary  executorship.  He  once  more  returned  to  Ireland,  acted  as 
secretary  to  Lord-Deputy  Berkeley,  received  some  more  small  pre- 
ferments, though  not  such  as  he  wanted,  and  spent  the  first  decade 
of  the  century  at  Laracor,  his  chief  benefice,  and  London,  where  he 
was  a  sort  of  agent  for  the  Archbishop  of  Dublin.  He  had  all  this 
time  been  a  kind  of  Whig  in  politics,  but  with  a  strong  dislike  to 
Whig  anti-clericalism  and  some  other  differences;  and  about  1710  he 
joined  the  new  Tory  party  under  Harley  and  St.  John,  and  carried  on 
vigorous  war  against  the  Whigs  in  the  Examiner,  though  he  did  not 
break  personal  friendship  with  Addison  and  others.  His  inestimable 
services  during  the  four  last  years  of  Queen  Anne  were  rewarded  only 
with  the  Deanery  of  Dublin  —  it  is  said  owing  to  the  Queen's  pious 
horror  of  the  Tale  of  a  Tub.  Swift  lived  chiefly  in  Dublin,  but  with 
occasional  visits  to  his  friends  in  England,  for  more  than  thirty  years 
longer,  and  the  events  of  his  life,  the  contests  of  "Vanessa"  and 
"  Stella "  for  his  hand,  or  at  least  his  heart,  his  interference  with 
Irish  politics,  his  bodily  sufferings,  and  the  end  which,  after  five 
terrible  years  of  madness,  painful  or  lethargic,  came  in  October 
1745,  are  always  interesting  and  sometimes  mysterious.  But  we 
cannot  dwell  on  them  here,  though  they  have  more  to  do  with  his 
actual  literary  characteristics  than  is  often  the  case.  His  dependency 
in  youth,  his  long  sojourn  in  lettered  leisure,  though  in  bitterness  of 
spirit,  with  a  household  the  master  of  which  was  a  dilettante  but 
a  distinctly  remarkable  man  of  letters,  his  suppressed  but  evidently 
ardent  affections,  his  disappointment  when  at  last  he  reached  fame 
and  the  chance  of  power,  and  his  long  residence,  with  failing  health, 
in  a  country  which  he  hated  —  all  these  things  must  be  taken  into 
account,  though  cautiously,  in  considering  his  work. 

This   is   of  very   great    bulk,   and     in    parts    of   rather   uncertain 
genuineness,   for    Swift    was    strangely    careless  of  literary  reputation, 
published  for  the  most  part  anonymously,  and,  intense  as  is  his  idio- 
syncrasy,  contrived  to    impress   it   on    one  or  two  of  his 
intimate    friends,   notably   on  Arbuthnot.      It    consists  of       "  ^"*'- 
both   verse   and  prose,  but    the  former   is  rarely  poetry  and  is  at  its 

2M 


530  THE   AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  viii 

best  in  easy  vers  de  socUtt^  such  as  Cadenus  and  Vanessa  (the  record 
of  his  passion  or  fancy  for  Esther  Vanhomrigh),  '•  Vanbrugh's 
House,"  the  pieces  to  Harley  and  others,  and  above  all,  the  Unes  on 
his  own  death ;  or  else  in  sheer  burlesque  or  grotesque,  where  he  has 
seldom  been  equalled,  as  in  the  famous  "  Mrs.  Harris's  Petition," 
and  a  hundred  trifles,  long  and  short,  of  the  same  general  kind. 
Poetry,  in  the  strict  and  rare  sense,  Swift  seldom  or  never  touches ; 
his  chief  example  of  it  —  an  example  not  absolutely  authenticated, 
seeing  that  we  only  possess  it  as  quoted  by  Lord  Chesterfield  —  is  a 
magnificent  fragment  about  the  Last  Judgment.  Here,  and  perhaps 
only  here  in  verse,  his  characteristic  indignation  rises  to  poetic  heat. 
Elsewhere  he  is  infinitely  ingenious  and  humorous  in  fanciful  whim, 
and,  sometimes  at  least,  infinitely  happy  in  expression  of  it,  the  pains 
which,  no  doubt  partly  owing  to  Temple's  influence  and  example,  he 
spent  upon  correct  prose-writing  being  here  extended  and  reflected 
in  verse.  For  Swift,  although  not  pedantically,  or  in  the  sense  of 
manuals  of  composition,  a  correct  writer,  is  so  in  the  higher  and 
better  sense  to  a  very  unusual  degree ;  and  we  know  that  he  was 
so  deliberately.  Several  passages,  especially  one  in  the  Tatler^ 
express  his  views  on  the  point,  and  his  dislike  at  once  of  the  older 
luxuriance  which  it  was  impossible  for  a  man  of  his  time  to  relish, 
and  of  the  inroad  of  slovenly  colloquialism  which  we  have  noticed  in 
the  last  chapter. 

Yet  if  Swift  had  been,  like  his  patron,  and  perhaps  in  some  sort 

exemplar,  Temple,  nothing  more,  or  little  more,  than  a  master  of  form 

in  prose,  his  position  in  literature  would  be  very  different  from  that 

which  he  actually  holds.     Hfcis  first  published  prose  piece, 

IS  pr  s  .  ^^  Dissensions  of  Athetts  and  Rome  (an  application, 
according  to  the  way  of  the  time,  to  contemporary  politics),  contains, 
except  in  point  of  style,  nothing  very  noticeable.  But  the  anony- 
mous volume  of  1704  is  compact  of  very  different  stuff.  The  Battle 
of  the  Books,  a  contribution  to  the  "  Ancient  and  Modern "  debate 
on  Temple's  side  and  in  Temple's  honour,  is  not  supreme,  though 
very  clever,  admirably  written  and  arranged,  and  such  as  no  English- 
man recently  living,  save  Butler  and  Dryden,  could  have  written, 
while  Butler  would  have  done  it  with  more  clumsiness  of  form,  and 
Dryden  with  less  lightness  of  fancy.  The  Tale  of  a  Tub  has 
supremacy.  It  may  be  peremptorily  asserted  that  irreligion  is 
neither  intended  nor  involved  in  it.  For  nearly  two  centuries  the 
ferocious  controversies,  first,  between  Rome  and  Protestantism,  then 
between  different  bodies  of  Protestants,  had  entirely  blinded  men  to 
the  extreme  danger  that  the  rough  handling  which  they  bestowed  upon 

1 27th  September  1710. 


CHAP.  IV  QUEEN   ANNE   PROSE  531 


their  enemies  would  recoil  on  the  religion  which  underlay  those  enemies' 
beliefs  as  well  as  their  own.  And  this,  as  well  as  the  other  danger 
of  the  excessive  condemnation  of  "  enthusiasm,"  was  not  seen  till  lono- 
after  Swift's  death.  But  the  satire  on  Peter  (Rome),  Jack  (Calvinisn^ 
or  rather  the  extremer  Protestant  sects  generally),  and  Martin  (Luther- 
anism  and  Anglicanism)  displays  an  all-pervading  irony  of  thought, 
and  a  felicity  of  expressing  that  irony,  which  had  never  been  seen  in 
English  prose  before.  The  irony,  it  must  be  added,  goes,  as  far  as 
things  human  are  concerned,  very  deep  and  very  wide,  and  its  zio-zao- 
glances  at  politics,  philosophy,  manners,  the  hopes  and  desires  and 
pursuits  and  pleasures  and  pains  of  man,  leave  very  little  unscathed. 
There  is  a  famous  and  not  necessarily  false  story  that  Swift,  in  his 
sad  later  days,  once  exclaimed,  in  reference  to  the  Tale,  "  What  a 
genius  I  had  when  I  wrote  that  book  ! "  The  exclamation,  if  made, 
was  amply  justified.  The  Tale  of  a  Tub  is  one  of  the  very  greatest 
books  of  the  world,  one  of  those  in  which  a  great  drift  of  universal 
thought  receives  consummate  literary  form. 

The  decade  of  his  Whiggery  (or,  as  it  has  been  more  accurately 
described,  of  his  neutral  state  with  Whig  leanings)  saw  no  great 
bulk  of  work,  but  some  exquisite  examples  of  this  same  irony  in  a 
lighter  kind.  This  was  the  time  of  the  charming  Argument  against 
Abolishing  Christianity  (1708)  and  of  Swift's  contrijDutions  to  the 
Tatler,  which  periodical  indeed  owed  him  a  great  deal  more  than  the 
mere  borrowing  of  the  7ioin  de guerre— \sdac  Bickerstaffe  — which  he 
had  used  in  a  series  of  ingenious  persecutions  of  the  almanack-maker, 
Partridge.  The  shorter  period  of  Tory  domination  was  very  much 
more  prolific  in  bulk  of  work,  but  except  in  the  \\on<^td\x\  Journal  to 
Stella  (i 710-13),  which  was  never  intended  for  any  eye  but  hers 
(and  the  faithful  "  Dingley's  "),  the  literary  interest  is  a  little  inferior. 
The  Examiners  are  of  extraordinary  force  and  vigour;  the  Remarks 
on  the  Barrier  Treaty  (1712),  the  Public  Spirit  of  the  Whigs  (1714), 
and  above  all  the  Conduct  of  the  Allies  (171 1),  which  Johnson  so 
strangely  decried,  are  masterly  specimens  of  the  political  pamphlet. 
The  largest  work  of  this  time,  the  History  of  the  Four  Last  i'ears  of 
Queen  Anne,  is  sometimes  regarded  as  doubtfully  genuine,  tliough 
there  is  no  conclusive  reason  for  ruling  it  out. 

His  very  greatest  prose  work,  however,  dates  from  the  last  thirty 
years  of  his  life,  and  especially  from  the  third,  fourth,  and  fifth  lustres 
of  this  time,  for  the  last  was  darkened  by  his  final  agony,  and  in 
the  first  decade  he  was  too  marked  a  man  to  venture  on  writing 
what  might  have  brought  upon  him  the  exile  of  Atterbury  or  the 
prison  of  Harley  and  Prior.  He  began  at  once,  however,  a  curious 
kind  of  Irish  patriotism,  which  was  in  fact  nothing  but  an  English 
Fronde.     In     1724    some    jobbery   about    a    new   copper   coinage    in 


532  THE   AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  viir 

Ireland  gave  him  a  subject,  and  he  availed  himself  of  this  in  the 
Drapier''s  Letters  with  almost  miraculous  skill ;  while  two  years  later 
came  the  greatest  of  all  his  books,  greater  for  method,  range,  and 
quiet  mastery  than  even  the  Tale^  that  is  to  say  Gulliver's  Travels. 
The  short  but  consummate  Modest  Proposal  for  eating  Irish  children, 
the  pair  to  the  Argianent  against  Abolishing  Christianity^  as  a  short 
example  of  the  Swiftian  irony,  came  in  1729;  and  the  chief  of  his 
important  works  later  were  the  delightful  Polite  Conversation  (1738), 
probably  written  or  at  least  begun  much  earlier,  in  which  the  ways 
and  speeches  of  ordinary  good  society  are  reproduced  with  infinite 
humour  and  spirit,  and  the  Directions  to  Servants,  almost  as  witty, 
but  more  marked  with  Swift's  ugliest  fault,  a  coarseness  of  idea  and 
language,  which  seems  rather  the  result  of  positive  and  individual 
disease  than  the  survival  of  Restoration  license. 

There   is    no   doubt   that   on   the   whole    Swift's   peculiar   powers, 

temper,  and   style   are   shown   in   his   one  generally  known   book  as 

well  as  anywhere  else.     The  absence  of  the  fresher,  more  whimsical. 

His  qualitv    ^'^'^  perhaps  even  deeper,  irony  and  pessimism  of  the  Tale 

and         of  a  Tub,  and   the   loss   of  self-control   indicated   in   the 

levemen  .  gj^y^gg  misanthropy  of  the  Houyhnhnms  finale,  are  com- 
pensated by  a  more  methodical  and  intelligible  scheme,  by  the 
charm  of  narrative,  by  range  and  variety  of  subject,  and  by  the 
abundance  of  little  lively  touches  which  that  narrative  suggests  and 
facilitates.  The  mere  question  of  the  originality  of  the  scheme  is,  as 
usual,  one  of  the  very  slightest  importance.  Swift  had  predecessors, 
if  he  had  not  patterns,  in  Lucian  and  in  scores  of  other  writers  down 
to  and  beyond  Cyrano  de  Bergerac.  The  idea,  indeed,  of  combining 
the  interest  and  novelty  of  foreign  travel  with  an  obvious  satire  on 
"  travellers'  tales,"  and  a  somewhat  less  obvious  one  on  the  follies, 
vices,  and  contrasted  foibles  of  mankind,  is  not  beyond  the  range  of 
an  extremely  moderate  intellect,  and  could  never  be  regarded  as  the 
property  or  copyright  even  of  the  greatest.  It  is  the  astonishing  vigour 
and  variety  of  Swift's  dealing  with  this  public  stuff  that  craves  notice  ; 
and  twenty  times  the  space  here  available  would  be  too  little  to  do 
justice  to  that.  The  versatility  with  which  the  picture  —  it  can 
hardly  even  at  its  worst  be  called  the  caricature  —  of  mankind  is 
adjusted  to  the  different  meridians  of  the  little  people,  the  giants,  the 
pedants,  the  unhappy  immortals,  and  the  horses  —  the  dexterous  relief 
of  the  satirist's  lash  with  the  mere  tickling  of  the  humourist  —  the 
wonderful  prodigality  of  power  and  the  more  wonderful  economy  of 
words  and  mere  decorations  —  all  these  things  deserve  the  most  care- 
ful study,  and  the  most  careful  study  will  not  in  the  least  interfere 
with,  but  will  only  enhance,  the  perpetual  enjoyment  of  them. 

It  only  remains  to  point  out  very  briefly  the  suitableness  of  the 


CHAP.  IV  QUEEN   ANNE   PROSE  533 

style  to  the  work.  Swift's  style  is  extremely  unadorned,  though  the 
unfailing  spirit  of  irony  prevents  it  from  being,  except  to  the  most 
poor  and  unhappy  tastes,  in  the  very  least  degree  flat.  Though  not 
free  from  grammatical  licenses,  it  is  on  the  whole  correct  enough,  and 
is  perfectly  straightforward  and  clear.  There  may  be  a  very  differ- 
ent meaning  lurking  by  way  of  innuendo  behind  Swift's  literal  and 
grammatical  sense,  but  that  sense  itself  can  never  be  mistaken. 
Further,  he  has — -unless  he  deliberately  assumes  them  as  the  costume 
of  a  part  he  is  playing  —  absolutely  no  distinguishing  tricks  or 
manners,  no  catchwords,  and  in  especial  no  unusual  phrases  or 
vocables  either  imitated  or  invented.  In  objecting  to  neologisms,  as 
he  did  very  strongly,  he  was  perhaps  critically  in  the  wrong ;  for  a 
language  which  ceases  to  grow  dies.  But,  like  some,  though  by  no 
means  all,  similar  objectors,  he  has  justified  his  theory  by  his  practice. 
In  fact,  if  intellectual  genius  and  literary  art  be  taken  together,  no 
prose-writer,  who  is  a  prose-writer  mainly,  is  Swift's  superior,  and  a 
man  might  be  hard  put  to  it  to  say  who  among  such  writers  in 
the  plainer  English  can  be  pronounced  his  equal. 

It  has  been  said  that  it  is  hard  to  settle  the  credit  of  the  invention 
of  the  Queen  Anne  Essay,  in  which  the  characteristic  of  the  later 
Augustan  period  was  chiefly  shown.  For  years  before  it  appeared, 
the  essay-writers,  from  Bacon  to  Temple  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  journalists,  of  whom  -the  mo.st  remarkable  Essayists, 
were  mentioned  at  the  close  of  the  last  chapter,  on  the 
other,  had  been  bearing  down  nearer  and  nearer  to  this  particular  point. 
The  actual  starting  is  usually  assigned  to  the  Review  of  a  greater 
than  any  of  these  journalists,  Daniel  Defoe,  who  will,  however,  find 
a  more  suitable  place  later  in  this  chapter.  And  it  is  noteworthy 
that  Swift,  whose  fertility  in  ideas  was  not  less  remarkable  than  the 
nonchalance  with  which  he  abandoned  them  or  suggested  them  to 
his  friends,  was  most  intimate  with  Steele  and  Addison  just  at  the 
time  of  the  appearance  of  the  Tntler,  lent  it  a  mm  de  guerre,  wrote 
for  it,  and  may  in  different  metaphors  be  said  to  have  given  it 
inspiration,  atmosphere,  motive  power,  launch.  But  it  was  un- 
doubtedly set  agoing  under  the  management  of  another  person, 
Steele,  and  he  need  not  be  deprived  of  the  honour. 

Richard  Steele  was  born  in  Dublin  in  March  1672,  but  he  had 
little  to  do  with  Ireland  afterwards.  His  .school  was  the  Charter- 
house, and  from  it  he  went  to  Merton  College  at  Oxford,  where  he 
was  postmaster.  But  though  he  made  some  stay  at  the  ^^ 
University  he  took  no  degree,  and  left  it  for  the  army, 
beginning  as  a  cadet  or  gentleman  volunteer  in  the  second  Life 
Guards,  whence  he  passed  as  an  ensign  to  the  Coldstrcams  and  as 
a   captain    to    Lucas's   foot.     He    became    Gazetteer   in    1707,   and   a 


534 


THE   AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  viii 


little  later  engaged,  with  more  zeal  than  discretion,  in  Whig  politics, 
being  expelled  from  the  House  of  Commons  in  the  turbulent  last 
years  of  Anne.  The  success  of  the  Hanoverians  restored  him  to 
fortune,  or  the  chance  of  it,  and  he  was  knighted  and  made  patentee 
of  Drury  Lane.  But  he  was  always  a  spendthrift  and  a  speculator, 
and  in  his  later  years  he  had  to  retire  to  an  estate  which  his  second 
wife  (an  heiress  in  Wales  as  the  first  had  been  in  the  West  Indies) 
had  brought  him  near  Caermarthen.  He  died  there  in  1729.  His 
letters  and  even  his  regular  works  tell  us  a  great  deal  about  his 
personality,  which,  especially  as  contrasted  with  that  of  Addison,  has 
occasioned  much  writing. 

Steele's  desertion  of  the  University  for  the  army  might  not  seem 
to  argue  a  devotion  to  the  Muses.  But  he  began  1  while  still  a 
soldier  by  a  book  of  devotion.  The  Christian  Hero  (1701),  and  it 
was  not  in  him,  whatever  it  might  have  been  in  another,  at  all 
inconsistent  to  turn  to  play-writing,  in  which  occupation  he  observed, 
though  not  excessively,  the  warnings  of  Jeremy  Collier.  The  Tatler 
(1709)  opened  his  true  vein,  and  in  it,  in  the  Spectator,  in  the 
Guardian,  in  the  Englishman,  Lover,  and  other  periodicals,  he 
displayed  a  faculty  for  miscellany  more  engaging,  though  much 
less  accomplished,  than  Addison's  own.  In  the  political  articles  of 
this  series,  and  still  more  in  his  political  pamphlets,  he  is  at  his 
worst,  for  he  had  no  argumentative  faculty,  and  was  utterly  at  the 
mercy  of  such  an  opponent  as  Swift.  The  Conscious  Lovers,  his  most 
famous  play,  was  late  (1722),  and  is  distinguished,  amid  the  poor 
plays  between  Farquhar  and  Sheridan,  for  its  mixture  of  briskness 
and  amiability.  There  was  a  third  ingredient,  sentimentality,  which 
is  indeed  sufficiently  prominent  in  Steele's  earlier  comedies.  The 
Funeral  (1701),  The  Lying  Lover  (1703),  and  The  Tender  Husband 
(1705),  and  by  no  means  absent  from  his  essays.  But,  with  a  little 
allowance,  it  adds  to  these  latter  a  charm  which,  though  it  may  be 
less  perceptible  to  later  generations  than  it  was  to  those  who  had 
sickened  of  the  ineffable  brutality  of  the  time  immediately  preceding, 
can  still  be  felt. 

Of  the  plays,  though  all  endeavour  to  carry  out  Collier's  prin- 
ciples, The  Conscious  Lovers  is  the  only  one  which  deserves  Fielding's 
raillery,  through  Parson  Adams,  as  to  its  being  "  as  good  as  a  sermon," 
which   Hazlitt  has  rather  unfairly  extended  to  all.     Even   The   Con- 

1  No  complete  edition.  The  Tatler,  Spectator,  and  Guardian  essays  are  in 
the  usual  British  Essayists;  the  others  must  be  sought  in  original  editions,  or 
ed.  Nichols,  4  vols.  1791.  There  is  an  excellent  selection  from  the  former  set 
(Oxford,  1885)  and  an  admirable  monograph  (London,  1886)  by  Mr.  Austin 
Dobson.  The  plays  are  in  the  "Mermaid  Series"  (London,  1894),  edited  by 
Mr.  Aitken,  who  has  also  written  a  long  Life  of  Steele  (2  vols.  London,  1889). 


CHAP.  IV  QUEEN   ANNE   PROSE  535 

scious  Lovers  contains,  in  the  scenes  between  Tom  and  Phillis, 
pictures  of  flirtation  belowstairs  which,  with  all  Steele's  tenderness 
and  good  feeling,  have  nearly  as  much  vivacity  as  any 
between  the  most  brazen  varlets  and  baggages  of  the  '^  ^  ^^*' 
Restoration  dramatists.  The  Lying  Lover,  an  adaptation  of 
Le  Menteur,  is  of  no  great  merit,  perhaps  because  it  also  has  a 
slight  tendency  to  sermonising.  But  I'he  Funeral,  though  very 
unnatural  in  plot  and  decidedly  unequal  in  character,  contains  a 
famous  passage  of  farcical  comedy  between  an  undertaker  and  his 
mates,  and  a  good  though  rascally  lawyer.  The  most  uniformly 
amusing  of  the  four  is  The  Tender  Husband,  though  the  ap- 
propriateness of  the  title  is  a  little  open  to  question.  The  pair  of 
innocents,  the  romantic  heiress  Biddy  Tipkin  and  the  clumsy  heir 
Humphry  Gubbin,  are  really  diverting,  and  in  the  first  case  to  no 
small  extent  original ;  while  they  have  furnished  hints  to  no  less 
successors  than  Fielding,  Goldsmith,  Sheridan,  and  Miss  Austen. 
The  lawyer  and  the  gallant  are  also  distinctly  good,  and  the  aunt  has 
again  furnished  hints  for  Mrs.  Malaprop,  as  Biddy  has  for  Lydia. 
Steele,  who  always  confessed,  and  probably  as  a  rule  exaggerated,  his 
debts  to  Addison,  acknowledges  them  here;  and  there  is  a  certain 
Addisonian  tone  about  some  of  the  humours,  though  Steele  was  quite 
able  to  have  supplied  them.  Fond  as  he  was  of  the  theatre,  how- 
ever, and  familiar  with  it,  he  had  little  notion  of  constructing  a 
play,  and  his  morals  constantly  tripped  up  his  art.  The  essay,  not 
the  drama,  was  his  real  field. 

The  almost  inextricable  entanglement  of  the  work  of  Steele  with 
Addison's,  and  the  close  connection  of  the  two  in  life,  have  always 
occasioned  a  sort  of  comparison,  now  to  the  advantage  of  the  one, 
now  to  that  of  the  other,  in  literary  history ;  and  there  is  probably 
more  loss  than  gain  in  the  endeavour  to  separate  them  sternly.  We 
may  therefore  best  give  Addison's  life,  and  such  short  sketch  of  his 
books  as  is  possible  now,  and  then  consider  together  tlie  work,  still  in 
parts  not  very  clearly  attributable  to  one  more  than  to  the  other, 
which  gives  them,  and  must  always  give  them,  an  exalted  place  in 
English  literature. 

Joseph  Addison  1  was  born,  like  Steele,  in  1672,  but  in  May 
instead  of  in  March.  His  father,  Lancelot  Addison,  was  a  divine  of 
parts  and  position,  who  Ijecame  Dean  of  Lichfield.  His  mother's  name 
was  Jane  Gulston.  After  experience  of  some  country  schools,  at 
one  of  which  he  is  said  to  have  shared  in  a  "  barring-out."  lie,  like 

iMany  editions  of  complete  Works  {X\\c.  lies!  by  Iliird),  which  are  still  worth 
getlirif,'  for  the  miscellanies.  I\^ems  in  Chalmers.  Kssays  (most)  in  Uritish 
Essayists:  Selected  Essays  by  J.  R.  Green  (London,  1880)  and  T.  Arnold  (Oxford, 
1886). 


536  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  vni 

Steele,  went  to  the  Charterhouse  and  then  to  Oxford,  where  he  was 
first  at  Queen's,  then  at  Magdalen,  holding  a  demyship,  taking  his 

Master's  degree  in    1693,  and  being  elected  to  a  Fellow- 
li'fe?"^     ship    in    1697,    at    the   latter    college,    where   '^  Addison's 

Walk"  preserves  his  name.  He  made  early  acquaint- 
ance with  Dryden,  but  adopted  Whig  politics ;  and,  by  the  influence 
of  Montague,  obtained  in  1699  a  travelling  pension  of  ^300  a  year. 
He  discharged  the  obligation  loyally,  remaining  four  years  abroad, 
visiting  most  parts  of  the  Continent,  and  preparing,  if  not  finishing, 
his  only  prose  works  of  bulk,  the  Remarks  on  Italy  (1704)  and  the 
Dialogues  oh  Medals,  not  published  till  later.  But  when  he  came 
back  in  1703,  Halifax  was  out  of  favour,  his  pension  was  stopped, 
and,  having  broken  off  his  University  career  by  his  failure  to  take 
orders,  he  was  for  some  time  in  doubtful  prospects.  But  his  poem 
of  The  Campaign,  in  which  he  celebrated  Blenheim  (1704),  with  one 
fine  passage  and  a  good  deal  of  platitude,  gained  high  reputation  in 
the  dearth  of  poetical  accomplishment,  and  the  short  summer  of 
favour  for  men  of  letters,  which  followed  Dryden's  death ;  and  he  was 
made  a  Commissioner  of  Excise. 

This  was  the  first  of  a  long  series  of  appointments,  official  and 
diplomatic,  which  was  not,  thanks  to  Swift,  entirely  interrupted  even 
during  the  Tory  triumph,  and  which  enabled  Addison,  who  had 
been  in  1703  nearly  penniless,  to  layout,  in  1711,  ^^  10,000  on  an 
estate  in  Warwickshire.  It  culminated  in  171 7,  after  the  Hanoverian 
triumph,  by  his  being  appointed  Secretary  of  State,  which  office  he 
held  but  a  short  time,  resigning  it  for  a  large  pension.  He  had  a 
year  before  married  the  Countess  Dowager  of  Warwick,  and  he  died 
of  dropsy  at  Holland  House  in  1719,  aged  only  forty-seven.  His 
character  has  been  discussed,  not  with  acrimony,  for  no  one  can 
dislike  Addison,  but  with  some  heat.  He  had  none  of  the  numerous 
foibles  of  which  Steele  was  guilty,  except  a  rather  too  great  devotion 
to  wine.  But  the  famous  and  magnificent  "Character  of  Atticus," 
by  Pope,  is  generally  supposed  by  all  but  partisans  to  be  at  best  a 
poisoned  dart,  which  hit  true.  His  correct  morality — the  Bohemian 
philosopher  Mandeville  called  him  "a  parson  in  a  tie-wig"  —  has 
been  set  down  to  cold-bloodedness,  and  there  has  even  been  notice- 
able dissension  about  the  relative  amount  of  literary  genius  in  him 
and  in  Steele. 

As  noticed  already,  Addison's  literary  work  outside  periodicals  is 

by  no  means  small.     His  early  Latin  poems  are  very  clever,  and  very 

.  happy  in  their  artificial  way.     Of  his  English  verse  nothing 

laneo^wor'k.  ^^^   survived,    except   his   really   beautiful    hymns,   where 

the    combination    of    sincere    religious    feelings    (of    the 
sincerity  of  Addison's  religion  there  is  absolutely  no  doubt,  though 


CHAP.  IV  QUEEN   ANNE   PROSE  537 

it  was  of  a  kind  now  out  of  fashion)  and  of  critical  restraint  produced 
things  of  real,  though  modest  and  quiet,  excellence.  ''  The  Lord  my 
pasture  shall  prepare,"  "The  spacious  firmament  on  high,"  and 
''  How  are  Thy  servants  blest !  O  Lord,"  may  lack  the  mystical 
inspiration  of  the  greatest  hymns,  but  their  cheerful  piety,  their 
graceful  use  of  images,  which,  though  common,  are  never  mean,  their 
finish  and  even,  for  the  time,  their  fervour  make  them  singularly 
pleasant.  The  man  who  wrote  them  may  have  had  foibles  and 
shortcomings,  but  he  can  have  had  no  very  grave  faults,  as  the 
authors  of  more  hysterical  and  glowing  compositions  easily  might. 

The  two  principal  prose  works  are  little  read  now,  but  they  are 
worth  reading.  They  show  respectable  learning  (with  limitations 
admitted  by  such  a  well-qualified  and  well-affected  critic  as  Macaulay), 
they  are  excellent  examples  (though  not  so  excellent  as  the  Essays) 
of  Addison's  justly  fiimous  prose,  and  they  exhibit,  in  the  opening  of 
the  Medals  and  in  all  the  descriptive  passages  of  the  Italy,  the 
curious  insensibility  of  the  time  to  natural  beauty,  or  else  its  almost 
more  curious  inability  to  express  what  it  felt,  save  in  the  merest 
generalities  and  commonplaces. 

The  three  plays  at  least  indicate  Addison's  possession,  though  in 
a  much  less  degree,  of  his  master  Dryden's  general  faculty  of  literary 
craftsmanship.  Tlie  opera  of  Rosamond  is,  indeed,  clearly  modelled 
on  Dryden  in  its  serious  parts,  but  is  no  great  success  there.  The 
lighter  and  more  whimsical  quality  of  Addison's  humour  enabled  him 
to  do  better  in  the  farcical  passages,  which,  especially  the  speeches 
of  Sir  Trusty,  sometimes  have  a  singularly  modern  and  almost 
Gilbertian  quality  about  them.  The  comedy  of  The  Drummer,  where 
a  Wiltshire  tradition  is  used  to  make  a  play  on  a  theme  not  entirely 
different  from  Steele's  Funeral  (in  each  a  husband  is  thought  to  be 
dead  when  he  is  not),  contains,  like  Steele's  own  pieces,  some  smart 
'•words,"  but  no  very  good  dramatic  situation  or  handling.  It  is, 
also  like  Steele's,  an  attempt  to  write  Restoration  drama  in  the  fear 
of  Jeremy  Collier.  Cato,  the  most  famous,  is  at  this  time  of  day  by 
far  the  least  interesting.  Its  universally  known  stock-pieces  give 
almost  all  tiiat  it  has  of  merit  in  versification  and  style ;  as  a  drama 
it  has  an  uninteresting  plot,  wooden  characters,  and  a  great  absence 
of  life  and  idiosyncra.sy. 

It  is  very  different  when  we  turn  to  the  Essays.     The  so-called 
Essay  which  Steele  launched  in  the    Taller,  which  was  taken  up  and 
perfected  in  the  Spectator,  which   had  numerous   immediate  followers, 
and  a  succession  of  the  greatest  importance  at  intervals       j,;^  ^^^ 
throughout  the  century,  and  which  at  once  expressed  and       Steele's 
influenced   the   tone  and   thought   of  that  cfutury  after  a        '"'***"'" 
fashion  rarely  paralleled,  was  not  originally  started  in  cjuitc  the  form 


538  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 

which  it  soon  assumed,  and  never,  for  the  greater  part  of  a  hundred 
years,  wholly  lost.  Naturally  enough,  Steele  at  first  endeavoured  to 
make  it  a  newspaper,  as  well  as  a  miscellany  and  review.  But  by 
degrees,  and  before  very  long,  news  was  dropped,  and  comment,  in  the 
form  of  special  essays,  of ''  letters  to  the  editor,"  sometimes  real,  oftener 
manufactured,  of  tales  and  articles  of  all  the  various  kinds  which 
have  subsisted  with  no  such  great  change  till  the  present  day,  reigned 
alone.  As  Addison's  hand  prevailed  —  though  literature,  religion,  and 
even  politics  now  and  then,  the  theatre  very  often,  and  other  things 
were  not  neglected  —  the  main  feature  of  the  two  papers,  and  espe- 
cially of  the  Spectator,  became  a  kind  of  light  but  distinctly  firm  censor- 
ship of  manners,  especially  the  part  of  them  nearest  to  morals,  and 
of  morals,  especially  the  part  of  them  nearest  to  manners.  Steele, 
always  zealous  and  always  generous,  but  a  little  wanting  in  criticism, 
not  infrequently  diverged  into  sentimentality.  Addison's  tendency, 
though  he,  too,  was  unflinchingly  on  virtue's  side,  was  rather  towards 
a  very  mellow  and  not  unindulgent  but  still  distinctly  cynical 
cynicism  —  a  smile  too  demure  ever  to  be  a  grin,  but  sometimes, 
except  on  religious  subjects,  faintly  and  distantly  approaching  a 
sneer.  This  appears  even  in  the  most  elaborate  and  kindly  of  the 
imaginative  creations  of  the  double  series.  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  whom 
Steele  indeed  seems  to  have  invented,  but  whom  Addison  adopted, 
perfected,  and  (some,  perhaps  without  reason,  say)  even  killed  out 
of  kindness,  lest  a  less  delicate  touch  should  take  the  bloom  off  him. 
This  great  creation,  which  comes  nearer  than  anything  out  of  prose 
fiction  or  drama  to  the  masterpieces  of  the  novelists  and  dramatists,  is 
accompanied  by  others  hardly  less  masterly ;  while  Addison  con- 
stantly, and  Steele  not  seldom,  has  sketches  or  touches  as  perfect  in 
their  way,  though  less  elaborate.  It  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that 
these  papers,  and  especially  the  Spectator,  taught  the  eighteenth 
century  how  it  should,  and  especially  how  it  should  not,  behave  in 
public  places,  from  churches  to  theatres ;  what  books  it  should  like, 
and  how  it  should  like  them ;  how  it  should  treat  its  lovers,  mistresses, 
husbands,  wives,  parents,  and  friends ;  that  it  might  politely  sneer  at 
operas,  and  must  not  take  any  art  except  literature  too  seriously ;  that 
a  moderate  and  refined  devotion  to  the  Protestant  religion  and  the 
Hanoverian  succession  was  the  duty,  though  not  the  whole  duty,  of 
a  gentleman.  It  is  still  a  little  astonishing  to  find  with  what  docility 
the  century  obeyed  and  learnt  its  lesson.  Addison  died  a  little 
before,  Steele  not  much  after,  its  first  quarter  closed ;  yet  in  the 
lighter  work  of  sixty  or  seventy  years  later  we  shall  find,  with  the 
slightest  differences  of  external  fashion,  the  laws  of  the  Spectator 
held  still  by  "  the  town  "  with  hardly  a  murmur,  by  the  country  with- 
out the  slightest  hesitation.      In  particular,  these   papers   taught  the 


CHAP.  IV  QUEEN   ANNE   PROSE  539 

century  how  to  write ;  and  the  lesson  was  accepted  on  this  point 
with  almost  more  unhesitating  obedience  than  on  any  other.  The 
magnificent  eulogy  of  Johnson/  who  had  himself  deviated  not  a 
little,  though  perhaps  unconsciously,  from  Addisonian  practice,  would 
have  been  disputed  by  hardly  any  one  who  reached  manhood  in  Eng- 
land between  the  Peace  of  Utrecht  and  the  French  Revolution ;  and, 
abating  its  exclusiveness  a  little,  it  remains  true  still. 

Steele,  though  he  has  some  rarer  flights  than  his  friend,  is  much 
less  correct,  and  much  less  polished ;  while,  though  he  had  started 
with  equal  chances,  his  rambling  life  had  stored  him  with  far  less 
learning  than  Addison  possessed.  The  latter,  while  he  never 
reached  the  massive  strength  and  fiery  force  of  Swift,  did  even  more 
than  Swift  himself  to  lift  English  prose  out  of  the  rut,  or  rather 
quagmire,  of  colloquialism  and  slovenliness  in  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  it  was  sinking.  He  could  even,  though  he  rarely  did,  rise  to  a 
certain  solemnity  —  caught,  it  may  be,  from  Temple,  who  must  have 
had  much  influence  on  him.  But,  like  Temple's,  though  with  a 
more  modern,  as  well  as  a  more  varied  and  completely  polished, 
touch,  his  style  was  chiefly  devoted  to  the  "  middle "  subjects  and 
manners.  He  very  rarely  attempts  sheer  whimsical  fooling.  But  he 
can  treat  all  the  subjects  that  come  within  the  purview  and  interests 
of  a  well-bred  man  of  this  world,  who  by  no  means  forgets  the  next, 
in  a  style  quite  inimitable  in  its  golden  mediocrity  —  well-informed, 
without  being  in  the  least  pedantic ;  moral,  without  direct  preaching 
(unless  he  gives  forewarning)  ;  slightly  superior,  but  with  no  provoking 
condescension  in  it ;  polite,  without  being  frivolous  or  finicking ;  neat, 
but  not  overdressed ;  easy,  but,  as  Johnson  justly  states,  never  familiar 
in  any  offensive  degree.  It  is  easier  to  feel  enthusiasm  about  Steele, 
who  had  so  much,  than  about  Addison,  who  at  any  rate  shows  so 
little  ;  and  on  the  character,  the  genius,  the  originality,  of  the  two 
there  may  always  be  room  for  dispute.  But  it  seems  incredible  that 
any  one  should  deny  to  Addison  the  credit  of  being  by  far  the  greater 
artist,  and  of  having  brought  his  own  rather  special,  rather  limited, 
but  peculiar  and  admirable  division  of  art  to  a  perfection  seldom  else- 
where attained  in  letters. 

These  three  greatest  writers  were  surrounded  by  others  hardly 
less  than  great.  Arbuthnot,  Atterbury,  Bentley,  Boiingbroke, 
Mandeville,  the  younger  Shaftesbury,  Berkeley,  Butler,  Middleton, 
were  all  either  actual  contril)utors  to  the  great  periodical  scries,  or 
intimately  connected  with  those  who  wrote  these,  or  (which  is  of  equal 

1  "  Whoever  wishes  to  aUain  an  l-^nglish  style,  familiar,  l)iit  not  coarse,  and 
elegant,  but  not  ostentatious,  must  give  his  days  and  nights  to  the  volumes  of 
Addison."  But  this  is  only  the  crowning  sentence  of  the  peroration,  throughout 
laudatory,  of  the  Life. 


540  THE   AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  viii 

importance  to  us)  at  any  rate  exponents  of  the  extremely  plain  prose 
style,  which  required  the  exquisite  concinnity  of  Addison,  the  volcanic 
and  Titanic  force  and  fire  of  Swift,  or  the  more  than  Attic  stateliness 
and  grace  of  Berkeley,  to  save  it  from  being  too  plain.  The  order 
in  which  they  are  to  be  mentioned  is  unimportant,  and  few  can 
have  more  than  very  brief  space,  but  none  must  pass  unnoticed. 

Richard  Bentley,  a  very  great  classical  scholar,  and  no  mean 
writer  of  English,  was  a  Yorkshireman,  born  in  1662,  and  educated 
at  Wakefield.  He  went  early  to  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  was 
taken  as  a  private  tutor  into  the  household  of  Stilling- 
fleet,  took  orders  not  very  early,  was  made  King's 
Librarian  in  1694,  engaged,  and  was  completely  victorious,  in  the 
Ancient  and  Modern  controversy,  especially  in  reference  to  the 
Epistles  of  Phalaris ;  was  made  Master  of  Trinity  in  1699,  and  passed 
nearly  the  whole  of  his  more  than  forty  years  of  mastership,  till  his 
death  in  1742,  in  a  desperate  struggle  with  his  college,  wherein,  if 
his  adversaries  were  unscrupulous,  he  was  no  less  so,  while  the  right 
was  on  the  whole  rather  against  him,  though  his  bull-dog  tenacity  has 
won  over  most  commentators  on  the  matter  to  his  side.  There  is  at 
any  rate  no  doubt  of  his  learning,  his  logical  power,  and  his  very  real, 
though  gruff  and  horseplayful,  humour.  To  merely  English  literature 
he  stands  ^  in  two  very  different  relations.  His  almost  incredibly 
absurd  emendations  on  Milton  would,  if  the  thing  were  not  totally 
alien  from  the  spirit  of  the  man,  seem  like  a  designed  parody  on 
classical  scholarship  itself.  But  his  writing,  especially  in  the  famous 
Phalaris  dissertation,  and  in  the  remarks  on  the  Deist  Collins,  is- 
extraordinarily  vigorous  and  vivid.  His  birth-date,  probably  even 
more  than  a  design  to  avoid  the  reproach  of  pedantry,  made  him 
colloquial,  homely,  and  familiar  down  to  the  very  level  from  which 
Swift  and  Addison  tried  to  lift,  and  to  a  great  extent  succeeded  in 
lifting,  prose ;  but  his  native  force  and  his  wide  learning  save  him, 
though  sometimes  with  difficulty,  from  the  merely  vulgar. 

Conyers  Middleton,^  Bentley's  most  deadly  enemy,  was,  like 
Bentley,  a  Yorkshireman,  but  was  much  younger,  having  been  born  at 
Richmond  in  1683.  He  went  to  Trinity  young,  and  was  not  only  a 
Fellow  thereof,  but  connected  throughout  his  life  with 
Cambridge,  by  his  tenure  of  the  offices  of  University 
Librarian  from  1722  onwards,  and  Woodwardian  Professor  of  Geology 
for  a  time.  He  was  a  man  of  property,  was  thrice  married,  and  held 
several  livings  till  his  death  in  1750,  though  his  orthodoxy  was,  in  his 
own  times  and  afterwards,  seriously  impugned. 

This  does  not  concern  us  here,  though  it  may  be  observed  that 

1  Works  in  various  editions.    The  Phalaris  dissertation  often  separately, 
"^Miscellaneous  Works,  5  vols.  1753.     The  Cicero  has  been  often  reprinted. 


CHAP.  IV  QUEEN   ANNE   PROSE  541 

Middleton  may  be  cleared  from  anything  but  a  rather  advanced 
stage  of  the  latitudinarianism  and  dislike  of  "  enthusiasm  "  which  was 
generally  felt  by  the  men  of  his  time,  and  which  invited — indeed 
necessitated  —  the  Evangelical  and  Methodist  revolt.  So,  too,  we 
need  not  busy  ourselves  much  with  the  question  whether  he  directly 
plagiarised,  or  only  rather  freely  borrowed  from  the  Scotch  Latinist, 
Bellenden,  in  his  longest  and  most  famous  prose  work,  the  Life 
of  Cicero  (1741).  Besides  this,  he  wrote  two  controversial  works 
of  length — ostensibly  directed  against  Popery,  certainly  against 
extreme  supernaturalism,  and,  as  his  enemies  will  have  it,  covertly 
against  Christianity  —  entitled  A  Letter  front  Rome,  showing  an  exact 
Conformity  betiveen  Popery  a7id  Paganism  (1729),  and  A  free 
Inquiry  into  the  Miraculous  Powers  which  are  supposed  to  have 
existed  in  the  Christian  Chu?-ch  (1748)  ;  with  a  large  number  of  small 
pamphlets  on  a  variety  of  subjects,  in  treating  which  he  showed  wide 
culture  and  intelligence.  His  place  here,  however,  is  that  of  the 
most  distinguished  representative  of  the  absolutely  plain  style — not 
colloquial  and  vernacular  like  Bentley's,  but  on  the  other  hand 
attempting  none  of  the  graces  which  Addison  and  Berkeley  in  their 
different  ways  achieved  —  a  style  more  like  the  plainer  Latin  or  French 
styles  than  like  anything  else  in  English. 

John  Arbuthnot,^  the  "moon"  of  Swift,  born  1667,  came  of  the 
noble  family  of  that  name  in  Kincardineshire,  but  went  to  Oxford, 
and  spent  all  the  later  part  of  his  life  in  London,  where  he  was 
physician  to  Queen  Anne,  a  strong  Tory,  and  an  intimate 
friend  of  Swift  and  Pope.  He  died  in  1735,  much 
respected  and  beloved.  Arbuthnot's  literary  fate,  or  rather  the 
position  which  he  deliberately  chose,  was  peculiar.  It  is  very 
difficult  to  identify  much  of  his  work,  and  what  seems  certainly  his 
(especially  the  famous  History  of  John  Bull  and  The  Memoirs  of 
Scriblerus)  is  exceedingly  like  Swift,  and  was  pretty  certainly  pro- 
duced in  concert  with  that  strange  genius,  who,  unlike  some  animals, 
never  took  colour  from  his  surroundings,  but  always  gave  tliem  his 
own.  It  is,  however,  high  enough  praise  that  Arbuthnot,  at  the  best 
of  his  variable  work,  is  not  inferior  to  anything  but  the  very  best  of 
Swift.  There  is  the  same  fertility  and  the  same  unerringness  of 
irony ;  and,  if  we  can  distinguish,  it  is  only  that  a  half  or  wholly 
good-natured  amusement  takes  the  place  of  Swift's  indignation. 

Francis  Atterbury.-  born  in  Buckinghamshire  in  1672,  a  dis-. 
tinguished  Christ  Church  man,  who,  after  being  head  of  his  house, 
obtained  the  Bishopric  of  Rochester  and  the  Deanery  of  Westminster 
in  succession   to  Sprat,  was  the  divine  and  scholar  of  the   extreme 

1  Ed.  .Xitkrn,  1892. 

2  No  complete  or  modern  edition. 


542  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 

Tory  party,  as  Arbuthnot  was  their  man  of  science.  He  has  been 
accused  not  merely  of  conspiring  after  the  Hanoverian  succession, 
but  of  denying  it,  and  sailing  too  near  perjury  in  his 
denial.  Of  this  there  is  no  sufficient  proof,  and  we  must 
remember  that  the  political  ethics  of  the  age  were  extremely  accom- 
modating. He  was  at  any  rate  attainted,  and  banished  (in  1723)  to 
France,  where  he  died  nine  years  later.  A  brilliant  and  popular 
preacher,  a  pleasant  letter-writer,  a  most  dangerous  controversialist 
and  debater,  and  a  good  critic  (though  he  made  the  usual  mistakes 
of  his  age  about  poetry  before  Waller),  Atterbury  wrote  in  a  style  not 
very  unlike  Addison's,  though  inferior  to  it. 

The    huge    contemporary    fame    of    Henry    St.    John,    Viscount 

Bolingbroke,!  and  its  rapid   and  lasting  decline  after  his  death,  are 

among    the    commonplaces    of    literary    history.      He   was    born   in 

T,  .•    ,.    ,      1678,   passed    through    Eton   and  Christ  Church,  entered 

Bohngbroke.    ^     ,.  ^  T  r.  r       -.-r  •  , 

Parliament  very  early,  was  Secretary  for  War  at  six-and- 
twenty,  climbed  with  Harley  to  power,  and  contrived  to  edge  his 
companion  "  out,"  but  remained  "  in  "  himself  only  a  few  days,  fled  to 
the  Continent,  returned  to  England  and  recovered  his  estates,  but 
not  his  seat  in  Parliament,  in  1723,  organised  and  carried  on  the 
English  Frotide  against  Walpole,  and  died  in  1751.  His  career  — 
for  he  was  as  famous  for  "  wildness "  as  for  success  —  was  of  those 
which  specially  appeal  to  the  vulgar,  and  are  not  uninteresting  even 
to  unvulgar  tastes.  He  was  beyond  question  one  of  the  greatest 
orators  of  his  day,  and  he  was  extravagantly  praised  by  his  friends, 
who  happened  to  include  the  chief  poet  and  the  greatest  prose  writer  of 
the  time.  Yet  hardly  any  one  who  for  generations  has  opened  the 
not  few  volumes  of  his  works  has  closed  them  without  more  or  less 
profound  disappointment.  Bolingbroke,  more  than  any  other  English 
writer,  is  a  rhetorician  pure  and  simple;  and  it  was  his  misfortune, 
first,  that  the  subjects  of  his  rhetoric  were  not  the  great  and  perennial 
subjects,  but  puny  ephemeral  forms  of  them  —  the  partisan  and 
personal  politics  of  his  day,  the  singularly  shallow  form  of  infidelity 
called  Deism,  and  the  like  —  and,  secondly,  that  his  time  deprived  him 
of  many,  if  not  most,  of  the  rhetorician's  most  telling  weapons.  The 
Letter  to  Wind/iajn  (1716),  a  sort  of  apologia,  and  the  Ideal  of  a 
Patriot  King  (1749)  exhibit  him  at  his  best. 

Benjamin  Hoadly  (i 676-1 761),  a  pluralist  courtier,  and  more 
•than  doubtfully  orthodox  divine  on  the  Whig  side,  held  four  sees  in 
succession,  in  one  at  least  of  which  he  was  the  cause  of  much 
literature,  or  at  least  many  books,  by  provoking  the  famous 
"  Bangorian  "  controversy.     He  himself  wrote  clearly  and  well.     Nor 

1  Works,  8  voLs.  London,  1809. 


CHAP.  IV  QUEEN   ANNE   PROSE  543 


can  the  same  praise  be  denied  to  Samuel  Clarke  (1675-1729) 
philosopher,  physicist,  and  divine.  There  is  more  diversity  of 
opinion  about  the  purely  literary  merits,  as  distinguished 
from  the  unquestioned  claims  in  religious  philosophy,  of  ofhw^ivrnl 
Bishop  Joseph  Butler,  who  was  born  at  Wantage  in 
1692,  left  Nonconformity  for  the  Church,  went  to  Oriel,  became 
preacher  at  the  Rolls  Chapel,  Rector  of  Stanhope,  Bishop  of  Bristol, 
Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  and,  lastly.  Bishop  of  Durham,  owing  these 
appointments  to  no  cringing  or  intrigue,  but  to  his  own  great 
learning,  piety,  wisdom,  and  churchmanship,  fortunately  backed  by 
Queen  Caroline's  fancy  for  philosophy.  Butler's  Sermons,  published 
in  1726,  and  his  Analogy  of  iVatural  and  Revealed  Religion  ten 
years  later,  occasionally  contain  aphorisms  of  beauty  equal  to  their 
depth ;  but  it  is  too  much  to  claim  "  crispness  and  clearness "  for 
his  general  style, ^  which  is,  on  the  contrary,  too  often  obscure  and 
tough. 

Anthony  Ashley  Cooper,  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  the  third  of  his 
names  and  title,  the  grandson  of  "  Achitophel,"  and  the  son  of  the 
'•shapeless  lump"  (a  phrase  for  which  he  never  forgave  Dryden),  was 
born  in  1671.  His  mother  was  Lady  Dorothy  Manners. 
He  was  brought  up  partly  by  a  learned  lady,  and  partly  ^  '^^  ""^^ 
by  Locke.  He  was  for  three  years  at  Winchester,  went  to  no 
University,  and  travelled  a  good  deal  abroad.  He  sat  for  a  short 
time  in  the  House  of  Commons,  but  made  no  figure  there  or  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  where,  during  nearly  the  whole  time  of  his  tenure  of 
the  earldom  (1699-17 13),  politics,  whether  Whig  or  Tory,  were  of  too 
rough  a  cast  for  his  dilettantism.  He  died,  after  more  foreign  travel,  in 
1 71 3.  His  writings,  scattered  and  not  extensive,  had  been  collected 
two  years  before  as  Characteristics  of  Men,  Manners,  Opinions,  Times. - 
Shaftesbury  was  an  original  and  almost  powerful  thinker  and  writer, 
spoilt  by  an  irregular  education,  a  sort  of  morbid  aversion  from 
English  thought  generally,  an  early  attack  of  Deism,  and  a  strong 
touch  of  affectation.  Much  harm  has  been  done  to  him  by  Lamb's 
description  of  his  style  as  "genteel,"  a  word  in  Lamb's  time  and 
later  not  connoting  the  snobbishness  which  has  for  half  a  certury 
been  associated  with  it.  "Superfine,"  the  usurJ  epithet,  is  truer; 
though  Dr.  George  Campbell,  an  excellent  critic,  was  .somewliat  too 
severe "  on  Shaftesbury's  Gallicisms,  and  his  imprudent  and  rather 
amateurish  engagement  in  the  Deist  controversy  of  the  time   caused 

1  Butler's  Sermons  and  Analos^',  which  have  long  played  an  important  part 
as  text-books  in  the  Oxford  curriculum,  have  been  well  cared  for  in  matter  of 
reprints  by  that  University.  Clarke  and  Hoadly  must  be  sought,  if  at  all,  in  con- 
temporary editions. 

'^  New  ed.  3  vols.  London,  1749.  »  In  his  Philosophy  of  Rhetoric. 


544  THE   AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  viii 

him  to  be  broken  a  little  too  ruthlessly  on  the  wheel,  adamantine 
in  polish  as  in  strength,  of  Berkeley  in  AlcipJiron.  His  centra! 
doctrine,  that  ridicule  is  the  test  of  truth,  as  well  as  his  style,  are  in 
reality  caricatures  of  Addison,  though  the  dates  preclude  any  notion 
of  plagiarism.  He  is  full  of  suggestion,  and  might  have  been  a  great 
thinker  and  writer. 

Shaftesbury's  superfineness  and  his  optimism  seem  to  have  had 
at  least  a  considerable  share  in  provoking  the  cynical  pessimism  of 
another  remarkable  thinker  of  this  time,  Bernard  Mandeville,  or  de 
Mandeville,^  a  Dutchman,  born  at  Dordrecht  about  1670, 
who  came  early  to  London,  attained  a  singular  mastery 
of  English,  practised  physic,  and  died  in  1733.  There  is  some 
mystery,  and  probably  some  mystification,  about  the  origin  of  The 
Grumbling  Hive,  better  known  by  its  later  title  of  The  Fable  of  the 
Bees.  No  edition  earlier  than  1705  is  known,  but  Mandeville  claimed 
a  much  earlier  date  for  it.  About  nine  years  later  a  reprint,  in  17 14, 
drew  attention,  and  after  yet  another  nine  years  another  was  "pre- 
sented" by  the  Grand  Jury  of  Middlesex,  and  fiercely  denounced  by 
men  of  such  importance  as  Law  and  Berkeley.  The  book,  which  was 
constantly  enlarged,  is  in  its  final  form  a  cluster  of  prose  tractates, 
with  a  verse  nucleus  (the  original  piece)  showing  how  vice  made 
some  bees  happy,  and  virtue  made  them  miserable.  A  good  deal 
of  other  work,  some  certainly  and  some  probably  spurious,  is  attributed 
to  Mandeville,  who  is  the  Diogenes  of  English  philosophy.  An 
exceedingly  charitable  judgment  may  impute  to  deliberate  paradox, 
and  to  irritation  at  Shaftesbury's  airy  gentility,  his  doctrine  that 
private  vices  are  public  benefits ;  but  the  gusto  with  which  he 
caricatures  and  debases  everything  pure  and  noble  and  of  good 
report  is,  unluckily,  too  genuine.  He  thought,  however,  with  great 
force  and  acuteness,  despite  his  moral  twist ;  he  had  a  strong, 
fertile,  and  whimsical  humour ;  and  his  style,  plebeian  as  it  is,  may 
challenge  comparison  with  the  most  famous  literary  vernaculars 
in   English   for   racy   individuality. 

If,  however,  Shaftesbury  has  rather  too  much  of  the  peacock, 
and  Mandeville  a  great  deal  too  much  of  the  polecat,  about  him,  no 
depreciatory  animal  comparison  need  be  sought  or  feared  for  George 
Berkeley,  the  best-praised  man  of  his  time,  and  among 
the  most  deserving  of  praise.  He  was  born  in  1685 
near  Kilkenny,  and  was  educated  first,  like  Swift  and  Congreve 
earlier,  at  its  famous  grammar  school,  and  then  at  Trinity  College, 
Dublin,  where  he  made  a  long  residence,  and  wrote  his  chief  purely 

1  Works  never  collected  —  some  rare  and  some  doubtful.  The  Fable  of  the  Bees 
is  common.  I  use  the  so-called  ninth  (Edinburgh,  1755)  edition  of  its  fullest 
form. 


CHAP.  IV  QUEEN  ANNE   PROSE  545 

philosophical  worlcs.  In  1713  he  went  to  London,  and  was  intro- 
duced to  the  wits  by  Swift,  after  which  he  travelled  on  the  Continent 
for  several  years.  He  was  made  Dean  of  Derry  in  1724,  went  with 
missionary  schemes,  which  were  defeated,  to  North  America,  but 
returned,  in  1731,  and  published  the  admirable  dialogues  oi  Alciphron. 
He  was  made  Bishop  of  Cloyne  in  1734,  and  for  eighteen  years 
resided  in  his  diocese.  A  few  months  before  his  death,  in  1753,  he 
had  gone,  in  bad  health,  to  Oxford,  and  he  died  there. 

Berkeley's  principal  works,'  or  groups  of  works,  are  first  —  The 
Theory  of  Vision  (1709),  The  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge  (1710), 
and  the  Dialogues  of  Hylas  [Materialist]  and  Philonous  [partisan  of 
mind],  in  which,  continuing  the  Lockian  process  of  argument  against 
innate  ideas,  he  practically  re-establi.  ned  them  by  a  further  process  of 
destruction,  and  brought  down  on  himself  a  great  deal  of  very  igno- 
rant attack  or  banter  for  his  supposed  denial  of  matter.  The  above- 
mentioned  Alciphron ;  or,  the  Minute  Philosopher,  is  a  series  of 
dialogues,  in  which  the  popular  infidelity  of  the  day,  whether  optimist 
like  Shaftesbury's,  pessimistical  like  Mandeville's,  or  one-sidedly 
critical  like  that  of  the  Deists  proper,  is  attacked  in  a  fashion  which 
those  who  sympathise  with  the  victims  accuse  of  occasional  unfair- 
ness, but  which  has  extraordinary  cogency  as  polemic,  and  extraor- 
dinary brilliance  as  literature.  His  last  important  book  was  Siris, 
an  odd  miscellany,  advocating  tar- water  for  the  body,  and  administer- 
ing much  excellent  mysticism  to  the  soul ;  but  he  wrote  some  minor 
things,  and  a  good  many  letters,  diaries,  etc.,  which  were  not  fully 
published  till  the  later  years  of  the  present  century. 

Unusually  good  as  a  man,  and  unusually  great  as  a  philosopher, 
Berkeley  would  have  stood  in  the  first  rank  as  a  mere  writer  had    his 
character  been  bad  or  unknown,  and  the  matter  of  his  writings  un- 
important.    The  charm  of  his  style  is  at  once  so  subtle 
and  so  pervading  that  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  separate     "hit  style, 
and  define  it.     He  has    no   mannerisms ;  although   he   is 
a  most  accomplished  ironist,  he  does  not  depend  upon  irony  for  the 
seasoning  of  his  style,  as,  in  different  ways,  do  Addison  and  Swift ;  he 
can  give  the  plainest  and  most  unadorned  exposition  of  an  abstruse, 
philosophical    doctrine    with     perfect    literary    grace.     And    (as,  for 
instance,     in     Lysicles'    version    of    Mandeville's     vices-and-benefits 
argument)    he    can    saturate  a  long   passage    with     satiric    innuendo, 
never  once  breaking  out   into   direct  tirade  or  direct    burlesque.     He 
can  illustrate  admirably,  but  he  is  never  the  dupe  of  his  illustrations. 
He   is  clearer  even  than   Hobbes  and    infinitely  more  elegant,  while 

1  Editions  are  numerous,  but  for  crilic.il  purposes,  and  also  as  conf.\ining  some 
previously  unpublished  maltL-r,  Professor  Campbell  Fraser'c  (4  vols.  Oxford,  1871) 
is  the  standard. 
2N 


546  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 

his  dialect  and  arrangement,  though  originally  arrived  at  for 
argumentative  purposes,  or  at  least  in  argumentative  works,  are 
equally  suited  for  narrative,  for  dialogue,  for  description,  for  almost 
every  literary  end.  Were  it  not  for  the  intangibleness,  and  there- 
fore the  inimitableness,  of  his  style,  he  vi^ould  be  an  even  better 
general  model  than  Addison ;  and,  as  it  is,  he  is  unquestionably 
the  best  model  in  English,  if  not  in  any  language,  for  philosophical, 
and  indeed  for  argumentative,  writing  generally. 

Daniel  Defoe,^  the  link  between  the  great  essayists  of  the  earlier 
and  the  great  novelists  of  the  middle  years  of  the  eighteenth  century 
—  one  of  the  most  voluminous  and  problematical  of  English  writers, 

Def  e  ^^  ^^^^^  ^^  °"^  "^^  ^'^  ^^^  ^^^  greatest  —  a  man,  too,  of 
very  questionable  life  and  character  —  could  not  be  fully 
discussed  in  any  compendious  history  of  English  literature.  But 
luckily  it  is  by  no  means  necessary  that  he  should  be  so  discussed, 
the  strictly  literary  lines  of  his  work  being  broad  and  clear,  and  the 
problems  both  of  it  and  of  his  life  being  such  as  may,  without  any 
loss,  be  left  to  the  specialist.  He  was  born,  it  would  seem,  in  1659 
(not,  as  used  to  be  thought,  1661)  in  the  heart  of  London,  St.  Giles's, 
Cripplegate,  where  his  father  (whose  name  was  certainly  Foe)  was  a 
butcher.  It  is  not  known  for  what  reason  or  cause  Daniel,  when  more 
than  fifty,  assumed  the  "de,"  sometimes  as  separate  particle,  some- 
times in  composition.  He  was  well  educated,  but  instead  of  becom- 
ing a  Nonconformist  minister,  took  to  trade,  which  at  intervals  and 
in  various  forms  (stocking-selling,  tile-making,  etc.)  he  pursued  with 
no  great  luck.  He  seems  to  have  been  a  partaker  in  Monmouth's 
rebellion,  and  was  certainly  a  good  deal  abroad  in  the  later  years  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  but  he  early  took  to  the  vocation  of  pam- 
phleteering, which,  with  journalism  and  novel-writing,  gave  his  three 
great  literary  courses.  The  chief  among  many  results  of  this  was 
the  famous  Shortest  Way  with  the  Dissenters  (1702),  a  statement  of 
the  views  of  the  extreme  "  Highflying "  or  High  Church  party,  in 
which  some  have  seen  irony,  but  which  really  is  the  exact  analogue 
in  argument  of  his  future  fictions,  that  is  to  say,  an  imitation  of  what 
he  wanted  to  represent  so  close  that  it  looks  exactly  like  fact.  He 
was  prosecuted,  fined,  pilloried,  and  imprisoned,  but,  in  the  growing 
Whig  temper  of  the  nation,  the  piece  was  undoubtedly  very  effective. 

1  There  is  no  complete  collection,  and  hardly  the  possibility  of  any,  of  Defoe's 
enormous  work.  Partial  collections,  and  lives,  are  rather  numerous.  The  most 
recent  of  the  former  is  Mr.  Aiiken's  (of  the  novels),  the  most  accessible  of  the  gen- 
eral works  that  in  Bohns  Library  (7  vols.),  the  best  Piazlitfs  (3  vols.  London, 
1841).  Mr.  Lee's  speculative  but  laborious  Life  and  Uiipuhlished  Writings  (3 
vols.  London,  1869)  is  necessary  for  all  thorough  students;  Professor  Morley's 
selection  of  the  miscellaneous  works  (not  fiction)  in  the  "  Carisbrooke  Library  " 
is  very  cheap  and  useful. 


CHAP.  IV  QUEEN   ANNE   PROSE  547 

For  the  greater  part  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne,  and  at  first 
in  prison,  Defoe  carried  on,  from  1704  to  1713,  his  famous  Review, 
the  prototype  to  some  extent  of  the  great  later  periodicals,  but  written 
entirely  by  himself.  Before  he  had  been  long  in  prison  he  was 
liberated  by  Harley,  of  whose  statesmanship,  shifty  in  method,  and 
strangely  compounded  of  Toryism  and  Whiggery  in  principle,  Defoe 
became  a  zealous  secret  agent.  He  had  a  great  deal  to  do  with 
negotiating  the  Union  with  Scotland.  Nor  did  Harley's  fall  put  an 
end  to  his  engagement  in  subterranean  branches  of  the  public  service ; 
for  it  has  long  been  known  that  under  the  House  of  Hanover  he  dis- 
charged the  delicate,  or  indelicate,  part  of  a  Tory  journalist,  secretly 
paid  by  the  Whig  Government  to  tone-  down  and  take  the  sting  out 
of  il//.f/'j /6'//r«rt/ and  other  Opposition  papers.  He  lived  for  a  good 
many  years  longer,  and  did  his  very  best  literary  work  in  his  latest 
period ;  but  at  the  last  he  experienced  some  unexplained  revolution 
of  fortune,   and    died  at  Moorfields,    in  concealment  and  distress,   in 

1731- 

Of  Defoe's,  in  the  strictest  sense,  innumerable  works  the  follow- 
ing catalogue  of  the  most  important  may  serve :  —  Essay  on  Projects 
(1698),  an  instance  of  the  restless  tendency  of  the  time  towards  com- 
mercial and  social  improvements,  and  of  Defoe's  own  fertility ;  The 
True-Born  Englishman  (1701),  an  argument  in  vigorous  though 
most  unpoetical  verse  to  clear  William  from  the  disability  of  his 
foreign  origin;  the  Hymn  to  the  Pillory  (1703),  composed  on  the 
occasion  of  his  exhibition  in  that  implement,  still  more  vigorous  and 
a  little  less  unpoetical ;  the  curious  political  satire  of  the  Consolidator 
(1705);  the  xu.7if,\.^x\y  Relation  of  Mrs.  Veal,  the  first  instance  of  his 
wonderful  "lies  like  truth  ";  y>^r^  Dijnno  (1706),  worse  verse  and 
also  worse  sense  than  The  True-Born  Englishman.  But  the  best  of 
these  is  poor  compared  with  the  great  group  of  fiction  of  his  later 
years  —  Robi)ison  Crusoe  (171 9),  Duncan  Campbell,  Memoirs  of  a 
Cavalier,  a.x\A  Captaiti  Singleton  (all  produced  in  ijzo),  Moll  Flanders, 
the  History  of  the  Plague,  and  Colonel  fack  (all  in  1722),  Roxana 
(1724),  and  A  New  Voyage  Round  the  World  (1725).  Besides 
these,  he  published  in  his  later  years,  as  he  had  in  his  earlier,  a  crowd 
of  works,  small  and  great,  political,  topographical,  historical,  moral, 
and  miscellaneous. 

It  is  not  of  much  use  to  discuss  Defoe's  moral  character,  and  it 
is  sincerely  to  be  hoped  that  no  more  revelations  concerning  it  will 
turn  up,  inasmuch  as  each  is  more  damaging  than  the  last,  excf])!  to 
those  who  have  succeeded  in  taking  his  true  measure  once  for  all. 
It  is  that  of  a  man  who,  with  no  high,  fine,  or  poetical  sentiment  to 
.save  him.  shared  to  the  full  the  partisan  entlnisiasm  of  his  time,  and 
its  belief  that  all    was    fair  in  politics.     His    literary    idiosyncrasy    is 


548  -  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  vin 

more  comfortable  to  handle.  He  was  a  man  of  extraordinary  in- 
dustry and  versatility,  who  took  an  interest,  subject  to  the  limitations 
of  his  temperament,  in  almost  everything,  whose  brain  was  wonder- 
fully fertile,  and  who  had  a  style,  if  not  of  the  finest  or  most  exquisite, 
singularly  well  suited  to  the  multifarious  duties  to  which  he  put  it. 
Also,  he  could  give,  as  hardly  even  Bunyan  had  given  before  him, 
and  as  nobody  has  since,  absolute  verisimilitude  to  fictitious  presenta- 
tions. He  seems  to  have  done  this  mainly  by  a  certain  chameleon- 
like faculty  of  assuming  the  atmosphere  and  colour  of  his  subject,  and 
by  a  cunning  profusion  of  exactly  suited  and  selected  detail.  It  is 
enough  that  in  Robinson  Crusoe  he  has  produced,  by  help  of  this  gift, 
a  book  which  is,  throughout  its  first  two  parts,  one  of  the  great  books 
of  the  world  in  its  particular  kind ;  and  that  parts  of  Afoll  Flanders, 
Captain  Singleton^  and  Colonel  Jack,  at  least,  are  not  inferior.  Further, 
the  "lift"  which  Defoe  gave  to  the  novel  was  enormous.  He  was 
still  dependent  on  adventure ;  he  did  not  advance  much,  if  at  all, 
beyond  the  more  prosaic  romantic  scheme.  But  the  extraordinary 
verisimilitude  of  his  action  could  not  but  show  the  way  to  the  last  step 
that  remained  to  be  taken,  the  final  projection  of  character. 


CHAPTER  V 

POPE  AND  HIS  ELDER  CONTEMPORARIES  IN  VERSE 

Divisions  of  eighteenth-century  verse  —  Pope  :  his  Hfe  —  His  work  —  His  character 

—  His  poetry — His  couplet  and  paragraph  —  His  phrase — His  subjects  — 
Garth  —  Blackmore  —  Congreve,  etc.,  —  Prior  —  His  metrical  importance  —  Gay 

—  Young  —  Farnell  —  Lady  Winchelsea 

The  poetry  of  the  eighteenth  century  can  be  classified  with  a  com- 
pleteness  and   convenience    uncommon   in   literary   periods.      In   the 
first  division  we   see   the   complete   triumph   of  the   "  classical "   and 
"correct,"  or  conventional,  ideal  at  once  exemplified  and    Divisions  of 
achieved  in  the  work   of  Pope.     This   is   followed   by   a    eighteenth- 

,.,,,.  ,       century  verse. 

rather  longer  period,  in  which  the  dominant  poetry  —  the 
kind  of  verse  admired  and  praised  by  almost  all  the  vulgar  and  a  few 
of  the  elect  —  is  imitation  of  Pope,  tempered  more  or  less  by  that  of 
Dryden.  But  side  by  side  with  both  these  (and  even  at  the  very 
earliest  represented  by  Lady  Winchelsea  and  one  or  two  others)  there 
is  a  party  of  mostly  unintentional  revolt  which  first,  as  represented  by 
Thomson,  reverts  to  nature  in  observation,  but  generalises  still  in 
expression ;  then,  as  presented  by  Gray,  while  not  neglecting  nature, 
changes  all  the  sources  of  its  literary  inspiration,  seeking  them  always 
farther  back  and  wider.  In  respect  of  form  the  two  first  schools  are 
almost  wholly  busied,  except  in  light  and  occasional  verse,  with  the 
couplet ;  while  the  third,  in  its  endeavour  not  to  be  conventional,  takes 
refuge  in  blank  verse  and  stanza-forms.  In  the  present  chapter  we 
shall  have  to  do  with  the  first,  and  one  or  two  belated  or  precocious 
members  of  the  third.  The  second  and  the  main  body  of  the  third 
will  occupy  us  in  the  next  Book. 

Alexander  Pope.^  —  within  certain  narrow  but  impregnable  limits 
one  of  the  greatest  masters  of  poetic  form  that  the  world  has  ever 
seen,  and  a  considerable,  though  sometimes  over-rated,  .satirist  —  was 

1  The  standard  library  edition  of  Pope  is  that  of  Elwin  and  Courthopc.  with  an 
exhaustive  Life  by  the  latter,  ii  vols.  London,  1870-89.  The  "Globe"  edition  of 
the  Poems,  by  A.  W.  Ward,  is  exceptionally  valuable. 

S49 


550 


THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 


born  in  London  in  1688,  of  a  respectable  tradesman's  family.  His 
parents  were  Roman  Catholics,  and  Pope  was  rather  badly  educated 
in  his  early  youth.  From  the  time  when  his  father 
ope.  isie.  j^^Q^,g(^  i^Q  Binfield,  on  the  outskirts  of  Windsor  Forest, 
he  seems  to  have  educated  himself.  The  bad  health  and  physical 
deformity  which  marred  his  later  life,  and  to  which  the  disagreeable 
parts  of  his  character  have  been  traced,  with  a  mixture  of  reason  and 
charity,  are  said  not  to  have  been  congenital.  He  wrote  verse  very 
early ;  but  his  extreme  untruthfulness  makes  it  very  uncertain  how 
much  before  the  date  of  publication  any  particular  piece  was  com- 
posed. Still,  the  dates  of  the  Pastorals  (1709),  when  he  was  twenty- 
one,  of  the  Essay  on  C?-iticisr>i,  two  years  later,  and  of  IVmdsor 
Forest,  two  years  later  still,  establish  beyond  all  question  his  early 
command  of  versification  and  expression.  Even  before  the  earliest 
of  these  dates  Pope  had  been  introduced  to  Wycherley  and  to  Walsh, 
and  through  them  he  became  acquainted  with  the  rising  prose  lights 
of  literature  —  Addison,  Steele,  and,  above  all.  Swift.  These  (at  least 
Swift)  zealously  furthered  his  scheme  of  translating  the  Iliad,  which 
was  started  17 13,  began  to  appear  next  year,  and  was  finished  in 
1720.  This,  like  the  Odyssey,  which  followed,  and  a  good  deal  of 
which  was  done  by  assistants  (Fenton  and  Broome),  was  published 
by  subscription,  and  the  two  brought  Pope  in  not  much  less  than 
_;^io,ooo,  a  sum  which,  at  the  rates  of  interest  then  prevailing,  and  with 
some  paternal  property,  was  enough  to  put  him  in  affluence  for  the 
rest  of  his  life.  That  life  presents  little  history  except  a  record  of 
disease,  publications,  and  quarrels.  It  was  in  1718  that  he  estab- 
lished himself  at  Twickenham,  which  as  headquarters  he  never  after- 
wards left,  and  here  he  died  in  1744. 

The  order  of  his  later  publications  was  as  follows.  The  Rape  of 
the  Lock,  published  partially  in  1712,  reappeared  during  the  time 
of  his  work  on  Homer  in  1714.  He  produced  an  edition  of  Shake- 
speare, which  could  not  well  be  good,  in  1728.  His 
'^  ^  "^  '  satirical  powers,  which  had  already  been  exhibited  in 
fragments,  at  last  took  the  form  of  The  Dunciad  (1728-29),  a  violent 
attack  on  the  minor  writers  of  the  day,  with  whom  Pope  fancied  that 
he  had  the  quarrel  of  Wit  against  Dulness,  while  he  really  had  that  of 
an  exceedingly  irritable  poet  against  reviewers  and,  in  some  sense, 
rivals.  Thereafter  he  fell  into  a  course  of  half-moral,  half-satirical 
writings  —  Epistle  to  Lord  Burlington,  Essay  on  Man,  Imitations  of 
Horace,  Epistle  to  Arbuthnot,  etc.  (1730-38),  which,  whether  poetry 
or  not,  whether  philosophy  or  not,  are  at  any  rate  the  most  brilliant 
examples  in  English  of  one  particular  kind  of  verse  and  one  particular 
kind  of  style.  His  last  important  work  was  an  alteration  and  en- 
largement of  The  Dunciad  (1742-43).     Neither  changes  nor  additions 


CH.v    POPE  AND  HIS  ELDER  CONTEMPORARIES  IN  VERSE    551 


were  by  any  means  always  improvements,  but  the  finale  of  the  com- 
plete poem  is  one  of  the  very  greatest  things  that  Pope  ever  wrote, 
and  one  of  his  strongest  titles  to  the  name  of  poet. 

That  his  claims  to  that  name  could  be  disputed  probably  never 
entered  into  the  head  of  any  of  his  contemporaries  save  his  personal 
foes,  nor  perhaps  into  the  heart  and  conscience  of  any  even  of  these. 
They  were  sufficiently  numerous,  and  Pope  amply  de- 
served them.  His  faults,  from  their  evident  connection 
with  a  sort  of  childish  weakness,  invite,  and  have  received,  compassion ; 
but  to  deny  them  is  absurd.  Nor  were  his  virtues  extremely  con- 
spicuous. He  is  credited  with  sincere  affection  for  his  friends. 
But  there  were  no  two  men  whom  he  loved  and  honoured  more 
than  Swift  and  Bolingbroke,  and  yet  he  could  not  resist  playing 
upon  both  some  of  the  underhand  literary  tricks  to  which  he  was  more 
addicted  than  any  great  man  of  letters  except  his  contemporary  and 
analogue  Voltaire.  He  lampooned  Addison,  who  had  perhaps  given 
him  a  provocation  of  which  a  magnanimous  person  would  have  made 
nothing,  while  it  very  possibly  had  no  existence  except  in  his  own 
morbid  fancy ;  and  though  the  lampoon,  the  ''  Character  of  Atticus," 
is  magnificent  literature  and  not  quite  unjust,  it  is  all  the  baser 
ethically  for  its  genius  and  its  justice.  He  made  violent  and  foolish 
love  to  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu,  and  being,  or  thinking  himself, 
snubbed,  revenged  the  snub  with  vulgar  insults  which  the  pen  of  no 
gentleman  could  have  ever  allowed  to  flow  from  it  at  any  time,  except 
that  of  the  literary  bravos  of  his  old  friend  Wycherley's  youth.  Even 
his  partisans  have  allowed  a  feeling  of  revolt  at  the  venomous  and 
snobbish  delight  with  which  he  dwells  at  once  on  the  poverty  and 
the  dinnerlessness  of  his  Grub  Street  foes.  He  was  stingy  in 
entertaining  (a  very  rare  fault  for  his  time)  ;  he  had,  with  no  motive  to 
save,  odd  tricks  of  writing  on  backs  of  letters  and  scraps  of  paper ; 
he  had  many  minor  faults.  Yet  those  of  his  friends  with  whom  he 
did  not  quarrel  never  quarrelled  with  him,  and  it  would  be  unfair  to 
ask  whether  it  was  policy  or  generosity  which  made  him  invariably 
favourable  to  rising  young  men  of  letters  —  Thomson  and  Johnson 
are  the  great  and  sufficient,  though  by  no  means  the  only,  examples 
who  made  their  appearance  in  his  time  —  provided  only  they  did  not  join 
the  real  or  imagiried  army  of  Diabolus  in  Grub  Street.  He  was  a 
very  good  son;  his  passion  for  Martha  Blount  —  a  passion  which  was 
not  too  well  requited,  though  the  object  benefited  by  it  most  hand- 
somely—  seems  to  have  been  faithful  and  intense;  and  though  trouble- 
some to  his  inferiors  and  servants  from  his  infirmities,  he  seems  to 
have  been  liked  by  them. 

But   his   character,  save   for    its    close    connection    with    his    work, 
matters  very   little  ;    his   literature   matters  very   much.      The   greater 


552  THE  AUGUSTAN    AGES  book  viii 

jars  of  the  conflict   over  the   question  "  Was    Pope  a   poet  ?  "  have 
mostly  ceased.      Hardly  anybody  now  would  dream  of  denying  that 

he  was  a  poet ;  very  few  would  assert  that  he  was  one 
isp  ry.  ^^  ^j^^  greatest  kind.  Some  indeed  have  challenged  for 
himself  the  phrase  "  Return  to  nature "  which  has  generally  been 
applied  to  the  revolters  from  him.  The  argument,  which  lacks 
neither  ingenuity  or  plausibility,  is  that  from  the  Elizabethan 
time  to  the  Pindaric  imitators  of  Cowley  a  non-natural  exaggeration 
had  been  a  curse,  if  not  the  curse,  of  English  poetry,  and  that  Pope 
finally  aboHshed  this.  Unluckily,  however,  Cleveland  had  been  dead 
for  fifty  years  when  Pope  wrote ;  Dryden  had  "appealed  to  sense" 
long  before  he  was  born ;  and  the  prevalent  faults  of  the  time  imme- 
diately preceding  were  not  those  of  unnatural  conceit.  Even  had 
it  been  otherwise,  the  nature  to  which  he  returned  was,  in  all  but 
one  respect,  a  nature  of  prose,  not  of  poetry.  He  did  refine,  to  the 
utmost  possible  e.xtent,  one  special  kind  of  verse,  and  this  —  perhaps 
this  only  —  establishes  his  claim  to  be  a  poet.  Those  who  hold  that 
though  (to  their  sorrow)  there  may  be  verse  without  poetry,  there 
cannot  be  poetry  without  verse,  are  not  the  least  trusty  guardians 
of  Pope's  position.  He  may  be  open  to  attack  on  other  sides; 
here  the  defence  may  laugh  at  any  assault. 

Pope's  extraordinary  mastery  of  a  certain  refinement  on  the 
Drydenian  couplet,  which,  losing  not  a  little  strength  and  colour,  and 
something  of  that  portion  of  the  poetic  vague  which  Dryden  retained, 

added  an  incomparable  lightness  and  polish,  seems  to 
and  paragraph,  have  been  attained  very  early.     In  the  Essay  on  Criticism 

it  is  nearly  as  advanced,  if  not  quite  as  sure,  as  in  the 
satires  of  thirty  years  later.  The  secret,  .so  far  as  there  is  a  single 
one,  is  the  bold  discarding  of  everything  but  the  consideration  of  the 
couplet  itself —  triplets  and  Alexandrines,  the  enjatnbement  which  even 
Dryden  sometimes  permitted  himself,  and  the  structure  of  the  para- 
graph by  any  other  than  sense-methods.  This  last  is,  of  course,  an 
important  exception,  and  it  speaks  volumes  for  Pope's  skill  that  he 
can,  by  means  of  the  sense  merely,  connect  together  strings  of 
couplets  of  which,  by  no  means  infrequently,  each  is  complete  in  itself 
in  rhythm  as  in  meaning.  But  he  sacrifices  every  attraction  of  form 
to  the  couplet  —  light,  bright,  glittering,  varied  in^  a  manner  almost 
impossible  to  account  for,  tipped  ever  with  the  neatest,  smartest, 
sharpest  rhyme,  and  volleying  on  the  dazzled,  though  at  times 
at  any  rate  satiated,  reader  a  sort  of  salvo  of  fettx-d'' artifice,  skip- 
ping, crackling,  scattering  colour  and  sound  all  round  and  about  him. 
If  we  take  a  paragraph  of  Milton's  with  one  of  Pope's,  and  compare 
the  apparent  variety  of  the  constituent  stones  of  the  one  building 
with  the  apparent  monotony  of  those  of  the  other,  the  difference  may 


CH.  V   POPE  AND  HIS  ELDER  CONTEMPORARIES  IN  VERSE     553 

be  at  first  quite  bewildering.  One  of  Dryden's,  between  the  two,  will 
partly,  though  not  entirely,  solve  the  difficulty  by  showing  how  the  law 
of  the  prose  paragraph,  that  of  meaning,  is  brought  to  supply  the  place  of 
that  of  the  pure  poetic  paragraph,  the  composition  of  sound  and  music. 
Pope's  other  engine  for  attaining  his  effect  was  phraseology,  in 
which  he  displays  the  same  exquisite,  though  limited,  perfection. 
Here,  again,  of  the  remoter  and  rarer  graces  of  style  there  are  none. 
Pope  suggests  little ;  no  conjunction  of  his  words  causes 

,       ,,      .,  ,  ....  Ill  r   r^i  1     His  phrase. 

the  "wild  surprise  given  by  the  phrase  of  Chaucer,  and 
by  those  of  an  unbroken  succession  from  Spenser  to  Dryden.  So  also 
(in  this  point  inferior  to  his  friends  Addison  and  Swift)  he  has  little 
humour.  But  his  wit  is  of  the  finest,  and  everything  that  he  wishes 
to  say,  everything  that  comes  within  his  purview  as  proper  to  be 
said,  is  expressed  with  unequalled  propriety.  It  is  impossible  to 
improve  on  Pope ;  to  get  something  better  you  must  change  the 
kind.  Nor  can  there  be  much  doubt  that,  in  the  negative  as  in  the 
positive  sides  of  this  perfection,  he  is  indebted  to  that  process  of 
conscious  or  unconscious  conventionalising  which  all  his  time  adored 
and  which  he  brought  to  its  acme.  The  individual  and  particular 
graces  of  the  literature  before  and  after  his  century  give  a  nobler 
gust,  but  it  is  hit  or  miss  with  them.  Pope's  process  —  of  extracting 
and  representing  the  best  thought  within  his  compass  in  the  best 
words  that  his  own  genius  (still  careful  of  the  common)  could 
achieve  —  is  lower  but  surer.  He  cannot  (or  can  but  very  rarely  when 
transported  by  private  passion,  as  in  the  "  Character  of  Atticus,"  or 
by  the  contagion  of  a  greater  genius,  as  in  that  conclusion  of  The 
Dunciad,  which  is  Swift  done  into  poetry)  give  the  greatest  things. 
But  what  he  can  give  he  gives  quite  unerringly;  he  is  a  secure  and 
impeccable  master  of  his  own  craft. 

With  so  peculiar  a  genius  as  this  (for  it  would  be  absurd  to  stint 
Pope  to  the  word  "  talent,"  though  some  logical  defence  might  be  made 
for  it)  his  subject  could  not  but  be  of  the  greatest  importance,  while 
even  his  treatment  of  matters  was  necessarily  conditioned 

-^  ^    His  subjects. 

by  his  knowledge.  In  the  subjects  of  the  Pastorals,  01 
the  Messiah,  of  U'itidsor  Forest,"^  he  was  not  really  at  home,  and  all 
these  are  in  consequence  mere  pastiches  —  things  immensely  clever  but 
no  more.  In  the  Essay  on  Criticism  the  subject  itself  was  thoroughly 
congenial.  Pope  knew  his  own  ideal  of  literature,  could  express 
.  that  ideal  critically  as  few  could,  and  express  it  constructively  as 
could  no  other  man  in  the  world.  But  he  was  a  very  bad  judge  of 
other  styles  and  other  ideals,  and  his  knowledge  of  literary  as  of  other 

1  Wordsworth,  usually  unjust  to  Pope,  lias  been  too  generous  to  this  ixu-ni.  It 
Rives  literally  nofhinp  of  the  Forest  or  of  the  Thames  Valley :  a  library  and  a 
poulterer's  shop  would  furnish  all  its  material. 


554  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 

history  would  have  disgraced  the  meanest  hack  in  his  own  fancied 
Grub  Street.  Consequently,  here  and  wherever  else  he  touches  the 
subject,  we  get  the  most  ridiculous  statements  of  fact  and  the  most 
absurd  arguments  based  upon  them,  side  by  side  with  maxims  and 
judgments  worthy  of  almost  any  signature  in  sense,  and  expressed  as 
no  one  but  Pope  could  express  them  in  form. 

And  this  difference  holds  throughout.  The  Iliad,  for  instance,  a 
wonderful  tour  de  force  of  literature,  has  long  become  merely  a  curi- 
osity, because  if  we  want  Homer  we  either  go  to  himself  or  to  a 
translator  who  has  some  sense  of  him.  The  Elegy  on  an  Unfortutiate 
Lady  and  the  Eloisa  to  Abelard,  again,  are  both  marred,  though  not 
ruined,  by  the  prevalence  of  conventionalism  in  reference  to  subjects 
which,  above  all  others,  refuse  and  defy  convention.  But  the  Rape 
of  the  Lock,  artificial  as  it  is,  is  a  perfect  triumph  of  artifice,  a  piece 
with  which  no  fault  can  be  found  except  the  frequency  of  the  gradus- 
epithet,  and  in  which  the  gradus-epithet  is  excused  by  its  suitableness 
to  the  persons  and  the  manners  handled. 

Yet  it  is  in  his  later  Essay,  his  Epistles,  his  Satires,  his  Diinciad, 
that  Pope's  genius  shows  at  its  very  greatest.  They  are  no  doubt 
mosaics  —  the  "  Atticus  "  passage  was  pretty  certainly  written  twenty 
years  before  its  insertion  in  the  Epistle  to  Arbuthnot  —  but  this  is 
no  defect  in  them.  Their  value  for  meaning  varies  according 
as  Pope  was  copying  optimism  from  Bolingbroke,  pessimism  from 
Swift,  and  a  very  remarkable  kind  of  orthodoxy  from  Warburton,  or 
was  giving  expression  to  his  own  keen,  though,  alas!  limited,  observa- 
tion of  society,  his  personal  feelings,  and  his  narrow  but  clear  theory 
of  life  and  literature.  Here  he  reigns  triumphant.  His  philosophy 
may  be  always  shallow  and  sometimes  mere  nonsense ;  his  satire 
may  lack  the  large  Olympian  sweep  of  Dryden ;  but  he  looked  on 
society,  and  on  humanity  as  that  society  happened  for  the  time  to 
express  it,  with  an  unclouded  eye,  and  he  expressed  his  views  with 
a  pen  that  never  stumbled,  never  made  slips  of  form,  and  always  said 
the  right  thing  in  the  right  way,  when  we  once  accept  scheme  and 
time  and  man. 

Pope,  a  young  man  at  his  beginnings  but  very  precocious,  began 
to  be  copied,  or  to  be  revolted  from,  with  almost  unexampled 
earliness ;  but  the  imitators  and  rebels  may  best  be  left  for  future 
treatment.  We  shall  deal  here  with  those  of  his  contemporaries 
whom  dates  or  other  things  excuse  from  the  charge  of  being  either, 
though  some  even  of  these  may  have  felt  his  mighty  influence. 
We  have  noted  the  poetical  works  of  Swift  and  Addison  under  their 
names  earlier ;  we  may  here  take  Garth,  Blackmore,  Prior,  Con- 
greve.  Gay,  Parnell,  Young,  a  few  minors,  and  —  a  friendly  but,  though 
she  knew  it  not,  deadly  foe  —  Lady  Winchelsea. 


CH.  V    POPE  AND  HIS  ELDER  CONTEMPORARIES  IN  VERSE     555 

Samuel  Garth/  a  strong  Whig,  but  popular  with  both  parties,  and 
of  very  great  repute  as  a  physician,  was  born  at  Bolam  in  Durham  as 
early  as    1660,    went   to   Cambridge    (Peterhouse),  where 
he  remained  till  he  took  his  M.D.  in  1691,  and  spent  the  *'^'  ' 

rest  of  his  life  practising  in  London.  He  was  the  friend,  physician, 
and  mterrer  of  Dryden,  was  familiar  with  all  the  Queen  Anne  men, 
was  knighted  at  George  I.'s  accession,  and  died  in  1718.  Garth  owes 
his  place  in  English  literature,  which  ought  to  be  no  mean  one,  to 
the  fact  that  his  poem  The  Dispensary  was  published  in  1699,  before 
Dryden's  death,  and  that  its  versification  makes  advances  on 
Dry  den's  own  in  Pope's  direction.  Its  subject,  a  doctors'  quarrel, 
does  not  give  us  much  amusement  now,  though  it  has  some  interest 
as  starting  a  long  line  of  more  or  less  similar  poems  on  less  or  more 
unpromising  subjects  during  the  century.  Garth  followed  it  up  many 
years  later,  after  he  had  strengthened  The  Dispensary  itself  with  some 
of  its  best  parts,  by  a  poem  on  Clareniont,  and  translated  some  Ovid. 
But  the  help  which  he  gave  to  the  perfecting  of  the  couplet  in  this 
form  is  his  title  to  memory. 

The  most  notorious  verse-writer,  after  Garth,  of  the  interregnum 
between  Pope  and  Dryden  was  the  luckless  Sir  Richard  Blackmore, 
one  of  the  small  and  curious  company  who  have  been  made  immortal 
by  their  satirists.  Born  about  1650,  at  Corsham,  in 
Wilts,  he  .spent  a  long  time  at  Oxford,  and  afterwards 
took  his  M.D.  at  Padua.  He  had  a  good  practice,  and  the  "Quack 
Maurus  "  of  Dryden,  whom  he  censured  and  who  hit  back,  does  not 
appear  to  have  had  any  special  justification.  He  seems  to  have  begun 
to  write  verse  to  pass  the  time  as  he  drove  from  patient  to  patient,, 
and  he  published  the  long  poems  of  Prince  Arthur  (1695),  King 
Arthur  {\6c)j),y()b  {ijoo),  Eliza  (1705),  and  Creation  (1712),  besides 
e-ssays,  psalms,  etc.  He  died  in  1729,  having  been  still  more  unmerci- 
fully ridiculed  by  the  wits  of  the  second  generation.  Creation^-  how- 
ever, was  highly  praised,  not  merely  by  Addison,  to  whom  piety 
and  Whiggery  combined  would  have  been  an  irresistible  bribe,  but  by 
John.son,  to  whom  the  second  quality  would  have  neutralised  the  first. 
It  is  difficult  for  a  reader  of  the  present  day  to  share  their  admiration. 
Creation  supplies  (as,  for  the  matter  of  that,  do  the  other  poems, 
so  far  as  the  present  writer  knows  them)  tolerable  rhetoric  in  verse 
occasionally  not  bad.  But  this  is  a  different  thing  from  poetry. 
Blackmore's  couplets  are  often  enjambed ;  and  it  seems  (indeed  he 
boasted  of  it)  that  he  knew  little  of  the  popular  poetry  of  his  day. 

Congreve^   deserves   such    a    niche    as    lie    lixs    in    jjurcly   poetical 

1  Garth  and  Congreve,  with  all  the  writers  that  follow  except  Lady  Winchelsea, 
arc  in  Chalmers. 

-  In  Chalmers,  vol.  x. ;  the  rest  must  be  sought  in  the  original. 


556  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 

history  as  the  producer  of  a  few  songs  very  much  in  the  character  of 
those  mentioned  earlier  as  the  last  product  of  the  CavaUer  muse,  but 
^  with   more  of  the  order  and  neatness  of  the  eighteenth 

Congreve,  etc.  ^^        .  .  .  i       .       i      ,  i         i-i 

century.  He  is  sometimes  impudent,  but  rarely,  like 
the  Dorsets  and  the  Sedleys,  merely  coarse,  and  the  note  of  the 
careless  fine  gentleman  which  he  so  much  affected  in  his  life  does 
appear  in  his  poems,  especially  by  comparison  with  Prior,  whom, 
though  he  falls  far  short  of  him  in  nature,  tenderness,  whimsical 
wit,  and  suspicion  of  higher  and  deeper  feeling,  he  excels  in  that 
indescribable  and  sometimes  denied,  but  quite  real,  quality  called 
breeding.  Ambrose  Philips  and  Thomas  Tickell  were  both  friends 
of  Addison  and  (whether  of  their  own  choice  or  as  a  result  of  Pope's 
irritable  vanity  is  uncertain)  enemies  of  Pope.  The  former  — to  be 
carefully  distinguished  from  John  Philips  (i 676-1 708),  author  of  the 
admirable  Miltonic  burlesque  of  the  Splendid  Shilling  and  of  a  good 
poem,  or  at  least  verse-essay,  on  Cider  —  was  born  in  Leicestershire  in 
1 67 1,  and  died  in  London  in  1749.  His  short  sentimental  verses 
to  children  gained  him  from  Carey  (the  author  of  "  Sally  in  our 
Alley ")  the  nickname  of  "  Namby-Pamby,"  which  has  passed  into 
the  language  as  a  common  epithet.  Tickell,  a  Cumberland  man  and 
a  fellow  of  Queen's  College,  Oxford  (1676-1740),  is  chiefly  re- 
membered for  two  splendid  couplet-elegies  on  Addison  (whose 
devoted  friend  he  was)  and  on  Marlborough's  lieutenant  Cadogan. 
The  majesty  which  this  particular  form  could  put  on  has  seldom  been 
better  shown,  except  in  the  final  lines  of  The  Dunciad.  But  we  must 
turn  to  men  of  more  poetical  substance. 

Matthew  Prior,^  the  king  of  "  verse  of  society "  in  English,  was 
born  near  Wimborne  in  1664,  and  was  educated  at  Westminster, 
going  thence  to  Cambridge,  but  to  St.  John's,  not,  as  usual  with  his 

schoolfellows,  to  Trinity.     He   took   his   degree  in   1686, 

Prior  ,  , 

and  obtained  a  Fellowship,  which  he  kept  through  life, 
and  which  kept  him  at  some  times  of  it.  He  wrote  a  bad  parody  of 
The  Hind  attd  the  Panther  in  conjunction  with  Montague,  afterwards 
Halifax,  but  did  nothing  else  till  he  was  of  middle  age,  though  he 
enjoyed  to  the  full  the  copious  if  transient  stream  of  patronage  of 
men  of  letters,  which  his  coadjutor  did  much  to  set  running.  He 
was  even  Ambassador  to  France ;  was  deeply  engaged  in  the  still 
obscure  intrigues  which  just  failed  to  seat  James  HI.  on  the  throne 
of  England  at  his  sister's  death  ;  is  suspected  of  having  turned  king's 
evidence,    but   was   imprisoned   for  some   years.     He    had   published 

1  In  Chalmers,  and  common  in  editions  from  his  own  gorgeous  folio  down- 
wards. Mr.  Austin  Dob^on's  Selected  Poems  of  Prior  ("  Parchment  Library," 
London,  1889)  contains  most  things  of  much  value  but  not  all,  the  change  of  man- 
ners sometimes  making  Piior  difficult  to  reproduce  nowadays. 


CH.  V    POPE  AND  HIS  ELDER  CONTEMPORARIES  IN  VERSE     557 

poems  in  1709,  and  issued  another  collection  in  splendid  form  after 
his  liberation  in  1718.  He  did  not  long  survive  this,  and  died  in 
1 72 1.  He  was,  though  an  intimate,  somewhat  of  a  detached 
intimate  of  the  literary  society  of  his  time,  and  is  said  frankly  to  have 
preferred  less  distinguished  associates. 

The  works  of  Prior  are  rather  numerous  than  voluminous,  and 
they  are  very  curiously  assorted.  The  only  pieces  of  any  bulk  are 
Alma,  or  The  Progress  of  the  Mind,  and  Solomon,  or  The  Vanity  of  the 
World.  The  first,  divided  into  three  cantos,  is  an  extremely 
fantastic,  though,  according  to  most  (not  all)  critics,  somewhat 
tedioMS  poem  in  Hudibrastic  verse,  and  quite  openly  imitating 
Butler  in  style  as  well  as  in  metre.  Although,  however,  the  guise  is 
burlesque,  the  subject-matter  is  by  no  means  wholly  so ;  and  Prior, 
the  lightness  of  whose  best-known  work  has  perhaps  rather  obscured 
the  fact  that  he  was  a  scholar  and  a  man  of  no  small  reading,  has 
put  a  good  deal  of  thought  as  well  as  of  learning  in  an  ill-chosen 
fashion.  Solomon,  which  is  also  in  three  divisions  (here  called 
'•books"),  is  in  heroic  couplets  of  a  rather  Drydenian  than  Popian 
cast,  with  frequent  Alexandrines.  Here  too  the  poem  is  mucli  better 
worth  reading  than  is  usually  thought ;  but  the  author's  inability  to  be 
frankly  serious  again  shows  itself.  His  treatment  of  Vanity  has 
neither  the  bitter  quintessence  of  Swift,  nor  the  solemn  and  some- 
times really  tragic  declamation  of  Young,  nor  that  intense  conviction 
and  ethical  majesty  which  make  Johnson's  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes 
almost  a  great  poem,  and  beyond  all  question  a  great  piece  of  litera- 
ture. His  next  most  important  works  in  point  of  bulk  are  a  handful 
of  tales  after  the  manner  of  La  Fontaine,  for  which  the  rigid  Johnson 
himself  made  a  famous  excuse,  but  which,  though  they  contain  some 
of  their  author's  earliest  and  pleasantest  writing,  make  their  appear- 
ance not  at  all,  or  with  considerable  difficulty  and  adjustment,  in 
modern  volumes  intended  for  general  reading.  Longer  than  these, 
indeed,  are  the  Carmen  Secnlare,  a  dull  Pindaric  to  William  the 
Deliverer,  and  Henry  and  Emma,  an  ill-judged  modernising  of  tiie 
exquisite  Nut-brown  Maid,  but  they  form  no  part  nf  Prior's  title  to 
fame. 

This,  which  is  completely  indefeasible,  rests  upon  a  cloud  of 
bright  triHes,  or  things  pretty  serious  within  but  bright  and  tritiing 
in  appearance,  heterogeneous  enough  in  subject  and  form,  but  all 
animated  Ijy  tlie  same  dainty,  whimsical  touch  in  metre,  piirase,  and 
poetic  style.  He  can  be  merely  sentimental  and  achieve  mere  senti- 
ment cliarmingly;  imi)udently  but  triumpliantly  caricaturing,  as  in 
his  parody  of  Boilcau's  fustian  on  the  taking  of  Namur;  arch,  in  tiie 
best  sense  of  that  almost  ob.solete  and  long  misu.sed  but  really  useful 
word,  as  in  a  hundred  pieces  of  which  "  Cloe  and   Kuphelia  "  .stands 


558  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 

perhaps  first  in  order  in  his  collected  works ;  deliberately  but 
exquisitely  trivial,  as  in  "  The  Secretary."  Prior  has  never  been 
approached  in  the  lighter  love-poem  of  a  certain  kind,  such  as  "  The 
Lover's  Anger,"  or  "  Dear  Cloe,  how  blubbered  is  that  pretty  face  !  " 
For  all  his  easy  morality,  no  juster,  shrewder,  and  more  good-natured 
life-philosophy  was  ever  put  than  in  "  An  English  Padlock."  What 
may  be  more  surprising  to  those  who  do  not  see  from  the  first  that 
Prior  was  no  mere  wit  but  a  true  humourist  is  that  his  gaiety  can, 
with  an  imperceptible  turn,  admit  a  real  and  a  most  melancholy 
wisdom,  as  in  the  beautiful  and  justly  famous  '•  Lines  written  in  the 
beginning  of  Mezeray's  History  of  France."  In  the  mere  epigram, 
such  as  those  on  Dr.  Radcliffe,  on  Bibo,  and  others,  where  only  wit  is 
wanted,  he  is  supreme ;  his  verses  to  children,  especially  the  famous 
"■Child  of  Quality,"  defy  competition;  the  "Epitaph  on  Jack  and 
Joan "  shows,  like  some  other  things  of  his,  how  keen  a  knowledge 
of  humanity  underlay  his  apparently  frivolous  ways ;  and  in  "  Down 
Hall,"  the  narrative  of  a  trip  into  Essex,  he  set  an  example  of  lighter 
narrative  verse  in  easy  anapaestics  which  has  been  regularly  followed 
and  perhaps  never  improved  upon,  since. 

This  last  brings  us  to  one  of  Prior's  greatest  historical  merits. 
The  tyranny  of  the  couplet  was  severe  enough  on  the  eighteenth 
century  as  it  was.  But  it  would  have  been  worse  still  if  this 
poet,  influential  in  position  and  friendships,  attraC' 
important.  ^^^^  ^^  subject,  and  of  an  exquisite  skill  in  his  art,  had 
not  evaded  that  tyranny  by  writing  verse  for  lighter  pur- 
poses in  anapaestic  measures,  in  the  octosyllable,  and  in  various  lyric 
forms.  The  anapaestic  tetrameter,  in  particular,  may  be  said  to  have 
almost  owed  its  matriculation  in  the  list  of  permitted  metres  to  Prior. 
Dryden  had  used  it,  but  chiefly  in  compositions  intended  definitely 
for  music,  in  which  it  was  no  novelty,  having  been  used  for  ballads 
and  songs  time  out  of  mind.  But  it  had  been  regarded  as  a  sort  of 
"  blind  fiddler's  measure  "  —  good  enough  for  "  Drolleries  "  and  "  Gar- 
lands "  and  so  forth,  but  scarcely  worthy  of  "The  Muses."  Prior 
accomplished  its  presentation  to  these  punctilious  divinities  once  for 
all.  Henceforward  the  correctest  poet  felt  that  there  was  no  crime 
in  now  and  then  deserting  couplet  for  these  freer  measures ;  and  as  a 
matter  of  fact  we  find  in  them  by  far  the  larger  part  of  the  real  poetry 
of  the  eighteenth  century. 

Something  of  the  same  beneficent  influence  was  exercised  by  John 
Gay,i  who,  though  a  far  less  exquisite  and  original   poet  than  Prior, 

1  Very  popular  in  the  eighteenth  century;  a  little  neglected  in  this.  Amends, 
however,  have  recently  been  made  in  two  very  pretty  editions,  of  the  Fables  by  Mr. 
Austin  Dobson  (London,  1882),  and  of  the  whole  Poems  by  Mr.  Underhill  (2  vols. 
London,  1893). 


CH.  V   POPE  AND  HIS  ELDER  CONl'EMPORARIES  IN  VERSE      559 


had  perhaps  more  special  sympathy  for  the  country,  as  opposed  to  the 
town,  than  "  Dear  Mat."     He  was  born  in  the  same  year 
(1688)    with   Pope,  at    Barnstaple,   in    the   county   which        ^^^' 
contains    the    most  exquisite  mixture  of  scenery  in  England,  but  he 
seems  to  have  thought  himself  more  at  home 

Where  Catherine  Street  descends  into  the  Strand 

than  on  the  banks  of  the  Taw  or  in  the  hill-solitudes  of  its  springs. 
His  family  was  no  ill  one,  but  poor,  and  he  was  apprenticed  to  a  silk 
mercer  in  London.  From  this  unpromising  occupation  he  passed  to 
that  of  secretary  to  the  Duchess  of  Monmouth,  Anne  Scott,  the 
"charming  Annabel"  of  Dryden.  In  1713  he  published  a  poem  on 
"  Rural  Sports,"  containing  some  description  more  vivid  and  direct  tlian 
the  age  generally  showed,  and  dedicated  it  to  Pope.  Introduction  to 
the  wits  and  the  patrons  followed,  and  Gay  had  a  small  share,  and 
apparently  might  have  had,  but  for  laziness  and  inrliscretion,  a  larger 
one,  in  the  golden  shower  still  falling  on  men  of  letters.  The  same 
qualities  prevented  him  from  making  his  fortune  in  the  South  Sea 
Bubble  —  for  Craggs  gave  him  stock,  he  would  not  sell  during  the 
craze,  and  lost  everything  —  and  perhaps  contributed  to  defeat  his 
expectations  from  George  II.  But  he  was  one  of  those  fortunate, 
helpless  persons  whom  everybody  helps,  and  the  Duke  and  Duchess 
of  Queensberry  took  him  into  their  household,  managed  his  money  for 
him  (he  made  a  good  deal  by  the  Be^s^ars  Opera),  and  prevented  him 
from  having  any  need  of  it.  He  died  at  the  end  of  1732,  too  lazy  even 
to  make  a  will.  The  traditional  character  of  him  as  of  a  kind  of  human 
lapdog,  without  any  vice  except  extreme  self-indulgence,  has  been  little 
disturbed. 

His  earliest  poem.  Wine,  published  some  years  before  that  above 
noticed,  in  1708,  belongs  to  the  same  class  as  John  PhiJips's  pieces, 
clever  enough  Miltonic  parody.  In  Rural  Sports  he  shifted  to  the 
inevitable  couplet,  which  again  he  wrote  well ;  in  fact,  Gay  did  nothing 
ill,  he  only  wanted  initiation  and  distinction.  The  Sluphcrd's  Week 
(1 714)  relapsed  on  parody,  the  subject  being  now  Virgil  and  Spenser, 
or  rather  the  namby-pamby  imitators  of  both.  The  mock-heroic 
couplets  of  this  are  often  happy,  if  not  very  strong.  But  Gay's  skill  in 
this  kind  reached  its  acme  in  Trivia,  or  The  Art  of  Walking  the 
Streets  of  London  (1715),  which  is  one  of  the  most  vivid  things  of  the 
sort  ever  done,  and  for  all  its  rather  teasing  falsetto,  remains  a  docu- 
ment for  the  subject  and  a  pleasant  poem  in  itself.  His  Epistles 
exhibit  the  same  pleasing,  if  somewhat  uninspired,  accomplishment,  and 
his  Eclogues  might  sometimes  be  Pope  and  sometimes  Young.  It  is 
more  to  his  real  credit  that  he  had  a  lyrical  gift  possessed  by  neither 


56o  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  vni 

of  these,  his  greater  contemporaries.  The  immortal,  if  conventional, 
"  Black-Eyed  Susan,"  the  more  genuine  "  'Twas  when  the  seas  were 
roaring,"  the  most  musical  "  Phyllida"  song,  and  a  great  many  others, 
have  sometimes  more  sweetness  than  Prior,  though  seldom  as  much 
air  and  fire.  His  dramatic  pieces,  Acis  and  Galatea,  and  still  more 
the  Beggar's  Opera,  are  yet  unforgotten.  He  wrote  Tales,  again  very 
like  Prior's  ;  and  lastly,  there  are  his  once  universally,  and  still  widely, 
known  Fables.  They  have  been  for  some  time  neglected,  which  is  a 
pity,  for  they  are  perennial  sense  expressed  in  good,  though  not 
quite  perennial,  verse.  Gay  could  do  almost  anything  that  his  friends 
told  him  to  do  or  that  he  had  a  model  for;  but  he  required  these 
assistances. 

With  Edward  Young*  we  come  to  a  poet  of  greater  originality 
and  force,  but  of  much  less  equal  achievement,  than  Gay,  a  poet 
who  in  more  ways  than  one  represents  a  development  independent 
of  Pope,  and  to  some  extent  reactionary  from  the  move- 
°""^'  ment  which  Pope  represented.  Young  was  «ot  merely 
Pope's  senior ;  he  actually,  in  the  Universal  Passion  (1725-28),  pre- 
ceded that  writer  in  his  special  form  of  satire,  and  did  nearly,  if  not 
quite,  as  well  in  it  as  Pope  himself  at  his  very  best.  But  the  major 
part  of  his  work  is  of  a  kind  very  different  from  Pope's.  He  was 
born  in  Hampshire  in  the  year  1681,  went  to  Oxford,  and  obtaining 
one  of  the  then  very  rare  Fellowships  (at  All  Souls)  which  were  not 
necessarily  clerical,  did  not  take  orders  till  late  in  life.  He  is  said 
to  have  at  last  done  so  from  ambition,  and  disappointment  in  his 
hopes  of  preferment  is  credited  with  at  least  part  of  the  gloom  of 
the  Night -Thottghts.  He  did  not  die  till  1765,  having  published 
verse.  Resignation,  as  late  as  three  years  earlier.  He  was  a  play- 
wright, and  his  play  of  The  Revenge  was  long  very  popular.  His 
non-dramatic  verse  is  copious,  and  its  merit  varies  in  the  strangest 
degree. 

Young's  first  poem  was  The  Last  Day,  published  in  1713.  It, 
like  The  Force  of  Religion,  which  followed  it  a  year  later,  is  in 
couplets,  and  both  poems  display  Young's  peculiar  and,  to  modern 
tastes,  not  very  pleasant  mixture  of  probably  sincere,  but  gloomy  and 
bombastically  expressed,  religious  awe,  together  with  an  exaggeration 
of  that  flattery  of  "  the  great "  on  earth  which  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  century  feeling  permitted,  if  it  did  not  actually  demand. 
There  are,  however,  very  fine  things  in  The  Last  Day,  and  it  is  the 
best  piece  on  any  great  scale  that  he  did,  except  the  Night-Thoitghts. 
The  Force  of  Religion,  on  the  story  of  Lady  Jane  Grey  and  her 
husband,  is  mawkish  and  sometimes  ridiculous.     There  could  be  few 

1  In  Chalmers,  but  not  recently  edited  as  a  whole. 


CH.  V   POPE  AND  HIS  ELDER  CONTEMPORARIES  IN  VERSE     561 

greater  contrasts  than  the  seven  satires  of  Love  of  Fame,  or  The  Uni- 
versal Passion,  which  followed  at  about  ten  years'  interval.  As 
observed  above,  Pope  is  anticipated,  and  all  but  equalled,  in  these 
vigorous  compositions,  where  the  artificiality  of  the  treatment  is 
excused  by  that  of  the  subjects,  and  where  Young  shows  himself  a 
past  master,  not  merely  of  the  crack  but  of  the  sting,  of  the  couplet 
lash.  Then  we  come  upon  Ocean,  an  Ode  (1728),  which,  like  all 
Young's  other  odes  (^Impei-ium  Felagi,  1729,  etc.),  affords  examples, 
hard  to  be  excelled  in  the  works  of  the  meanest  writers,  of  the 
unintentional  mock  heroic,  and  then  to  The  Complaint,  or  Night- 
Thoughts. 

It  is  difficult  to  give  even  a  guess  whether  this  remarkable  poem 
will  ever  recover  much  or  anything  of  the  great  reputation  which  it 
long  held,  and  which,  for  two  generations  at  least,  it  has  almost 
entirely  lost.  It  has  against  it,  the  application  of  phrase  and  even 
of  thought,  merely  of  an  age,  to  the  greatest  and  most  lasting  subjects, 
and  a  tone  only  to  be  described  as  the  theatrical-religious.  Its 
almost  unbroken  gloom  frets  or  tires  according  to  the  mood  and 
temperament  of  the  reader.  On  the  other  hand,  the  want  of  sincerity 
is  always  more  apparent  than  real,  and  the  moral  strength  and  know- 
ledge of  human  nature,  which  were  the  great  merits  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  ajDpear  most  unmistakably.  Above  all,  the  poem  deserves 
the  praise  due  to  very  fine  and,  in  part  at  least,  very  original  versi- 
fication. If  Young  here  deserts  the  couplet,  it  is,  as  we  have  seen, 
by  no  means  because  he  cannot  manage  it ;  it  is  because  he  is  at 
least  partly  dissatisfied  with  it,  and  sees  that  it  will  not  serve  his 
turn.  And  his  blank  verse  is  a  fine  and  an  individual  kind.  Its 
fault,  due,  no  doubt,  to  his  practice  in  drama,  is  that  it  is  a  little  too 
declamatory,  a  little  too  suggestive  of  soliloquies  in  an  inky  cloak 
with  footlights  in  front.  But  tliis  of  itself  distinguishes  it  from  the 
blank  verse  of  Thomson,  which  came  .somewhat  earlier.  It  is  not 
a  direct  imitation  either  of  Milton  or  of  Sliakespeare,  and  deserves  to 
be  ranked  by  itself.  The  Night-Thoughts,  which  were  late  (1742- 
44),  were  at  once  Young's  best  work  and  his  last  good  work.  Resig- 
nation is  much  weaker,  but  not  quite  dotage. 

Thomas  Parnell  ^  may  also  be  classed  as  an  unconscious  rebel. 
He  was  of  a  good  Cheshire  family,  but  was  born  in  Dublin  in  1679; 
entered  Trinity  College,  took  his  degree  and  orders,  and  in  1705 
was  made  Archdeacon  of  Clogher.  Swift  introduced 
him  to  Harley  and  converted  him  to  Toryism,  but  the 
change  of  dynasty  made  his  conversion  infnicluous,  though  .Swift 
procured   furtlicr  preferment  for   him  from   Archbishop  King.     He  is 

1  Ed.  Aitken,  London,  1894. 


362  THE   AUGUSTAN   AGES  book  vin 

said  to  have  felt  the  death  of  his  wife  very  severely,  and  himself  died 
young  in  171 7. 

It  is  curious  that,  out  of  the  small  bulk  of  Parnell's  poetical  work, 
poetical  criticism  of  the  most  various  times  and  tastes  has  been  able 
to  pick  quite  different  things  to  sustain  his  reputation.  The  famous 
"Hermit"  has  kept  its  place  in  all  anthologies;  Goldsmith  extolled 
the  translations,  and  Johnson  endorsed  his  views,  though  he  himself 
liked  the  '-Allegory  on  Man"  best.  And  later  censorship,  which 
finds  the  '-Hermit"  not  much  more  than  a  smooth  and  ingenious 
exercise  in  verse,  and  the  translations  and  imitations  unimportant, 
has  lavished  praise  on  two  small  pieces,  "  The  Night-Piece  on  Death  " 
and  the  "Hymn  to  Contentment,"  the  former  of  which  cei'tainly 
displays  nature-painting  of  a  kind  unknown  in  the  work  of  any  but  one 
contemporary,  while  the  return  of  the  second  to  the  Comus  alternation 
of  trochaic  and  iambic  cadence  is  an  almost  equally  important,  though 
doubtless  unintended,  protest  against  the  ceaseless  iambs  of  the 
couplet.  It  is  not  possible  to  call  Parnell  a  great  poet  as  he  stands ; 
but  the  quality  and  the  variety  of  his  accomplishment  show  that  in 
slightly  different  circumstances  and  in  other  times  he  would  probably 
have  been  one. 

The  other  exception,  a  notice  of  whom  may  fitly  conclude  this 
chapter  and  this  Book,  was  Anne,  Countess  of  Winchelsea.  Lady 
Winchelsea  was  the  daughter  of  Sir  William  Kingsmill,  and  was  born 

in  Hampshire   about   the    time  of  the   Restoration.     She 
Wii!^hdsea.  died  sixty  years  later,  in   1720,  having  been  a  friend  of 

the  wits  (she  is  Pope's  Ardelia)  and  herself  a  consider- 
able practitioner  in  verse.  She  wrote  The  Spleen,  a  Pindaric  ode 
(1 701),  The  Prodigy  (1706),  Miscellany  Poems  (i7i4)>  the  publica- 
tion which,  almost  by  a  lucky  accident,  has  revived  her  memory,  and 
a  tragedy,  Aristomenes.  The  accident  referred  to  was  the  mention 
of  her  by  Wordsworth  in  his  famous  polemical  essay  appended  to  the 
Lyrical  Ballads  in  181 5,  where  he  excepts  her  Nocturnal  Reverie 
(with  an  odd  companion,  Pope's  Windsor  Forest)  from  his  sweeping 
denunciation  of  the  poetry  between  Paradise  Lost  and  The  Seasons, 
as  '-  not  containing  a  single  new  image  of  external  nature."  The 
statement  is  not  by  any  means  true,  or  rather  its  exaggeration  swamps 
what  truth  it  has,  but  the  commendation  of  Lady  Winchelsea  is 
deserved.  It  is  a  pity  that  her  poems  have  not  been  reprinted  and 
are  difficult  of  access,  for  it  is  desirable  to  read  the  whole  in  order  to 
appreciate  the  unconscious  clash  of  style  and  taste  in  them.^ 

It  is  not  a  little    noteworthy  that   Lady  Winchelsea   began  as  a 
Pindaric  writer.     The  imitators  of  Cowley  (unless  Dryden  is  classed 

I  The  Reverie  and  some  other  pieces  will  be  found  in  Ward's  Poets,  vol.  iii. 


CH.  V   POPE  AND  HIS  ELDER  CONTEMPORARIES  IN  VERSE      563 

among  them)  have  been  not  altogether  unjustly  regarded  as  having 
furnished  one  of  the  most  uninviting  divisions  of  English  poetry,  and 
it  is  no  doubt  in  part  due  to  them  that  the  couplet,  as  a  revolt,  obtained 
its  sway.  But  Cowley,  though  even  in  him  the  high  and  passionate 
spirit  of  the  earlier  poetry  was  dropping  and  falling,  still  preserved 
something  of  it,  and  ''  flights  "  were  necessary  to  a  Pindaric.  Fortu- 
nately for  Lady  Winchelsea,  natural  taste  and  the  opportunities  of  life 
seem  to  have  inclined  her  to  take  natural  objects  as  the  source  of 
her  imagery.  What  place  suggested  the  Nocturnal  Reverie  we  cannot 
say,  but  it  is  clearly  a  corrected  impression  and  not  merely  conven- 
tional. It  is  all  seen:  the  waving  moon  on  the  river,  the  sleepy 
cowslip,  the  foxglove,  paler  than  by  day,  but  chequering  still  with  red 
the  dusky  brakes,  and  the  wonderful  image  of  the  horse,  take  u,i 
almost  a  century  away  from  the  drawing-rooms  and  the  sham 
shepherdesses  of  her  contemporaries.  And  she  could  manage  the 
shortened  octosyllable  even  better  than  Parnell.  could  adjust  the 
special  epithet  (Pope  borrowed  or  stole  "aromatic  p;iin"  from  her, 
though  probably  she  took  it  from  Dryden's  ''aromatic  splinters''). 
Altogether  she  is  a  most  remarkable  phenomenon,  too  isolated  to 
point  much  of  a  moral,  but  adorning  the  lull  of  early  eigliteenth-century 
poetry  with  images  even  more  correct  than  Thomson's,  and  put  in 
language  far  less  artificial. 


INTERCHAPTER  VIII 

In  hardly  any  period  of  English  literature  (though  the  old  caution  as 
to  the  constant  overlapping  of  tendencies,  the  constant  or  regular 
coincidence  of  the  receding  and  flowing  tides,  has  still  to  be  repeated) 
are  the  general  characteristics  so  distinct  and  so  uniform  as  in  that 
which  has  been  surveyed  in  the  Book  just  concluded.  Survivors  of 
the  older  poetry  and  prose  reach,  in  actual  life,  to  within  a  very  few 
years  of  the  birth  of  forerunners  of  styles  not  yet  extinct  —  nay,  by  the 
help  of  a  nondescript  like  Lady  Winchelsea,  it  may  be  said  that  there 
is  no  breach  of  continuity,  even  in  nature-poetry  of  the  strictest  kind, 
from  Appleton  House  to  Grongar  Hill.  But  always  the  exceptions, 
though  in  the  time,  are  not  of  it ;  always  those  who  are  of  the  time 
show  one  complexion  in  poetry,  in  prose,  and,  at  bottom,  in  drama. 
Yet  even  the  nature  of  that  complexion  has  not  been  entirely  undis- 
puted, and  the  name  of  it  has  been  the  subject  of  much  contest. 
We  need  not  concern  ourselves  with  such  question-begging,  clumsy, 
and  yet  incomplete  appellatives  as  "  Gallo-Classic."  This  is  the 
really  important  question  —  Is  it  just  to  call  the  age  from  1660  to 
1740,  eminently  the  age  from  1660  to  1800,  more  or  less  an  "Age 
of  Prose "  in  the  depreciatory  sense,  and  to  deny  to  Dryden  and  to 
Pope  the  title  of  classics  of  our  poetry  ?  And  we  may  answer  it 
shortly.  It  is  just  to  call  the  Augustan  age,  or  ages,  ages,  by  com- 
parison, of  prose ;  it  is  not  just  to  deny  to  them,  and  especially  to 
their  greatest  representatives,  a  share,  though  again  by  comparison, 
of  poetry. 

At  the  Restoration  the  country  unquestionably  turned  to  business. 
It  had  not  quite  done  with  its  religious,  its  constitutional,  its  dynastic 
strifes.  It  was  not  to  have  finished  with  the  first,  even  generally,  for 
.some  years,  with  the  second  for  some  decades,  with  the  third  till  a 
period  actually  later  than  the  death  of  Pope  and  coincident  with 
that  of  Swift.  But  it  was  in  the  mind  to  have  done  with  them,  to 
let  "  the  great  questions  "  alone,  to  turn  to  shop  and  merchandise,  to 
"  projects,"  to  practical  studies,  and  while  by  no  means  abandoning 
philosophy,  to  take  the  most  practical  branches  of  that  art  —  ethics, 

564 


BOOK  VIII  INTERCHAPTER   VIII  565 

politics,  the  grosser  psychology.  It  wanted  literary  media  that  would 
suit  these  purposes,  that  would  accord  with  scientific  treatises,  histories, 
business  accounts  of  voyage  And  travel  telling  where  a  man  might 
traffic  in  bays  and  says,  summaries  of  the  news  and  the  affairs  of  the 
day.  It  had  no  objection  to  poetry  as  such,  but  insensibly  its  poetry 
took  the  same  complexion ;  and  after,  by  a  sort  of  reaction,  trying 
the  most  extravagant,  though  hardly  the  most  poetical,  kind  of 
tragedy  or  drama  ever  seen,  it  relapsed  upon  a  comedy  artificial 
indeed,  but  artificial  not  in  the  least  in  the  direction  of  the  ideal. 

In  all  three  departments  the  tendency  was  shown  most  of  all  by 
the  creation  of  a  new  style  —  of  a  style  in  which  poetry  and  prose 
drew  together  in  an  almost  unnatural  alliance.  The  quest  of  the 
unadorned  becomes  almost  fanatical,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  some- 
times becomes  a  mere  acquiescence  in  the  down-at-heel.  Only  in 
the  lower  rhetoric  is  bedizenment  sought  —  save  for  Irony,  the  sole  one 
of  the  greater  figures  which  almost  necessitates  simplicity.  Fancy,  pro- 
vided she  knows  her  place,  is  tolerated;  but  Imagination  is  kept  well 
at  a  distance ;  a  flight  is  perdition,  a  conceit  at  best  danger.  Above 
all,  a  sort  of  crusade  is  preached  and  practised  against  the  individual ; 
and  the  general  (which  rapidly  becomes  the  conventional)  is  alone 
orthodox.  To  understand  the  period,  perhaps  there  is  no  better  way 
than  to  read  those  papers  of  Addison's  on  the  Imagination,  which 
some  persons  have  strangely  taken  as  if  the  word  were  used  as 
Coleridge  might  have  used  it.  The  Imagination,  we  find,  is  that 
which  supplies  images ;  and  her  supply  is  to  be  strictly  limited  to 
what  the  senses  prove  and  what  correct  tradition  approves. 

These  characteristics  of  the  time  are  not  really  deniable :  it 
cannot  be  seriously  contended,  except  as  a  matter  of  rhetorical 
"colour,"  that  in  passing  from  Shakespeare  through  Dryden  to 
Pope,  we  do  not  pass  from  the  upper  through  the  middle  air  to  earth. 
But  it  is  by  no  means  necessary,  while  granting  this,  to  belittle,  much 
less  to  abuse,  the  Augustan  ages.  They  had  their  own  work  to  do 
and  they  did  it  — a  good  deal  better  perhaps  than  some  ages  which 
have  announced  more  amJMtious  tasks.  They  had,  in  the  first  place, 
to  get  English  grammar  settled  for  prose  use  at  least;  to  establish 
.something  like  a  recogni.sed  dictionary,  and  to  elaborate  something 
like  fixed  rules  of  composition  —  something  which  would  dissuade  the 
greater  writers  from  attempting  the  vagaries  of  Clarendon  and 
Milton,  and  safeguard  the  smaller  from  the  disasters  into  which 
men  like  Milton  and  Clarendon  could  never  wholly  fall.  They  had, 
even  in  poetry,  to  create  a  sort  of  etiquette  which  sliould  prevent 
even  really  fine  poetic  frenzy  from  dcscriijing  the  eyes  of  the 
Magdalene  as  portable  baths  and  compendious  oceans;  to  add  to 
the  metrical  exercises  of  English  a  course  of  the  neat,  smart,  limited 


566  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGES  book  viii 

drill  which  was  the  only  gymnastic  it  had  yet  lacked ;  to  get,  as  a 
reaction  from  this,  the  wholly  trisyllabic  metres  (hitherto  neglected) 
into  order  for  comic  work  first  and  then  for  serious. 

And  all  this  they  did.  They  did  not  (as  Johnson  thought  in 
Dryden's  case)  "  find  Rome  of  brick  and  leave  it  of  marble "  ;  but 
they  did  find  the  literary  city  ill-organised,  unpoliced,  with  none  of 
these  contemned  arrangements  for  '"gas  and  water"  which  add  so 
much  to  the  convenience  of  life.  And  they  did  leave  it  very  fairly 
drained,  paved,  lighted,  watered,  and  equipped  with  constables.  Nor 
had  they  much  to  be  ashamed  of  in  regard  to  the  actual  edifices  which 
they  added.  To  speak  of  the  verse  of  Dryden  with  any  kind  of 
contempt  or  belittlement  is  to  go  very  near  the  absurd.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  the  best"  verse-couplet  of  Pope  and  the  best  light 
verse  of  Prior ;  each,  like  Dryden,  is  .supreme  in  his  own  way.  Nor 
must  we  say  much  less  of  the  prose  of  Addison  and  of  Berkeley, 
while  we  must  say  a  great  deal  more  of  Swift.  His  life  practically 
covered  the  entire  time,  and  who  shall  say  that  a  time  throughout  the 
whole  of  which  Swift  was  living  need  vail  its  bonnet  in  the  presence 
of  any  time  ancient  or  modern  ? 

Yet  it  may  be  admitted  that,  though  it  could  produce  great  men 
and  even  greatest,  this  production  was  not  its  own  special  business. 
Its  business  was  to  do  what  has  been  described  above,  and  moreover 
to  extend  the  domains  of  literature,  by  opening  up  fresh  provinces  and 
arranging  equipment  for  settling  them.  It  allowed  nothing  to  die, 
though  it  certainly  left  the  drama  in  a  state  of  perilously  suspended 
animation.  On  the  contrary,  it  saw,  though  only  in  the  beginning,  the 
revival  of  much  and  the  positive  admission  of  more.  It  got  the 
Essay  thoroughly  into  shape  ;  it  left  the  novel  and  the  regular  history 
born,  or  just  ready  to  be  born ;  it  set  flying  new  species  of  lighter 
verse ;  and  it  saw  at  least  several  further  developments  of  periodical 
literature,  though  not  the  fullest. 

,  Above  all,  it  shaped,  to  a  degree  not  yet  much  bettered,  the 
lighter  form  of  English  verse,  and  it  arranged,  in  a  matter  not  yet 
altered  in  essentials  at  all,  the  general  form  of  English  prose.  It 
would  be  scarcely  paradox  to  .say  that,  on  the  whole,  we  have  rather 
reverted,  and  diverged  from  our  points  of  reversion,  than  made  any 
positive  advances  since  the  deaths  of  Pope  and  Swift.  We  have,  at 
any  rate,  been  much  more  indebted  to  the  past,  much  less  original 
in  our  apparently  most  daring  innovations,  than  were  the  patronised, 
the  pitied,  the  not  seldom  abused  and  despised,  "ages  of  prose 
and  sense." 


BOOK    IX 

MIDDLE  AND   LATER   EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY 
LITERATURE 

CHAPTER   I 

THE   POETS  FROM   THOMSON   TO   CRABBE 

Thomson  —  His  life  —  His  minor  poems —  The_S^uis«ns  ^  The  Castle  of  Indolence 
—  Dyer — Blair  and  Green  —  Shenstone  —  Collins — Gray — Byrom,  Savage, 
and  others  —  Akenside  ^  Resurrection  of  the  Ballad  :  Percy  and  others  —  Dods- 
ley's  Miscellany  —  Smart  —  Mason  —  Falconer  —  The  Wartons  —  Churchill  — 
Chatterton  —  Beattie  —  Langhorne  and  Mickle  —  Cowper  —  Crabbe—  Blake  — 
Burns  —  His  predecessors  from  Ramsay  to  Fergusson  —  His  poetic  quality 

James  Thomson,  the  first  Scotsman  after  the  Union  to  contribute 
matter  of  very  great  value  to  English  literature,  was  born  in  September 
1700  at  Ednam,  in  Roxburghshire.  His  grandfather  had  been  only 
a   gardener,  his   father   was   minister   of    the   parish,   and     ^^^  ^^^^ 

had  married  Beatrix  Trotter,  daughter  of  a  yeoman  pro- 

prietor.  Very  shortly  after  Thomson's  birth,  his  father  was  transferred 
to  Southdean,  a  parish  in  the  same  county,  but  nearer  the  Border,  in 
fact,  on  the  Scottish  slopes  of  the  Cheviots.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
much  of  Thomson's  hardly  excelled  knowledge  of  natural  aspects  was 
oljtained  here;  the  sterner  part  certainly  was.  He  was  educated  at  a 
school  in  Jedburgh,  whence,  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  he  went  to  the  Uni- 
versity of  Edinburgh  ;  and  as  his  father  soon  after  died,  the  family 
moved  to  that  city.  Thomson's  stay  at  Edinburgh,  as  then  usual  in 
the  case  of  divinity  students,  was  a  prolonged  one  —  some  nine  years; 
but  he  had  little  vocation,  and  in  1725  went  to  London  to  seek  his 
fortune.  He  had  some  initial  dilTiculties.  but  iiis  college  friend  David 
Malloch,  or  Mallet,  helped  him,  and  before  long  he  became  tutor  in 
Lord  Binning's   family.      IViuter  was  jjublished  in  March    1726,  was 

567 


568     MIDDLE  AND  LATER  18TH-CENTURY  LITERATURE     bk.  ix 

successful  from  the  first,  and  brought  him  many  friends  (including 
Pope)  and  patrons.  He  continued  The  Seasons  (Sumtner,  1727; 
Springy  1728),  which  were  finished  with  Autumn  in  1730,  wrote 
some  bad  tragedies  (especially  Sop/ionisba,  1729),  and  went  with 
a  pupil  on  the  Continent.  His  tour  seems  to  have  furnished  him 
with  the  materials  of  his  Liberty. 

It  was  in  1733  that  Lord  Chancellor  Talbot,  father  of  his  pupil  (who 
was  now  dead),  appointed  Thomson  to  a  post  in  Chancery,  which  he 
only  lost  through  negligence,  and  which  was  the  first  of  a  series  of 
„■  ,f  appointments,  pensions,  and  the  like  (the  chief  being  the 
surveyorship  of  the  Leeward  Islands),  sufficient  to  keep 
him  in  comfort  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  This  was  passed  near  Richmond, 
a  literary  neighbourhood  as  well  as  one  congenial  to  a  lover  of  nature. 
The  extreme  indolence  which  is  the  best-known  feature  of  his  later 
years  sometimes  exposed  him  to  difficulties,  and  he  was  unfortunate 
in  a  late,  and  perhaps  rather  lukewarm,  passion  for  a  certain  Miss 
Young.  ''Amanda."  He  died  in  1748.  Like  Gay  and  other  men  of 
letters  of  the  time,  both  English  and  French,  Thomson  seems  to  have 
deserved  Cowley's  description  of  the  grasshopper  as  an  '•  Epicurean 
animal."  Initiative  was  not  his  forte,  even  Winter  seems  to  have 
been  suggested  by  similarly  named  poems  of  an  early  friend,  one 
Riccaltoun.  But  no  vice  at  all  detestable  seems  to  have  been 
charged,  much  less  proved,  against  him.  The  eighteenth  century 
was  a  bad  time  for  men  of  his  temperament,  and  its  early  years,  in 
which  the  brilliant  luck  of  Addison  and  Prior,  and  the  great  money 
gains  of  Pope,  served  by  turns  to  encourage  and  dishearten,  were 
particularly  bad  for  men  of  letters.  If  Thomson's  inertia  could  be, 
as  it  has  sometimes  been,  charged  to  Miss  Young's  unkindness,  he 
might  be  a  little  more  interesting,  but  it  seems  to  have  begun  earlier ; 
and  after  all  a  want  of  energy,  not  improbably  constitutional,  is  no 
unpardonable  sin. 

Thomson's  poetical  works  ^  are  among  the  most  important  in  the 
history  of  English  poetry,  though  they  cannot  be  exactly  ranked 
among  the  best  of  English  poems.  Appearing  as  they  did  at  the 
very  same  time  with  the  most  perfect  and  polished  work  of  Pope, 
they  served  as  an  antidote  to  that  great  writer's  "  town "  poetry. 
Couched  as  the  best  of  them  were  in  blank  verse,  or  in  the  Spenserian 
stanza,  they  showed  a  bold  front  to  the  insolent  domination  of  the 
stopped  couplet.  Becoming  almost  instantly  popular,  and  retaining 
their    popularity,   they   supplied    for    full    seventy   years   a   perpetual 

1  Almost  the  whole  of  the  poets  of  this  chapter  will  be  found  in  Chalmers, 
though  not  always  (notably  in  the  case  of  Smart's  Song-  to  David)  complete. 
Many  are  in  the  "  Aldine  Poets,"  and  have  been  recently  and  well  re-edited.  Only 
important  special  editions  will  be  noted. 


CHAP.  I         THE   POETS   FROM   THOMSON  TO   CRABBE  569 

corrective  to  the  least  poetical  tendencies  of  the  poetry  of  the  day. 
Nor  can  there  be  any  doubt  that  their  efficacy  in  this  way  was  in- 
creased by  a  peculiarity  which  has  lessened  their  influence  and  their 
vogue  during  the  present  century.  Thomson  stood  apart  from  the 
Augustan  school  in  his  subjects  of  interest  and  in  his  selection  of 
metres.  But  he  shared,  and  rather  went  beyond,  the  predilection  of 
that  school  for  a  peculiar  stilted  "poetic  diction,"  partly  founded  on 
the  classicalism  of  Milton,  but  largely  tempered  from  less  genuine 
sources.  Nobody,  who  has  the  slightest  tincture  of  catholic  poetical 
taste,  can  defend  such  a  phrase  as  — 

See  where  the  winding  vale  its  lavish  stores 
Irriguous  spreads, 

which  is  on  a  par  with  the  worst  fashionable  faults  of  any  time. 
But  these  phrases  baited  the  hook  for  his  own  days,  and  they  can  be, 
except  for  historical  purposes,  neglected  in  these — just  as  we  have 
already  learnt  to  neglect,  and  sometimes  to  enjoy,  mediaeval  stock 
phrase,  sixteenth-  and  seventeenth-century  conceit,  and  as,  no  doubt, 
a  future  time  will  half  neglect  and  half  enjoy  the  tricks  on  which 
writers  of  our  own  time  pride  themselves. 

These  works  comprise  three  long  poems,  and  a  certain,  but  not 
large,  number  of  smaller  ones.  Of  the  first  class  a  merciful  posterity 
has  agreed  to  forget  Liberty,  though  unwise  partisans  sometimes 
attempt  to  drag  it  out  for  judgment.     The  result,  before 

.      ,  1,1  1    »•  i  His  minor 

competent  judges,  can  at  best  be  a  recommendation  to  poems, 
mercy.  The  piece  is  a  Whig  prize-poem,  in  five  parts, 
dealing  consecutively  with  Italy,  Greece,  Rome,  Britain,  and  "A 
Prospect."  The  vehicle  is  blank  verse  of  the  same  pattern  as  that 
in  which  the  more  artificial  passages  of  The  Seasons  are  couched. 
The  sentiment  is  of  that  kind  which  was  finally  made  hateful  to  gods 
and  men  by  the  orators  of  the  French  Revolution — a  "dull-snuffling" 
compound  of  Brutus  and  Tully,  and  the  Retreat  of  the  Ten  Thousand. 
King  Alfred,  and  the  Immortal  Nassau.  The  Goddess  of  Liberty  is 
the  main  speaker  through  the  whole,  and  sometimes  she  .speaks 
well.  Except  by  Dryden,  the  licensed  flattery  of  friends  and  patrons 
has  seldom  been  better  put  than  in  the  exordium  dealing  witli  the 
poet's  dead  pupil  Talbot,  and  that  pupil's  father;  the  picture  of  the 
Campagna  shows  the  poet  of  The  Seasons;  the  passage  on  modern 
Italy  beginning  — 

What  would  you  say,  ye  conquerors  of  earth  ! 

is  declamation  become  eloquence;  the  Ten  Thousand  piece  is  even 
better;  and  the  sketch  of  Roman  history  in  tlic  third  book  is  clever. 


570    MIDDLE  AND   LATER    18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    BK.  ix 

But    the  whole  is  hopeless.     Nor  need  much   be  said  of  the  minor 
poems.     Only  the  dehcate  and  charming,  though  artificial  — 

Tell  me,  thou  soul  of  her  I  love, 

and  the  graceful  "  Nuptial   Song  for  Sophonisba,"  must  be  excepted 
from  faint  praise,  or  by  no  means  faint  condemnation. 

The    Seaso7is    and     The    Castle   of    Indoletice  ^    are    an    entirely 

different   matter.     About   neither   is    any    mistake   po.ssible   to   those 

who    know   poetry.       In    the    successive    editions    of    The  Seasons 

Thomson    made     many   changes,    and    his    editors    have 

e_  easons,  ^^^  ^^^  ^^^  coped  with  them.     But  between  the  earliest 

Winter  of  1726  and  the  latest  complete  Seasons  there  are  not 
differences  sufficient  to  interfere  with  the  general  position  of  the 
book  and  its  author  in  English  poetry.  Thomson  was  not  entireM 
above  the  cant  and  fashion  of  his  time,  either  in  thought  or  iri 
phrase.  But  his  glory  and  his  salvation  lay  in  the  fact  that  he  was 
born  with,  and  had  cultivated,  the  gift  of  looking  straight  at  nature,! j 
and  of  reporting  the  result  of  his  observation  in  words.  He  never 
lost  this  gift.  He  saw  the  view  from  Richmond  Hill,  and  the  lazy 
luxuriance  of  the  Thames  Valley,  just  as  inevitably  and  unmistakingly 
as  he  had  seen  the  snow-storms  of  the  Carter  and  the  spates  of  the 
Jed.  He  had  such  a  genius  at  the  thing  that,  even  in  describing 
what  he  had  never  seen  —  the  merely  book-learnt  scenes  of  foreign 
countries  —  he  is  not  much,  though  somewhat  less,  convincing  than 
when  he  touches  off  the  wallflower,  or  the  birds  at  the  approach  of 
rain,  or  the  disturbance  of  the  trout  by  sheep-washing.  In  a  thou- 
sand casual  strokes,  as  well  as  in  the  well-known  set  pieces  of  The 
Seasons,  this  infallible  observation  and  this  admirable  if  not  always 
consummate  expression  show  themselves.  As  compositions,  all  the 
four  lie,  no  doubt,  open  to  exception.  There  is  a  good  deal  of 
padding,  and  it  is  often  weak.  A  certain  amount  of  the  matter  has 
the  cant  common  to  declaimers,  and  a  certain  further  amount  has 
the  sentimentality,  the  artificiality,  and  the  other  faults  of  the  time. 
But  even  these,  in  the  company  where  we  find  them,  add  a  certain 
flavour.  It  is  impossible  to  believe  that  The  Seasons  will  ever  be  read 
without  admiration  and  delight  by  fit  persons.  They  have,  if  not  the 
charm  of  the  absolutely  best  and  highest  literature,  yet  that  of  the 
next,  and  still  not  too  extensive,  class,  that  which  combines  an 
excellent  adherence  to  truth  of  fact  with  a  more  than  competent 
skill  in  art.  For  their  time,  and  therefore  for  history,  they  were  of 
simply  paramount  importance,  but  they  have  a  charm  not  merely  of 
their  time. 

1  The  best  edition  is  that  of   Mr.  J.   Logie   Robertson  for  the   Clarendon 
Press. 


CHAP.  I         THE   POETS   FROM  THOMSON  TO   CRABBE  571 

Poetically  speaking,  Thomson  went  far  higher  in  The  Castle  of 
Indolence,  which  closed,  as  Winter  had  opened,  his  poetical  career; 
and  it  so  happened  that  its  lesson  was  not  much  less  im- 
portant for  his  time.  Spenser  had  never  wholly  gone  out  ^'I'td^ien'"'^ 
of  favour,!  though  both  Thomson  himself  and  Shenstone 
i^vide  infra)  thought  it  safest  to  imitate  iiis  ''Gothick"  form  with  a 
touch  of  burlesque.  But  the  virtue  of  the  magnificent  stanza  almost 
completely  conquered  this;  and  the  charms  of  The  Castle  of  Indolence 
are  not  those  of  a  parody,  but  those  of  a  great  poem,  which  happens 
to  bear  the  image  and  superscription  of  a  greater.  Almost  at  once 
the  poet  is  carried  away,  and  the  famous  picture  of  the  dale  of 
Indolence  is  almost  as  noble  a  thing  as  we  shall  find  anywhere  in 
eighteenth-century  poetry.  The  very  spirit  of  the  stanza,  its  long- 
drawn,  sleepy,  yet  never  sluggish  melody,  passes  with  the  murmuring 
sound  of  it  into  the  poet's  song.  Nor  does  it  ever  fully  leave  him, 
despite  his  occasional  struggles  to  get  back  to  falsetto.  The  Speech 
of  Indolence,  itself  not  wholly  couched  in  this  vein,  is  hardly  over 
before  we  have  the  wondrous  stanza  — 

As  when  a  shepherd  of  the  Hebrid  Isles  — 

the  picture  of  the  Castle,  almost  worthy  of  Spensers  self,  the  Mirror 
of  Vanity  (which  shows  that  Thomson  was  not  far  behind  Young  or 
even  Pope  himself  as  a  satirist),  and  the  sketches  of  the  guests.  The 
second  book  is  not  so  continuously  good,  because  (to  tell  the  truth) 
Thomson  had  no  real  sympathy  with  the  Knight  of  Arts  and 
Industry,  while  he  had  much  with  the  fell  enchanter;  but  it  com- 
pletes the  moral,  without  which  the  age  would  not  have  been 
contented. 

It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  beneficent  influence  which  The 
Castle  of  Indolence  must  have  had  in  soothing,  relaxing,  and  adjust- 
ing to  true  poetic  feeling  the  ears  and  mind  of  a  generation  made 
half-deaf  and  half-nervous  by  the  sharp  scratch  and  rasp  of  the 
couplet.  That  its  ^olian-harp  music  did  not  appeal  to  Johnson  is 
not  in  the  least  surprising ;  that  something  of  its  charm  must  have 
in  some  unexplained  way  kept  him  from  expressing  contom])t  or 
blame  is  very  interesting.  For  it  was,  in  truth,  the  knell  of  the  kind 
of  poetry  he  himself  loved  and  practised. 

Three  short  poems,  two  in  octosyllables,  one  in  blank  verse,  keep 

l-The  nadir  of  the  tasle  for  him  seems  to  have  been  about  the  last  thirty 
years  of  the  seventeenth  century.  In  i686  a  "Person  of  Quality"  "dcliverefl  in 
Heroick  numbers"  (/.<r.  couplets),  as  Spenser  A'eJivivus,  the  Faerie  {hieene,  Mk.  1., 
with  its  author's  "essential  design  preserved,  l)ut  his  olisoiole  Lini^u.-iRc  .mil 
manner  of  verse  totally  laid  asitir."  In  order  not  to  do  the  work  ncghgrnlly,  the 
Person  of  Quality  has  also  totally  laid  aside  "  his  "  poetry. 


572    MIDDLE   AND   LATER   18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

alive  the  memory  of  three  poets,  who  were  all  born  within  a  year  or 
two  of  Thomson,  while    Dyer's  Grongar  Hill,  the    most   remarkable 

and  the  most  like  his  work,  appeared  in  the  very  year  of 
-^.  Winter.  John  Dyer  (born  circa  1688,  died  1758)  was  a 
native  of  Caermarthenshire,  and  at  first  a  painter  by  profession,  but 
took  orders.  He  wrote  later  and  larger  poems — The  Ruins  of  Rome 
(after  an  actual  visit  there  on  his  earlier  business).  The  Fleece,  one 
of  the  impossible  descriptive-didactics  of  the  century  —  but  by  their 
dates  (1740  and  \7S7)i  his  genuine  but  thin  fount  of  originality  had 
been  swamped  by  the  greater  volume  and  more  forceful  genius  of 
Thomson.  Grongar  Hill,  a  little  poem  of  some  200  lines,  and  the 
still  shorter  Country  Walk,  are  very  different  things.  They,  like 
Lady  Winchelsea's  work,  remind  us  more  of  Marvell  than  of  any 
later  poet.  The  rhymes  in  Grongar  Hill  are  really  '*  uncertain,"  and 
the  grammar  is  sometimes  dubious.  But  the  poet  sees;  he  clothes 
what  he  sees  with  atmosphere,  and  ranges  it  in  composition  ;  his 
phrase  is  often  singularly  fresh  and  direct,  and  his  versification, 
though  not  attempting  Christabel  scope,  uses  at  least  the  licenses  of 
Co?nus.  He  was  evidently,  from  his  later  work,  one  of  those  poets 
who  survive  their  poetry ;  but  he  was  a  poet. 

Robert  Blair  (1699-1743),  minister  of  Athelstaneford,  who  pub- 
lished The  Grave  in  1743,  and  Matthew  Green  (1696-1737),  a  clerk 
in  the  Custom-House,  who  wrote  The  Spleen,  or  at  least  published  it, 

in  1732,  were  more  of  their  time,  but  transcended  mere 
and  Green.     Convention   in   each   case.     The   good   old    Saxon   gloom 

inspires  Blair's  verse,  which  has  something  of  the  dec- 
lamation of  Young's,  but  is  less  florid  and  more  nervous.  As  for 
The  Spleen,  it  is  one  of  the  liveliest  poems  of  a  century  which 
has  many  lively  poems  —  a  little  Philistine  and  decidedly  Hedonist, 
but  shrewd,  by  no  means  unkindly,  and  shading  off  the  indignant 
satire  of  its  model.  Swift,  into  an  easy  raillery,  which  almost  masks 
its  contempt  of  life. 

The  name  of  Thomson,  with  those  of  Gray  and  Collins,  supplies 
almost  the  whole  poetical  list  of  the  greater  poets  of  the  middle 
eighteenth  century,  and  hasty  judgment  often  seeks  no  farther,  if  so 
far.  On  the  other  hand,  in  no  period  of  English  literature  have 
minor  poets  made  so  secure  a  hold  on  memory,  owing  to  the  fact  of 
Johnson's  Lives,  and  to  the  enrolment  of  their  works  in  the  excellent 
collection  of  Chalmers.  Nor  is  it,  perhaps,  entirely  certain  that,  from 
some  future  standpoint,  these  poets  will  seem  so  inferior  to  those  of  the 
seventeenth  and  those  of  the  nineteenth  century  as  they  seem  to  us. 

There  is,  at  any  rate,  no  lack  of  interesting  matter  in   William 
Shenstone.^     If  we  took  his  prose  remains,  hardly  to  be  called  essays 
1  Poems  only  in  Chalmers ;    Works,  3rd  ed.  3  vols.  London,  1773. 


CHAP.  I         THE  POETS   FROM   THOMSON  TO   CRABBE  573 

so  much  as  jottings,  then  we  should  think  him  a  very  considerable 
though  unequal  critic,  and  an  innovator  of  the  most  remarkable 
kind.  In  his  actual  verse  we  find  him  tentative,  often 
feeble,  and  nearly  always  incomplete.  He  was  born  at  ^^^^55*255^ 
the  Leasowes,  in  a  part  of  Worcestershire  which  technically  belonged 
to  Shropshire,  in  17 14,  and  the  greater  part  of  his  life  of  not  quite 
fifty  years  (he  died  in  1763)  was  passed  there,  in  those  attempts  to 
develop  and  improve  the  natural  beauty  of  his  estate  which  brought 
him  some  fame,  some  ridicule,  and  a  good  deal  of  pecuniary  em- 
barrassment. But  he  had  been  educated  at  Pembroke  College, 
Oxford  (which  probably  made  Johnson  as  kind  to  him  as  he  could  be 
to  any  man  who  liked  "  prospects "),  he  had  seen  something  of 
fashionable  society,  and  he  continued  to  be  intimate  with  persons  of 
rank,  as  well  as  with  persons  of  literature.  It  must  never  be  forgotten 
that  he  had  much  to  do  with  the  appearance  of  Percy's  Reliqucs,  and 
would  have  edited  it  jointly  had  his  life  lasted.  But  there  was  on 
Shenstone  the  curse  which  attends  all  transition  poets,  aggravated  in 
his  case  by  ill-health,  a  nature  at  once  shy  and  appetent  of  f;xme, 
and  a  fortune  which  neither  provided  affluence  nor  compelled  industry. 
Of  the  greater  poets  we  can  say  that  in  other  times  they  would  have 
been  either  silent  or  the  same  with  slight  and  separable  difterences ; 
there  is  probably  not  a  poem  of  Shenstones  which  would  not  have 
been  a  perfectly  d.-fferent  thing  if  he  had  been  born  in  1614  or  1814. 
A  batch  of  elegies,  neither  unmusical  nor  thoughtless,  but  unfortu- 
nately artificial  in  phrase,^  is  followed  by  a  pot-pourri  of  odes,  songs, 
and  ballads  as  artificial,  but  more  graceful,  and  by  attempts  in  the 
most  various  kinds,  of  which  the  deservedly  famous  Pastoral  Ballad, 
which  is  really  four  separate  poems,  and  the  charming  Spenserian 
imitation  of  The  Schoolmistress,  are  certainly  the  best.  Elsewhere  in 
their  author's  work  are  things  not  mucli  less  pretty.  It  is  in  Slien- 
stone,  not  in  Sterne,  that  the  scntimentaJism  of  the  eighteenth  century 
finds  its  most  genuine  and  unadulterated  expression.  And  in  his 
Essays  we  find  much  besides  sentiment  —  some  strangely  advanced 
poetical  criticism,  much  originality  of  thought,  and  some  thoughts 
which  are  actually  profound. 

A  greater  poet,  less  favoured  by  circumstance,  was  William  Collins, 
who  was  born  at  Chichester  in  1721.  He  was  the  son  of  a  tradesman, 
but  very  respectably  connected,  and  was  educated  at  Winchester  and 
Magdalen  College,  Oxford.  But  lie  left  the  University  sud- 
denly. Johnson,  who  knew  and  loved  him,  cither  did  not  ^i"V- 
know  or  would  not  reveal  wliy.  ProI)al)Iy  Collins's  mental  disease 
had  already  apjjeared.     At  any  rate,  he  went   to   London  at  the  age 

^ "  And  livelier  far  than  Tyrian  seemed  his  vest,"  probably  suggested  Gimp- 
bell's  still  more  luckless  "  Iberian  seemed  his  boot." 


574    MIDDLE   AND    LATER    18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

of  about   twenty-four,  published  (1746-47)  his  tiny  handful  of  Odes 
(he  had  already  printed  Persian  Eclogues,   1742,  and   an  Epistle  to 
Hanmer,  1743),  and  was  arrested  for  debt.     But  the  booksellers,  that 
maligned  race,  freed  him  on  the  security  of  a  merely  promised  trans- 
lation of  the  Poetics,  and  soon  afterwards  a  legacy  put  him  at  ease. 
Unfortunately  his  mind  gave  way,  and  after  some  years  of  partial  in- 
sanity he  died  in  1756.     His  poetical  work  consists  of  a  few  eclogues 
in  couple cs  of  next  to  no  value,  and  of  a  rather  larger  batch  of  odes 
in  different  lyrical  metres,  together  with  two  or  three  minor  pieces, 
among    which    are    the    exquisite    "Dirge    in    Cymbeline^''    and    the 
beautiful  if  rather  artificial  piece  on  the  death  of  Thomson.      The 
odes,    on     the     subjects    of    "Pity,"     "Fear,"    "  Simphcity,"    "The 
Poetical    Character,"   "  Patriotism "    (not   so    named,    but   universally 
known    as    "How   Sleep    the    Brave"),    "Mercy,"    "Liberty,"    "The 
Death    of    Colonel     Charles     Ross,"     "Evening,"    "Peace."     "The 
Manners,"    "The   Passions,"   and    "The    Superstitions  of  the    High- 
lands," are  among  the  great  texts  of  English  poetry,  if  not  among  its 
greatest  accomplishments.     They  are  decidedly  unequal,  though  hardly 
the  worst  is  without  something  memorable.     "  How  Sleep  the  Brave," 
"Liberty,"  "  Evening"  (in  unrhymed  verse),  "Peace,"  the  ever-famous 
"  Passions,"  and  parts  of  the  "  Highlands  "  ode  (which  never  received 
Collins's  final  touches)  are  so  beautiful,  that  a  good  deal  of  critical 
detachment  is  needed  to  appreciate  them  with  absolute  correctness. 
There  is  no  danger  of  their  being  undervalued  (as  they  have  some- 
times   been    overvalued)    for    a    touch    of    that    quite    academic    re- 
publican  sentiment   which   was    characteristic   of  the   century.     And 
their    wonderful     mnsic  —  as    in     the    whole    of    "How    Sleep     the 
Brave,"    in    the    opening    stanzas    of    "  Liberty "    (the    rest    is    far 
inferior),    in   the   admirable   landscape-painting    and   soft    rhythmical 
undertone  which  for  once  redeem  the  foolish  asceticism  of  refusing 
rhyme  in  "  Evening,"  in  the  consummate  variety  of  "  The  Passions," 
and  in  large  passages  of  "The  Superstitions"  — can  escape  none  but 
tlie  deaf.     But,  at  the  same  time,  the  curse  of  artificiality  was  still  on 
Collins.     Few  have  read,  or  at  any  rate  remember,  his  worst  verses ; 
but  even  his  best  are  never  long  without  obvious  faults.     The  "  slow 
motion  of  his  lines,  clogged  and  impeded  with  clusters  of  consonants," 
which  Johnson  blames,  often  provides  exactly  that  music  which  has 
been   praised   above.      But   it   is    impossible    to    traverse    Johnson's 
other  charge,  that  he  puts  his  words  out  of  the  common  order,  and 
this  charge  may  be  extended  to  a  more  general  one,  that  his  diction, 
thougii  not  his  versification,  is  starched  and  unnatural.      His   model 
seems  to  have  been,  if  any  one,  Milton;    and  it  is  much  easier  to 
imitate    Milton's   pedantries   than   to  borrow  his   genius.      Yet   it  is 
by  no   means  certain  that  Coleridge,  born  sixty  years  earlier,  would 


CHAP.  I         THE   POETS   FROM  THOMSON  TO   CRABBE 


575 


have  been  as  great  as  Collins,  while  Collins,  bom  sixty  years  later, 
might  have  been  even  greater  than  Coleridge. 

But  by  far  the  most  important  example  of  the  clogs  and  crosses 
of  the  time  is  to  be  found  in  Thomas  Gray,^  a  man  of  less  original 
poetical  inspiration   than  Collins,  perhaps   not  much    more  gifted  in 
this  way  even  than   Shenstone,  but  a   far  better  and  far 
wider  scholar  than  either,  and  entirely  free  from  all  un-  ^^^' 

toward  circumstance.  Neither  Milton,  nor  Wordsworth,  nor  Tenny- 
son had  greater  facility  for  developing  whatsoever  poetical  gifts 
were  in  each  than  had  Gray.  His  father,  like  Milton's,  was  a 
<' money-scrivener,"  and  the  poet,  born  in  London  in  1716,  was  sent 
to  Eton,  where  his  mother's  brother  was  a  master.  There  he  made 
friends  with  Horace  Walpole,  and  thence  he  went  to  Cambridge  (Peter- 
house).  He  took  no  degree,  but  read  hard  and  widely;  travelled 
for  some  time  with  Walpole  to  Italy,  and  after  returning  in  1741, 
was  enabled  by  his  father's  death  to  give  up  the  law  (to  which  he  had 
unwillingly  taken)  and  settle  himself  at  Cambridge.  Although  he  was 
never  a  Fellow  of  either,  he  lived  all  his  life  in  two  colleges,  Peter- 
house  and  Pembroke,  the  change  from  one  to  the  other  being  caused 
by  an  undergraduate  practical  joke.  He  would  not  take  the  Poet- 
Laureateship  in  1757,  but  sought  the  Professorship  of  History  at 
Cambridge  in  vain  in  1762,  and  successfully  in  1768.  He  never 
lectured,  and  died  at  the  end  of  July  1771,  being  not  yet  fifty-five. 
He  had  written  most  of  his  few  poems  in  early  manhood  or  middle 
life.  The  first  published  was  the  famous  Eton  Ode  (1747),  and  the 
"  Elegy  in  a  Country  Churchyard "  was  then  ready,  though  not 
printed  till  1750.  Besides  his  small  handful  of  verse,  we  have  from 
him  some  valuable  Letters  and  Essays,  and  a  good  deal  of  chiefly 
classical  adversaria.  He  planned  a  history  of  English  poetry,  and 
was  probably  the  best-read  man  of  letters  of  his  time  in  Europe  in 
regard  to  modern  literature,  not  merely  of  his  own  country.  And  his 
later  Z,^//^rj-,  especially  those  from  the  Lakes  in  1769,  show,  before  those 
of  most  others,  the  rising  sense  of  the  Picturesque  in  literature. 

Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  has  extolled,  with  a  nearer  approach  to  posi- 
tive enthusiasm  than  was  usual  with  him,  the  work  of  a  poet  whose 
temperament  was  not  wholly  unlike  his  own.  It  is  easy  to  agree 
with  Mr.  Arnold  that  Gray's  small  original  production  was  due  to  the 
times  being  out  of  joint  with  him  ;  less  easy  to  think  that  in  others 
Gray  would  have  done  much  more  that  was  original.  He  would 
very  likely  have  written  his  history  of  English  ])octry,  and  he  would 
almost  certainly  have  given  us  some,  perhaps  many,  volumes  of 
critical  essays  as  acute,  delicate,  and  well-infornicd  as   Mr.   Arnold's 

1  Works,  cd.  Gosse,  4  vols.  London,  1884. 


576    MIDDLE   AND   LATER    18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

own,  and  perhaps  less  alloyed  with  crotchets  and  limitations.  But  it 
is  not  probable  that  Gray  would  ever  have  been  a  much  greater  poet 
than  he  is.  For  though  on  one  side  the  shortcomings  of  his  time 
were  uncongenial  to  him,  though  he  could  (through  "a  plano-convex 
mirror  ")  see  and  love  the  country,  and  appreciate  '*  the  Gothick,"  and 
read  Norse  and  Welsh  and  Old  English,  he  was  still  in  verse  a  slave, 
and  a  willing  slave,  to  a  certain  classical  and  literary  convention. 
His  poems  are  careful  mosaics  of  previous  literary  expression;  he 
delighted  in  that  feeble  personification  which  is  really  worse,  not 
better,  than  the  older  imagery  of  the  Rose ;  his  diction,  though  Words- 
worth's attack  on  it  is  not  quite  fair,  has  a  dangerous  admixture 
of  the  cut-and-dried.  The  "rosy-bosomed  Hours,"  and  the  "toil- 
ing hand  of  Care,"  and  "Contemplation's  sober  eye,"  jostle  tags 
from  Virgil  and  Milton  and  Shakespeare.  Apostrophes  meet  us  every- 
where. When  we  read  the  "  Ode  on  the  Death  of  a  Favourite  Cat," 
we  say  (at  least  some  of  us,  for  from  Johnson  to  the  present  day  there 
have  been  dissentients)  —  "  That  could  not  have  been  better  done  — 
that  is  done  with  the  grain,  in  keeping,  at  ease."  When  we  turn  to 
the  Eton  Ode,  fine  as  it  is,  there  is  a  sense  of  buckram  in  the  form, 
of  rouge  in  the  colouring.  The  truth  and  sincerity  of  the  sentiment, 
the  brilliancy  and  finish  of  the  diction,  only  make  us  feel  more  dis- 
tinctly what  is  ;/fl/  there. 

These  characteristics  are  almost  sufficiently  shown  in  the  famous 
E/egy,  where,  beside  the  fact  that  Gray  adjusts  his  difficulties  and 
harmonises  his  endeavours  better  than  anywhere  else,  appears  the 
other  fact  that  he  is,  after  all,  but  a  second-rate  poet.  That  the  sen- 
timent is  commonplace  is  not  against  it,  but  the  contrary ;  the  poet 
is  to  deal  with  the  commonplace  and  to  make  it  not  common.  That 
the  phrasing  is  exquisite  cannot  be  denied ;  the  soft  perfection  of 
conventionality,  just  touched  and  tinged  with  the  dawn  of  some- 
thing higher  and  greater,  cannot  but  appeal  to  every  generous  taste. 
Though  the  quatrain,  unless  the  poet  resorts  to  such  devices  of 
e7ija7)ibement  and  linked  rhyme  as  Mr.  Swinburne's  in  Laus  Veneris, 
is  dangerously  subject  either  to  monotony  or  to  an  abrupt  and  jerky 
movement.  Gray  has  vanquished  these  tendencies.  But  the  expres- 
sion never  quite  reaches  that  poignant  suggestiveness,  that  endless 
circling  of  new  and  ever  new  music,  which  distinguishes  the  greatest 
poetry.  The  suggestion  is  not  that  which  Mr.  Arnold  has  so  char- 
itably taken  as  the  key  to  Gray,  that  the  poet  is  not  "speaking 
out,"  that  there  are,  behind,  treasures  of  poetry  which  he  keeps  in 
reserve  ;  but  that  there  is  nothing  more  to  come,  that  there  ought  to 
be  something,  and  that  he  is  even  dimly  conscious  of  both  facts.  It 
may  be  that  there  is  no  very  wide  or  real  demand  (though  at  times 
it  is  the  fashion  to  affect  it)  for  this  "  over-soul "  in  poetry ;  and  the 


CHAP.  I         THE  POETS  FROM  THOMSON  TO  CRABBE  577 

popularity,  immediate,  immense,  and,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  never  likely 
to  cease,  of  the  Elegy,  is  no  discouraging  evidence  that  there  is  a 
demand  for  true  poetry  of  a  kind  a  little  lower.  But  that  there  is 
this  shortcoming  in  Gray,  in  the  Odes  as  well  as  in  the  Elegy,  in  the 
few  other  pieces  as  well  as  in  the  Odes,2>XiA  that  though  partly  it 
was  not  wholly  or  even  mainly  the  fault  of  his  time,  there  can 
be  little  doubt.  His  scholarliness  has  justly  propitiated  scholars; 
his  nature,  such  as  it  is,  has  justly  charmed  the  general;  in 
"Spring,"  in  "The  Progress  of  Poesy,"  in  "Vicissitude,"  even  in  the 
stagey  and  mannered  "Bard,"  there  are  the  fine  things,  the  inevi- 
table, the  always  surprising  and  new.  But  they  are  not  very  common, 
and  they  are  constantly  jumbled  up  with  the  tawdry,  the  artificial,  and 
the  stale. 

We  must  now  hasten  the  tale.  John  Byrom,  spnmg  of  a  good 
Manchester  family,  was  born  in  1692,  went  to  St.  Paul's  School  and 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  became  a  Fellow,  and  cele- 
brated the  charms  of  "  Jug,"  or  Joanna.  Bentley  (a  daughter  of  the 
awful  Aristarch,  who  seems  to  have  charmed  all  his  college),  in  some 
pretty  verses,  beginning  — 

My  time,  O  ye  muses,  was  happily  spent, 

which  appeared  in  the  Spectator.  Byrom  was  later  a  physician,  an 
industrious  and  successful  teacher  of  the  first  really  good  system  of 
shorthand,  a  strong  Jacobite,  and  a  mystic  in  religion.  ,His 
works  1    consist   of   a    voluminous  and    often    interesting 

J.  J  1  1     11         /-  .  Hyrom, 

diary,  and  a  large  bulk  of  very  various  verse,  the  best  Savage, 
known  and  perhaps  the  best  piece  of  which  is  the  ="«^°'^'"- 
famous  Jacobite  epigram,  "God  bless  the  King,  of  Church  and 
State  Defender."  His  practice  of  throwing  every  possible  subject 
into  verse,  very  often  of  the  swinging  trisyllabic  kind,  of  which 
he  was  a  great  lover  and  a  very  clever  practitioner,  has  not  improved 
the  poetical  merit  of  his  work ;  but  he  had  much  more  diffuse  poetry 
in  him  than  all  but  one  or  two  of  his  contemporaries,  and  his 
vohiminous  work,  which  has  had  tiie  good  fortune  to  secure  two 
admirable  editors,  is  singularly  interesting  to  read,  and  furnishes 
side-lights  on  the  time  only  inferior  to  those  of  tiie  greatest  memoir- 
writers. 

No  greater  contrast  to  Byrom  can  be  even  imagined  than  Richard 
Savage  (1697-1743),  a  profligate  charlatan,  who,  partly  by  the 
accident   of  being   a  personal   friend    of  Joiinson,  and    partly  by  the 

1  Publisli(;d  by  the  Clietham  Society  at  Mancliestcr  in  two  divisions.  Kernains 
by  R.  Parkinson  (4  parts  or  2  vols.  1854,  S(/.),  and  Poems,  by  A.  W.  Ward  (4  parts 
or  2  vols.  1894,  S(/.) 

2P 


578    MIDDLE  AND   LATER   18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE   bk.  ix 

claims  he  made  to  being  a  persecuted  "love-child"  cf  persons  of 
quality,  obtained,  and  to  some  extent  kept,  a  reputation  quite  dispro- 
portionate to  his  worth.  His  chief  poem,  The  Wanderer  (1729),  is  a 
rhetorical  piece  in  five  cantos,  very  difficult  to  follow,  in  which  the 
idea  of  travel  very  thinly  supports  long  "  screeds  "  of  moral  declama- 
tion. Its  metre  is  an  attempt  at  the  couplet,  rather  as  Dryden  left  it 
than  as  Pope  transformed ;  its  diction  is  admittedly  Thomsonian. 
The  Bastard,  a  year  older,  more  forcible,  and  more  like  Dryden,  puts, 
witli  at  any  rate  literary  skill,  Savage's  claim  to  be  Lady  Maccles- 
field's son ;  and  the  verses  on  Lady  TyrconneFs  recovery  are  also  in  a 
fairly  imitative  swing  of  Drydenian  flattery.  Savage  rarely  attempted 
lyric,  and  few  of  his  minor  verses  of  any  kind  go  beyond  the  merits  of 
the  exercise. 

David  Malloch,  who,  for  reasons  rather  variously  stated,  changed 
his  name  to  Mallet,  was  born  about  1702,  and,  when  not  much 
past  twenty,  produced  in  "  William  and  Margaret "  a  piece,  in 
imitation  of  the  ballad  style  revealed  by  Watson's  and  Ramsay's 
publications  {vide  infra),  which  had  great  influence.  Mallet  has 
disputed  with  Thomson  the  credit  of  "  Rule  Britannia,"  a  piece  of 
vigorous  declamation  and  genuine  patriotic  sentiment,  which,  how- 
ever, owes  more  to  the  merit  of  it?  music  than  to  that  of  its  poetry. 
His  longer  poems.  The  Excursion  and  Aniynior  and  Theodora,  are 
quite  open  imitations  of  his  friend,  as  his  Verbal  Criticism  is  of  Pope. 
"Edwin  and  Emma,"  though  not  so  good,  was  long  as  famous  as 
"  William  and  Margaret,"  and  all  but  a  few  of  Mallet's  more  numerous 
pieces  in  the  lighter  style  show  the  grace  and  wit  which  belongs  to 
the  now  too-much-neglected  lighter  verse  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Mallet,  who  was  more  of  a  general  man  of  letters  than  a  poet,  died 
in  1765.  In  his  relations  with  Sarah  Marlborough,  Bolingbroke,  and 
others  he  showed  no  very  high  standard  of  literary  morality  and 
dignity ;  but  it  is  rather  absurd  to  blame  him  for  writing  against 
Byng,  whose  execution  some  very  good  judges  have  held  to  be  not 
unjust,  and  distinctly  beneficial. 

Conjoined  with  Mallet  in  the  never  executed  task  of  writing  a  life 
of  Marlborough,  like  him  a  Thomsonian  in  style,  and  like  him  a 
politician,  though  a  more  independent  one,  was  Richard  Glover,  born 
in  171 2,  who  was  all  his  life  connected  with  business  as  well  as  with 
letters,  and  though  for  a  time  unfortunate  in  his  city  affairs,  died 
prosperous  in  1785.  The  contrast  between  the  vigour  of  Glover's 
political  ballad,  "  Admiral  Hozier's  Ghost "  and  the  wastes  of  his 
stupendous  and  terrible  blank-verse  epics,  Leonidas  and  The  Athenaid, 
containing  between  them  some  20,000  lines,  presents  in  little  the 
contrast  of  the  whole  poetry  of  the  time. 

Two  of  the  most   interesting  verse-writers  of  the  middle  of  the 


CHAP.  I  THE   POETS   FROM   THOMSON   TO   CRABBE  579 


century,  both  illustrating  the  peculiarities  of  the  time,  were  Armstrong 
and  Akenside,  the  first  a  decided  Thomsonian  in  at  least  the  accidents 
of  verse,  the  other  a  nondescript,  but  resembling  other  nondescripts 
of  other  times  strangely. 

John  Armstrong,  the  less  important,  was  born  in  Roxburghshire 
in  1709,  and  educated  at  Edinburgh,  but  very  shortly  went  to  London, 
where  he  practised  medicine  till  his  death  in  1779.  Some  of  his 
early  verse  is  whimsical  and  a  little  more,  but  in  1744  he  published 
The  Art  of  Preserving  Health,  which  did  not  clash  with  the  ideas  of 
the  age  in  poetry,  and  was  quite  within  them  as  to  personal  conduct. 
He  was  the  friend  of  Wilkes,  and  also  of  Smollett,  whom  he  resembled 
in  a  perfervid  temper  and  in  occasional  coarseness  of  literary  expres- 
sion. No  one  now  would  write  on  Armstrong's  subjects  in  Arm- 
strong's manner,  but  his  grasp  of  the  peculiar  Thomsonian  diction 
and  versification  was  extraordinary. 

Mark  Akenside  was  the  son  of  a  butcher  at  Newcastle,  where  he 
was  born  in  1721.  He  was  at  first  intended  for  the  dissenting 
ministry,  but  his  studies  at  Edinburgh  and  Leyden  drew  him  to 
physic.  His  Pleasures  of  Imagination  appeared  in  the 
same  year  with  Armstrong's  Art  of  Preserving  Health. 
Akenside  was  a  very  strong  Whig  of  the  Republican  variety,  and 
his  principles  inspired  the  brilliant  "Epistle  to  Curio"  (Pulteney) 
which,  in  accordance  with  an  awkward  habit  of  his,  he  afterwards 
rehandled  and  spoilt.  He  practised  first  at  Northampton,  then  in 
London,  having  fortified  himself  with  a  Cambridge  degree ;  he 
attained  considerable  repute  in  his  own  profession,  though  his 
oddities  caused  him  to  be  pilloried  by  Smollett  as  the  physician 
who  gave  the  "Roman  dinner"  at  Paris;  and  even  Johnson,  who 
hated  his  principles,  admits  that  he  might  have  risen  very  high 
if  he  had  not  died  in  middle  life  (apparently  of  typhoid)  in 
1770. 

Akenside  is  a  very  fair  touchstone  of  criticism.  It  is  impossible 
to  like  or  even  to  admire  him  very  heartily;  he  belongs  to  a  class 
of  poets,  represented  in  most  days,  who  are  plaster  rather  than  marble, 
photograph  rather  than  picture,  pinchbeck  rather  than  gold  or  even 
copper.  And  yet  a  reluctant  confession  must  accompany  all  reason- 
able depreciation  of  him.  It  is  a  question  whether  Akenside  wants 
much  to  have  turned  his  statue  into  life,  or  at  least  liis  stucco  into 
alabaster.  The  Pleasures  of  the  Imagination,  often  and  jierhaps  ex- 
cusably called  tepid,  constantly  quiver  or  go  near  to  quivering  with 
the  needed  glow ;  the  "Hymn  to  the  Naiads"  has  a  strange  frozen 
grace  ;  the  Odes,  at  their  best,  fall  not  so  far  short  of  Collins,  and  not 
at  all  short  of  all  but  the  best  of  Gray;  and  the  "Epistle  to  Curio" 
is   a   most    remarkable   study.     It  has    the   sincerity,  the    throb,  that 


580    MIDDLE   AND   LATER   18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

Pope's  satire,  except  when  tinged  with  personal  hate,  wants ;  it  has 
the  hurry,  the  rise,  the  intense  discipline,  of  the  best  satiric  verse, 
and  it  only  lacks  the  disengagement,  the  supremacy,  of  Dryden.  It 
is  a  pity  that  Lord  Macaulay,  in  a  passage  which  has  probably  been 
read  by  a  thousand  to  one  who  knows  the  poem,  should  have  sneered 
at  it.  For,  in  truth,  almost  its  only  fault  is  an  unpractical  devotion  to 
principle.  It  may  not  be  party  war;  but  it  is  not  so  very  far  from 
being  magnificent  ethically,  and  it  is  poetically  fine. 

That  most  interesting  and  important  thing,  the  Resurrection  of 
the  Ballad,  and  indeed  of  old  poetry  generally,  was  going  on  during 
the  whole,  or  nearly  the  whole,  of  the  first  half  of  the  century;  and 

the  effects  of  it  are  visible  in  some  of  the  poets,  notably 

of  thrBaliad :  Mallet   and    Shenstone,   who  have  been  noticed    already. 

Percy  and     But  though  there  may   be,  as  Dryden  says,  "  in  epoches 

mistakes,"  if  we  endeavour  to  point  them  too  closely, 
the  appearance  of  Percy's  Reliqties  ^  in  1 765  is  not  likely  soon  to  be 
dethroned  from  its  place  of  vantage,  and  we  may  most  conveniently 
here  make  a  halt,  a  digression,  or  a  parenthesis,  in  order  to  mention 
it  and  its  preliminaries.  The  first  of  these  saw  the  light  (as  was  per- 
haps natural,  seeing  that  old  Scots  poetry  had  died  sooner  than  English) 
in  Scotland  earlier  than  in  England.  At  the  very  time  of  the  Union, 
in  1706,  1708,  and  171 1,  James  Watson,  the  King's  printer,  printed 
in  Craig's  Close,  opposite  the  Cross  of  Edinburgh,  his  Choice  Col- 
lection,''' opening  with  Chrisfs  Kirk  on  the  Green,  and  containing 
pieces  of  Montgomery,  Drummond,  Ayton,  and  Sempill,  with  others 
of  various  ages  and  merits.  There  is  no  doubt  that  Watson's  venture 
gave  the  hint  to  Allan  Ramsay,  whose  Evergreen  and  Tea-Table 
Aliscellany,  ^  on  similar  principles,  but  with  more  individual  editing 
and  addition,  appeared  later  (1724-40).  It  is  not  probable  that 
Watson  had  much  direct  effect -on  England,  but  the  "Scotch  tunes," 
which  had  even  affected  Dryden,  have  no  small  influence  on  two  most 
interesting  collections  which  appeared  in  London  before  Ramsay's 
own  gatherings,  Tom  D^Urfey's  Fills  to  Purge  Melancholy'^  (1719) 
and  an  anonymous  assembly  (1723)  of  Old  Ballads^  "printed  from 
the  best  and  oldest  copies."  The  former  was  still  intended  as  an 
actual  "Warbler"  (though  hardly  a  /////^Warbler)  for  use;  the  latter 
is  professedly  a  literary  collection. 

1  Editions  very  numerous;  that  of  H.  B.  Wheatley,  3  vols.  London,  1886,  is 
the  best.  Thomas  Percy  (1729-1801),  who  died  Bishop  of  Dromore,  a  friend  of 
Johnson  and  all  the  later  eighteenth-century  wits,  and  an  excellent  person,  did 
much  other  literary  work,  original,  editorial,  and  translating.  He  adulterated  his 
ballads,  but  he  knew  no  better. 

2  Reprinted,  Glasgow,  1869.  «  Reprinted,  4  vols.  Glasgow,  1876. 
*  Reprinted,  6  vols.  London,  n.d.           6  Reprinted,  3  vols.  London,  n.d. 


CHAP.  I  THE   POETS   FROM   THOMSON  TO   CRABBE  581 

D'Urfey,^  who  was  old  enough  to  have  been  among  the  later  and 
lower  rivals  of  Dryden,  seems  to  have  had  much  of  the  careless 
ringing  song-faculty  of  the  elder  age.  The  compiler  of  the  Old 
Ballads  is  chiefly  interesting  because  of  his  idea,  and  because  of  the 
way  in  which  (as  the  whole  eighteenth  century  did  till  near  its  close) 
he  mixes  modern  pastiches  and  risky  trifles  with  his  old  matter.  In 
1737  appeared  the  first  volume  (there  was  no  second)  of  The  Muses'' 
Library,  giving  itself  out  as  the  work  of  Mrs.  E.  Cooper,  but  attributed 
to  the  antiquary  Oldys.  It  is  not  quite  what  it  calls  itself,  "A  general 
Collection  of  almost  all  the  old  valuable  poetry  extant  "  —  it  could  hardly 
be  that  in  four  hundred  small  pages  of  large  type.  But  it  contains 
no  despicable  anthology  from  Langland  to  Daniel.  In  1760  came 
the  remarkable  Prolusions  of  Edward  Capell,  containing,  as  formerly 
noticed,  not  merely  the  Nut-browne  Maid,  but  Edward  III.  and 
Davies's  Nosce  Teipsum  ;  and  this  was  but  five  years  before  the  Reliques 
themselves,  which,  planned  by  Percy  and  Shenstone,  assisted  by  Lord 
Hailes  and  others,  based  upon  the  Folio  MS.,  and  supplemented 
from  various  sources  new  and  old,  give  to  this  day  one  of  the  most 
delightful  collections  of  "  old  valuable  poetry  "  extant,  and  taught  the 
next  two  generations  to  write  valuable  new  poetry.  Nor  in  atmosphere, 
subject,  and,  for  good  as  well  as  for  bad,  style  need  we  fear  to  yoke 
with  it  Macpherson's  Ossian  (1760-63),  discarding  altogether  the 
question  whether  it  was  faithful  translation,  ingenious  adaptation  of 
fragments,  or  mere  and  sheer  forgery.  It  gave,  just  as  the  ballads 
gave,  something  different  —  the  necessary  twist  and  alterative  to 
the  actual  course  of  poetry  —  and  that  is  enough. ^ 

Rut  we  must  now  take  up  the  direct  history.  The  poetry  of 
Johnson  is  so  intimately  connected  with  his  other  work  that  it,  like 
Goldsmith's,  can  hardly  be  noticed  separately,  but  it  is  of  the  first 
importance  to  note  that  both  represent  a  reaction  from  the  reaction 
—  a  "  neo-classic  "  halt,  if  not  return.  The  grotesque  odes  and  the 
pleasing  hymns  of  Watts  (1674-1748),  the  far  greater  hymns  of 
Charles  Wesley  (1708-88),  the  safely  recorded,  if  seldom  consulted, 

1  He  was  born  about  1650,  and  died  1723.  His  production  was  immense, 
and  has  never  been  collected.  In  1721  he  published  four  hundred  pages,  closely 
printed,  of  verse  under  the  title  New  Operas,  with  Comical  Stories  and  Poems  on 
Several  Occasions.  Here,  in  the  quatrain  poem  of  "  Socrates  and  Timandra," 
is  perhaps  the  most  prosaic  line  in  the  English  language  — 

Uncommon  and  particularly  rare. 

But  Tom  had  merits. 

2  Something  more  will  be  found  on  Ossian  infra.  Those  who  would  plunge 
into  the  vexed  questions  resperting  it.  may  most  succinctly  consult  the  old  editions 
of  the  book  itself,  with  Blair's  l.iud.itory  dissertation,  Macgrcgor's  Coniine  h'emains 
of  Ossian,  L<ondon,  1841.  and  Mr.  Bailey  Saunders's  Life  of  Macpherson,  London, 
1894. 


582    MIDDLE   AND   LATER    18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

verses  of  the  minor  contributors  to  Dodsley's  Miscellany^  and  others 
can  but  be  referred  to  in  passing ;  but  Langhorne  and  Mickle,  men 

not   even   admitted   to   the  asylum  of  Mr.  Ward's  poets, 
Misceitany.    ^^^  ^^^  characteristic  of  the  time  not  to  demand  a  little 

more  notice ;  and  Smart,  Mason,  Falconer,  Warton, 
Churchill,  Beattie,  and  Chatterton  must  have  individual  mention. 

It  may  be  permitted  to  think  that  Christopher  Smart  has  been  of 
late  almost  as  much  overrated  as  for  generations  he  vi^as  ignored. 
The  author,  whose  admitted   want  of  sanity  excuses  a  good  deal  of 

folly  and  some  moral  delinquency,  was  born  in  Kent  in 

1722,  and  had  every  chance,  his  education  at  Durham 
and  Cambridge  settling  him  in  a  Fellowship  at  Pembroke  College. 
Johnson  defended  him  half-jocularly,  but  the  piece  of  Smart's  work 
which  was  least  likely  to  appeal  to  Johnson  is  that  which  has 
secured  him  his  vogue  of  late  years.  This  is  the  now  famous  Song  to 
David,  to  which  the  praise  given  to  it  in  Mr.  Ward's  Poets,  and  Mr. 
Browning's  allotment  to  the  author  of  a  place  in  the  Parleying  with 
Certain  People  of  Importance,  have  given  a  notoriety  certainly  not 
attained  by  the  rest  of  Smart's  work,  familiar  as,  for  a  century  or 
so,  it  ought  to  have  been  by  its  inclusion  in  Chalmers,  where  the 
Song  is  not.  Smart,  as  there  presented,  is  very  much  like  other 
people  of  his  time,  giving  some  decent  hackwork,  a  good  deal  of 
intentionally  serious  matter  of  no  value,  and  a  few  light  pieces  of 
distinct  merit. 

The  Song  to  David  is  quite  different  from  all  these.  It  consists 
of  some  hundred  six-line  "  Romance  "  stanzas,  and  was  written  in  a 
lucid  or  half-lucid  interval  of  its  author's  madness.  The  language 
and  imagery  are  largely  supplied  direct  from  the  Bible.  In  such  a 
case  a  man  can  hardly  go  wrong,  unless  he  lacks  scholarship,  ear, 
and  familiarity  with  other  standards,  and  Smart  lacked  none  of  these. 
The  translator  of  Horace,  the  fashioner  of  easy  epigrams  and  Prior- 
like frivolities,  was  not  likely  to  drop  into  those  distressing  absurdities 
which  annoy  and  half-surprise  us  in  Watts,  the  Wesleys,  and  even 
Cowper.  At  the  same  time,  his  madness  set  him  free  from  the  mere 
convention  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  the  result  is  delightful  at 
times,  interesting  always.  But  those  who  say  that  "there  is  nothing 
like  it  in  the  eighteenth  century"  must  have  temporarily  forgotten 
Charles  Wesley  before,  and  still  more  Blake  afterwards.  It  is  a 
hurrying  rhapsody  of  confused  images,  wonderful  beside  some 
contemporary  work,  not  so  wonderful  beside  the  sources  of  its  own 

iThis   (6  vols.),  with  the  continuation  of  Pearch  (4  vols.),  fills  10  vols,  (the 
edition  I  use  is  that  of   1775).     It  holds  much  of  the  major  as  well  as  of  the 
minor  verse  of  the  century,  and  those  who  wish  really  to  appreciate  that  verse  ' 
cannot  do  better  than  read  it  through. 


CHAP.  I  THE   POETS   FROM  THOMSON   TO   CRABBE  583 

inspiration.  Read  it  after  The  Art  of  Preserving  Health,  and  it  is 
nearly  miraculous  ;  read  it  after  "  Arise,  shine,  for  thy  light  is  come," 
and  poetry  must  for  once  acknowledge  an  utter  inferiority  to 
translated  prose. 

William  Mason,  now  chiefly  thought  of  in  his  connection  with 
Gray,  lived  from  1725  to  1797,  was  a  Cambridge  man  (it  was  at  Pem- 
broke that  he  made  Gray's  acquaintance),  and  became  precentor  of 
York.  He  wrote  The  English  Garden,  a  blank-verse  poem 
published  between  1772  and  1782,  two  tragedies^  Elfrida  '^  ^*°°- 
(1753)  and  Caractactis  (1759),  divers  Odes,  and  not  a  few  smaller 
poems,  of  which  the  fustian  epitaph  on  his  wife  ("  dead  Maria ")  in 
Bristol  Cathedral  is  best  known,  and  is  somewhat  redeemed  by  the 
final  quatrain,  the  work  of  Gray.  All  the  less  good  points  of  that 
poet  —  his  stiffness,  his  artificial  poetic  diction,  and  so  forth  —  are 
exaggerated  by  Mason ;  but  he  has  hardly  a  touch  of  Gray's  poetry, 
and  not  many  touches  of  his  scholarship. 

William  Falconer  was  an  interesting  person,  and  a  not  quite 
uninteresting  poet.  He  was  born  in  Edinburgh  in  1732,  the 
son  of  a  barber,  went  to  sea,  and  is  said  to  have  been,  about 
the  middle  of  the  century,  shipwrecked  near  Cape 
Colonna,  thus  acquiring  the  experience  for  the  poem  that 
gave  him  fame.  Very  little  seems  to  be  really  known  about  his 
history,  but  his  dedication  of  The  Shipwreck  to  the  Duke  of  York,  in 
1762,  brought  him  a  commission  in  the  Navy.  He  married,  did 
some  miscellaneous  literary  work,  including  a  Marine  Dictionary, 
which  is  traditionally  well  spoken  of,  and  in  1769  was  purser  of 
the  Aurora  frigate,  which  was  lost  after  leaving  the  Cape,  some- 
where in  the  Indian  Ocean.  The  Shipwreck  is  one  of  those 
numerous  eighteenth-century  poems  which,  no  doubt  unconsciously, 
endeavour  to  escape  the  tyranny  of  the  couplet-form  by  taking  an 
unconventional  subject,  as  well  as  by  throwing  in  classical  and  other 
allusions. 

The  brothers  Warton,  and  especially  Thomas,  the  Laureate, 
exhibit,  on  the  contrary,  some  of  the  weaknesses,  yet  very  many 
of  the  gifts  and  graces  of  their  time.  They  were  sons  of  a  former 
Fellow  of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  who  was  Professor  of  ^„  „. 
Poetry  and  Vicar  of  Basingstoke.  Here  they  were  born, 
Thomas,  the  more  poetical  of  them,  in  the  year  1728.  Joseph,  the 
future  headmaster  of  Winchester,  the  editor  of  Poi)e,  a  very  good 
critic,  under  the  limitations  of  his  time,  and  a  pleasing  versifier,  had 
seen  the  light  six  years  earlier.  Thomas  wont  to  Trinity  College, 
Oxford,  before  he  was  sixteen,  and  practically  sjK-nt  the  rest  of  his 
life  there,  dying  in  1790.  He  also  was  I'rofcssor  of  Poetry  from 
1757-67,     and     Poet-Laureate     fri.m     1785      till     his     death.       His 


5^4  Middle  and  Later  isth-cEntury  literature  bk.  ix 

really  great  History  of  English  Poetry^  which  few  men  have  been 
competent  to  discuss,  and  of  which  no  one  competent  (unless 
cankered  to  the  core  like  Ritson)  has  ever  spoken  without  respect, 
began  to  appear  in  1774.  It  was  exactly  what  was  wanted  by  the 
age,  and  its  defects  are  far  more  than  compensated  by  its  merits ; 
while  in  his  Observations  on  Spenser  and  other  things  Warton 
carried  further  his  task  of  upsetting  the  notion  of  the  first  half  of  the 
century,  that  before  Dryden  English  poetry  had  numbered,  at  best,  some 
intelligent  barbarians.  His  own  poetry,  though  not  great,  has  been 
distinctly  undervalued.  The  Triumph  of  /sis  is  one  of  the  very  best 
pieces  of  the  School  of  Pope ;  The  Progress  of  Discontent^  the  very 
best  echo  in  a  milder  spirit,  but  with  little  loss  of  truth  and  vigour,  of 
the  "Omnia  Vanitas"  of  Swift.  But  he  was  a  rather  indolent  person 
in  a  rather  indolent  age. 

Indolence,  in  the  case  of  Charles  Churchill,  was  dispersed  by 
malignity.  This  too  much  forgotten  satirist,  who  made  a  distinct 
and  valuable  reaction  in  the  form  of  the  couplet,  was  the  son  of  the 
rector  of  Rainham,  but  born  in  1731  in  Westminster, 
where  his  father  had  preferment.  He  went  to  West- 
minster School  very  early,  but  enjoyed  the  benefit  of  neither 
University,  being,  it  is  said,  rejected  for  matriculation  at  Oxford, 
and  though  admitted  at  Trinity,  Cambridge,  keeping  no  terms  there. 
He  obtained  orders  in  1756;  but,  as  his  biographer  says,  he  soon 
"  relaxed  from  the  obligations  of  virtue,"  and  became  a  self- 
unfrocked  priest.  He  died  at  the  age  of  thirty-three  at  Boulogne, 
and  the  story  that  his  last  words  were,  "  What  a  fool  I  have  been,"  is 
certainly  not  invalidated  by  the  denial  of  his  estimable  friend  John 
Wilkes.  His  work,  almost  all  done  hastily  during  the  last  years 
of  his  life,  in  the  intervals  of  debauchery  and  in  the  spirit  of  bravado, 
adhering  for  the  most  part  to  a  conventional  form  of  satire,  and 
animated  by  a  personal  spite  which  is  even  more  worthy  of  contempt 
than  of  condemnation,  has  many  grave  defects.  But  the  trifling 
subject  and  the  venomous  personalities  of  The  Rosciad  cannot  hide  its 
vigour,  the  occasional  acuteness  of  its  criticisms,  and  above  all  the 
return,  in  the  management  of  the  couplet,  from  the  exquisite  but 
rather  shrilling  treble  of  Pope  to  the  manly  range  of  Dryden.  And 
the  same  qualities,  with  sometimes  less,  sometimes  more,  of  the  same 
defects,  appear  in  The  Apology,  Night,  the  fierce  anti-North-Briton 
Prophecy  of  Fatnine,  the  spiteful  but  not  always  unjust  Epistle  to 
Hogarth,  and  indeed  all  the  couplet  poems ;  while  The  [Cock  Lane'] 
Ghost,  a  Hudibrastic  poem  in  four  books,  though  perhaps  too  much 

1  The  edition  formerly  (p.  39)  noted,  though  the  best  for  instruction,  does  not 
do  the  original  author  justice,  as  its  perpetual  additions  and  corrections,  in  the 
text  itself,  make  it  impossible  to  appreciate  his  work. 


CHAP.  I  THE   POETS  FROM   THOMSOX  TO   CRABBE  585 

spun  out,  contains  a  vast  deal  of  acute,  if  ill-natured  wit.  The 
passage  here  on  "  Pomposo "  (Johnson)  is  only  the  best  known, 
not  by  any  means  the  only  good,  example  of  that  style  of  acrid 
censorship  where  the  whole  is  unfair,  while  by  no  means  all  the 
parts  are  unjust.  Churchiirs  styles  and  subjects  belonged  to  the 
outskirts  of  the  poetic  domain,  and  he  had  little  nobility  of  thought. 
But  to  speak  of  him  as  some  have  spoken  is  to  miss  that  touch 
of  justice  with  which  he  himself  generally  managed  to  wing  his 
lampoons.    . 

The  two  poets  to  be  mentioned  next  present  that  contrast  which 
we  have  so  often  found  attractive,  both  showing  the  influence  of  their 
time  in  the  most  diverse  circumstances  and  on  the  most  diverse 
temperaments     and     fates.       Thomas     Chatterton  ^     was    ^, 

,^.,.^,  ,  ,  •  ,,        Chatterton. 

born  at  Bristol  m  November  1752,  the  son  of  a  school- 
master and  cathedral  singer,  who  died  before  the  poet  was  born. 
The  boy  was  much  about  the  great  church  of  St.  Mary  Redcliffe,  took 
to  black  letter,  received  some  education,  was  bound  to  an  attorney, 
and  in  1764  produced  the  first  of  the  famous  "Rowley"  poems  in 
would-be  Old  English.  For  nearly  six  years  he  endured  his  life, 
increasing  his  production  as  local  ignorance  and  vanity,  or  his  own 
mood,  tempted  him  ;  and  towards  the  close  of  this  period  he  was  first 
lured  by  hopes  of  patronage  from  Horace  Walpole,  and  then  had  his 
hopes  dashed.  He  left  for  London  in  the  spring  of  1770,  and  made 
some  money  by  literary  hackwork  of  different  kinds.  But,  the  demand 
temporarily  failing,  with  no  resources,  and  too  proud  to  beg,  he 
poisoned  himself  in  his  Holborn  lodgings  on  24th  August,  being  not 
yet  eighteen. 

James  Beattie  was  born  in  Kincardineshire  seventeen  years 
before  Chatterton,  and  was  educated  at  the  Marischal  College  of 
Aberdeen,  where,  after  some  schoolmastering,  he  became  Professor  of 
Moral    Philosophy   in     1760.      He   wrote    verse,   and    in       ^ieMue 

1770  attacked  Hume  in  an  Essay  on  Truth,  which  gained  '- 

him  vast  applause,  offers  of  preferment  in  the  Church  of  England, 
and  an  allegorical  glorification  in  one  of  Reynolds's  few  bad  pictures. 
In  1771-74  he  published  The  Minstrel,  and  later  several  volumes  of 
criticism  and  discussion,  religious  and  aesthetic  He  died  in  1802, 
universally  and  very  deservedly  respected,  for  he  was  a  good  man 
and  a  good  writer,  though  not  exactly  a  poet. 

The  Rowley  poems  and  Beattie's  Minstrel  ^re  almost  as  different 
as  the  careers  and  characters  of  their  authors,  but  they  express 
exactly   the   same    influence,   the    almost   desperate   determination  to 

1  Professor  Skeaf  s  otherwise  valuable  "  Aldinc  "  edition  unfortunately  iircsrnis 
a  modernised  version  of  the  "  Rowley  "  poems :  the  older  ones  are  therefore  to  be 
preferred. 


586    MIDDLE   AND    LATER    18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

j/^scape  from  the  conventional  present  by  appealing  to  the  romantic 
past.  After  a  very  brief  period  of  controversy  as  to  the  genuineness  of 
Rowley  (which  even  at  the  time  such  mere  pioneers  and  dilettanti 
in  the  study  of  Old  English  as  Gray  and  Mason  at  once  negatived), 
this  has  been  entirely  given  up,  and  the  patient  exertions  of  Professor 
Skeat  have  shown  the  originals,  the  processes,  and  the  entire 
machinery  in  the  invention  of  the  dialect.  But  it  may  be  permitted 
to  protest  against  the  printing  of  the  poems  as  a  whole  in  modernised 
form,  and  still  more  against  the  extraordinary  liberties  which  others 
have  taken  with  Chatterton's  text,  even  to  the  Bentleian  extent  of 
substituting  words  which  to  the  individual  critic  ''seem  more 
appropriate."  It  is  certain  that  if  we  wish  to  appreciate  Chatterton's 
actual  poetic  powers,  we  must  take  the  words  he  wrote  in  the  spelling 
in  which  he  wrote  them ;  though  linguistic  inquiry  may  take  its  own 
course.  Thus  considering,  we  shall  find  him  a  distinct  puzzle,  show- 
ing in  his  ordinary  English  nothing  of  the  charm  which  floats  about 
his  Rowleian  dialect-pieces,  and  even  in  these  not  perhaps  suggesting 
the  certain  possession  of  that  charm  had  he  lived.  His  metrical 
ability  is  great,  though  it  is  rather  too  much  to  claim  for  him  that 
he  fully  anticipated  Coleridge's  reversion  to  the  Genesis  and  Exodus 
scheme,  and  his  phrase  and  word-music  have  now  and  then  a  singular 
romantic  appeal.  But  there  is  something  disquieting  in  this,  since  it 
exactly  resembles  the  not  infrequent,  but  always  passing,  gifts  of  very 
young  children  ;  and  it  makes  him  aesthetically  a  delight,  but  critically 
a  problem.  His  antiques  vary  from  pastiches,  hardly  more  really 
antique  than  Thomson  or  Shenstone,  though  inspired  by  the  study  of 
somewhat  older  models,  to  things  almost  or  wholly  exquisite,  like 
"  .(Ella's  Dirge."     The  nature-touches  are  in  the  same  way  sometimes 

I  exquisite,  sometimes  conventional,  and  the  whole  is  a  strange  medley 
of  promise,  performance,  and  failure. 

There  is,  on  the  other  hand,  no  puzzle  about  Beattie.  He  repre- 
sents, with  a  quite  marvellous  and  rather  terrible  sufficiency,  the 
rather  more  than  averagely  gifted,  and  much  more  than  averagely 
cultivated,  man,  who,  coming  to  years  of  literary  discretion  at  a 
critical  time,  feels  its  (in  this  case,  Romantic)  impulse  with  all  his  will, 
and  carries  it  out  to  the  best  of  his  might.  Unfortunately,  that 
might  was  very  small ;  Beattie's  early  verses  are  simply  echoes  of 
Collins  and  Gray,  his  trajislations  are  unimportant,  and  his  couplet- 
protest  against  the  erection  of  a  monument  to  Churchill  fails  to  make 
up  in  vigour  for  what  it  wants  in  generosity.  Nay,  The  Minstrel  or 
The  Progress  of  Genius  can  satisfy  only  the  most  moderate  expecta- 
tions, or  the  least  fastidious  taste.  There  is  absolutely  no  story ;  the 
expression  is  seldom  or  never  striking,  and  the  versification  (it  is 
Spenserian),  though   not   contemptible,  has   no   distinction.     But  ali 


CHAP.  I  THE   POETS   FROM   THOMSON  TO   CRABBE  587 

the  objects  of  the  early,  confused,  Romantic  appetite  —  country  scenes, 
woods,  ruins,  the  moon,  chivalry,  mountains  —  are  dwelt  upon  with  a 
generous  emotion,  and  with  at  least  poetic  intention.  Above  all, 
Beattie  was  important  "  for  ihem,'^  to  apply  once  more  one  of  the 
most  constantly  applicable  of  critical  dicta.  His  time  could  under- 
stand him,  as  it  could  not  have  understood  purer  Romanticism,  and  it 
is  probable  that,  for  an  entire  generation  at  least,  and  perhaps  longer, 
The  Minstrel  served  to  bring  sometimes  near,  and  sometimes  quite,  to 
poetry,  readers  who  would  have  found  Coleridge  too  fragmentary, 
Shelley  too  ethereal,  and  both  too  remote. 

Yet  another  pair  may  be  noticed  briefly  before  turning  to  the 
great  quartette  of  Burns,  Blake,  Cowper,  and  Crabbe,  which  appeared 
before  the  death  of  Johnson,  and  the  last  feeble  growth  which  pre- 
luded the  reveille  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads.  These  speci- 
mens of  a  great  host  shall  be  Langhorne  and  Mickle.  ^Mickk^^" 
John  Langhorne  was  born  at  Kirkby  Stephen  in  1735, 
and  educated  at  Appleby.  He  never  went  to  either  University,  though 
he  was  entered  at  Clare  Hall,  Cambridge,  and  his  time  passed  chiefly 
in  tutorships  and  schoolmasterships.  He  married  twice ;  did  a  good 
deal  of  literary  work,  which  included  the  well-known  translation  of 
Plutarch  (with  his  brother  William);  had  fair  clerical  preferment, 
and  died  in  1779.  William  Julius  Mickle  was  born  at  Langholm  on 
the  Scottish  side  of  the  Border  in  1734,  was  educated  at  Edinburgh, 
was  unfortunate  in  business,  went  to  London  at  the  age  of  thirty 
to  engage  in  literature,  and  died  there  in  1788,  after  also  doing 
varied  work,  the  best  known  and  most  successful  being  his  translation 
of  The  Lusiad,  which,  like  Langhorne's  Plutarch,  does  not  greatly 
concern  us. 

But  these  men  are  excellent  specimens  of  not  excellent  poets. 
Mickle's  ^  songs  and  ballads,  such  as  "  There's  nae  luck  about  the 
hou.se,"  in  Scots,  and  the  pretty  "Cumnor  Hall"  in  English; 
Langhorne's  topographical  work,  such  as  "  Studley  Park,"  and  his 
remarkable  anticipation  of  Crabbe  in  "The  Country  Justice,"  are 
something  more  than  straws.  They  are  unmistakable  vanes,  showing 
in  what  directions  the  poetical  wind  was  blowing.  And  Langhorne 
at  least  sometimes  has  a  melancholy  clangour  of  verse  too  rare  in  his 
century. 

1  Mickle  had  very  much  to  do  with  the  first  edition  of  Evans's  OIJ  lialhiJs 
(2  vols.  1777,  and  2  more,  1784),  a  designed  supplement  to  Percy,  and,  like  the 
Keliques,  consisting  of  an  odd  mixture  of  genuine  old  stuff,  the  same  altered, 
modern  pastiches,  ballad  and  Ossianic,  etc.  The  second  edition  of  this,  in 
1810  {4  vols.),  is  a  historical  document  of  a  striking  kind,  the  editor  and  pub- 
lisher. Evans's  son,  showing  the  further  drift  of  the  tinu-  by  ruthlessly  turning 
out  most  of  the  pastiches,  correcting  the  old  work  from  originals,  and  adding 
more. 


588    MIDDLE  AND   LATER    18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    HK.it 

Of  the  greater  four,  William  Cowper  ^  was  by  far  the  eldest,  indeed 

the  unfortunate  circumstances  of  his  life  threw  his  composition  almost 

a  generation  behindhand.     He  was  born  in  1731  at  Great 

CowDcr 

"— '  Berkhamstead,  where  his  father  was  rector.  The  family 
had  already  attained  great  legal  distinction,  and  the  poet's  mother 
was  a  Miss  Donne,  of  the  house  of  the  great  Dean  of  St.  Paul's. 
Cowper  was  educated  at  Westminster,  where,  notwithstanding  the 
black  account  of  public  schools  given  later  in  Tirocinium^  he  made 
many  friends,  as  he  also  did  in  his  subsequent  study  of  both 
branches  of  the  law.  He  wrote  for  the  fashionable  periodical  of  the 
Connoisseur,  and  seemed  likely  to  be  happy  and  (for  his  family 
interest  was  great)  prosperous.  But  the  seeds  of  madness  in  him  were 
developed  by  the  crossing  of  his  love  for  his  cousin  Theodora,  by  the 
nervous  excitement  of  his  appointment  to  certain  clerkships  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  and  by  religious  stimulus.  The  form  which  his 
mania  took  (1763)  was  suicidal,  and  though,  after  proper  treatment, 
he  recovered,  his  prospects  were  irrecoverably  blighted.  Removing 
into  the  country  with  a  small  allowance,  he  lived  first  at  Huntingdon, 
and  then  at  Olney,  in  friendship  with  the  famous  Evangelical 
clergyman  John  Newton,  and  with  the  family  of  the  Unwins.  After 
about  fifteen  years  (during  which  he  had  at  least  one  return  of  mania, 
or  at  best  melancholy)  he  began  to  write,  first  hymns  with  Newton, 
and  then  miscellaneous  poetry.  For  rather  more  than  ten  years  he 
was  happy,  sane,  and  (for  a  part  of  them)  a  good  deal  in  love  with  a 
widow,  named  Lady  Austin.  His  first  poems.  Truth,  Error,  etc., 
appeared  in  1782,  The  Task  in  1785,  his  Hotiier  a  little  later.  He 
should  have  died  now ;  but,  unluckily  for  him,  he  survived  for  yet 
another  decade  of  misery,  through  mental  and  bodily  illness,  dying  at 
East  Dereham  in  1800,  in  the  frame  of  mind  expressed  by  his  last 
and  perhaps  his  greatest  poem,  the  wonderful  Castaway,  where  the 
poetry  of  utter  despair  is  expressed,  albeit  with  the  utmost  simplicity, 
yet  in  a  fashion  which  makes  mere  Byronism  of  Leopardi  and  the 
second  James  Thomson. 

Cowper's  ten  or  twelve  years'  work,  even  excluding  his  translation 
of  Homer  and  other  things,  is  by  no  means  inconsiderable,  and  its 
range  is  almost  as  remarkable  as  its  bulk.  His  letters  are  among 
the  very  best  in  English,  perfectly  unaflfected  and  natural,  and  yet  as 
accomplished  literature  as  if  they  had  been  written  for  publication. 
His  verse,  in  all  but  its  very  best  things,  requires  more  allowance  and 
historical  adjustment.  The  famous  John  Gilpin  among  the  lighter 
things,  like  The  Castaway  and  Boadicea  among  the  more  serious,  need 
neither ;  they  stand  by  themselves,  and  will  always  obtain  admission 

1  The  standard  edition  of  Cowper's  whole  Works  is  Southey's ;  Mr.  Benham's 
"  Globe  "  edition  of  the  Poems  is  excellent. 


CHAP.  I         THE   POETS   FROM   THOMSON  TO   CRABBE  589 

for  their  author  into  the  courts  of  the  greater  poetry,  wherever  the 
critical  doorkeepers  are  not  hopelessly  incompetent  and  prejudiced. 
But  elsewhere  Cowper  exhibits  not  merely  some  defects  due  to  his 
hapless  fate,  but  more  due  to  his  time.  He  was  a  student  of 
nature,  a  practitioner  of  easy  and  conventional  forms  of  verse,  and  a 
writer  of  the  simplest  and  most  graceful  English.  But  he  was  born 
when  Pope  had  not  yet  written  some  of  his  most  characteristic  work, 
the  sane  years  of  his  early  manhood  were  passed  while  Johnson  was 
obtaining  his  dictatorship,  and  when  he  began  to  write  in  earnest 
that  dictatorship  was  in  full  force.  Accordingly,  we  find  in  him  the 
oddest  mixture  of  old  and  new,  —  couplet-writing,  not  indeed  of  the 
strictest  Popian  school  (for  he  had  improved  on  Churchill,  and  gone 
back  to  enjaniheinent),  but  still  cramped  and  artificial ;  blank  verse,  not 
quite  copied  from  any  one,  but  too  often  stiff  and  deformed  by  the 
poetic  diction  which,  violently  as  he  attacked  it,  survives  even  in 
Wordsworth.  Yet  we  find,  side  by  side  with  these,  and  sometimes 
actually  couched  in  them,  the  most  faithful  and  exquisite  studies  of 
nature  —  culminating  at  least  once  in  the  full  reflex  meditation,  the 
sense  of  man's  identity  with  nature,  that  appears  in  Yardley  Oak 
(1791)  — a  gentle  humour  totally  free  from  the  hardness  and  from  the 
license  which  too  frequently  deface  the  otherwise  excellent  fun  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and,  though  few  touches  of  passion,  yet  some,  such 
as  the  famous  — 

I  was  a  stricken  deer  that  left  the  herd  — 

thrilling  with  the  same  intensity  which  afterwards  gathered  force  and 
gloom  in  the  final  crash  of  The  Castaway. 

Such  a  poet  is  sure  to  occupy  a  peculiar  position  both  in  his  life- 
time and  subsequently.  In  the  last  ten  or  twenty  years  of  the 
eighteenth,  and  the  first  ten  or  twenty  of  the  nineteenth.  Cowper,  of 
no  great  power  with  the  critics,  was  an  immense  inlluence  with 
readers.  He  had  just  as  much  Romanticism  as  they  were  fit  for,  and 
though  it  is  an  absurdity  to  represent  him  as  in  any  way  revolu- 
tionary, his  work  contained  the  seeds,  and  showed  the  symjjtoms, 
of  impending  revolution.  He  is  the  direct  intermediary  between 
Thomson  and  Wordsworth,  and  the  contrast  between  him  and  Gold- 
smith (see  next  chapter),  who  was  almost  within  a  year  or  two  his 
contemporary,  exhibits  the  whole  difference  between  the  dominant 
init  waning,  and  tlie  insurgent  but  soon  to  be  triumphant,  poetical 
instincts  of  the  time.  Regarded  from  a  more  formal  point  of  view, 
Cowper's  poetry  inclines  rather  to  thp  old  than  to  the  new.  He  is  a 
very  ea.sy,  as  he  was  a  very  careful,  writer,  but  the  many-centred  and 
varying  measures  and  melodies  of  the  coming  age  were  not  for  him. 
He  had  not,  as  his  twenty  years'  junior  Chatterton  had,  come  to  any 


590  MIDDLE  AND   LATER   18TH-CENTURY  LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

knowledge  of  the  Cliristabel  metre ;  his  trisyllables  by  themselves, 
as  in  the  well-known  "The  rose  it  was  washed,"  show  no  advance 
upon  Shenstone's  in  resonance  and  fluidity ;  the  noble  trochees  of 
Boadicea,  and  the  still  nobler  iambs  of  The  Castaway,  have  the 
simple  movement  of  his  own  time,  not,  like  Blake's,  the  complicated 
throb  of  later  measures.  Intellectually,  Cowper  is  rendered  more 
difficult  in  appearance,  perhaps,  than  in  reality  by  his  malady.  He 
would  probably  not  have  been  very  different  as  a  perfectly  sane  man ; 
that  is  to  say,  he  would  have  at  least  shown  generous  sympathies, 
pure  morality,  and,  above  all  things,  the  instincts  and  conduct  of  a 
gentleman,  in  the  very  best  sense  of  the  word,  without  joining  to 
them  any  very  vigorous  reasoning  power  or  wide  faculty  of  apprecia- 
tion. His  nature,  slightly  feminine,  must  always  have  been  more 
than  slightly  prejudiced ;  but  his  prejudices  sometimes  contribute  to 
his  poetry,  and  rarely  interfere  with  it. 

Crabbe,  the  nearest  to  Cowper  of  the  other  three  in  form,  and  on 
some  sides  (not  all),  of  taste,  was  many  years  his  junior,  being  born 
in  1754,  and  did  not  die  till  more  than  as  many  after  him  in  1832. 
But  accident  of  a  less  ghastly  kind  interposed  nearly  the 
"*— ^  same  odd  gap  in  his  literary  production.  He  was  born 
at  the  Suffolk  Aldborough,  now  often  spelt  Aldeburgh,  in  1754,  his 
father  having  been  first  a  schoolmaster,  then  an  exciseman ;  was 
educated  as  a  surgeon,  and  practised  a  little,  but  went  to  London  to 
seek  his  fortune  in  literature,  and  obtained,  when  at  the  last  extremity, 
the  patronage  of  Burke  and  Thurlow.  His  first  poem.  The  Library^ 
appeared  in  1782,  his  second.  The  Village,  was  revised  by  Johnson. 
.He  took  orders,  received  preferment,  and  married  a  girl  of  station 
superior  to  his  own.  to  whom  he  had  long  been  attached.  The  News- 
paper appeared  in  1785.  For  twenty  years  he  published  nothing. 
But  he  began  again  in  1807  with  The  Parish  Register,  followed  it  in 
181O  with  his  greatest  book,  The  Borough,  and  later  gave  Tales  in 
Verse  and  Tales  of  the  Hall.  During  his  last  years  Crabbe  was 
treated  with  much  honour  and  no  jealousy  by  the  younger  and  greater 
poets  of  the  Romantic  school,  always  had  a  considerable  public, 
and  enjoyed  his  reputation  to  the  full  —  the  early  moodiness  and 
restiveness  which  were  probably  due,  in  part  at  least,  to  the  trials  of 
his  youth,  softening  to  an  easy  bonhomie,  which  sometimes  approached 
the  childish,  in  his  age. 

However,  temperament,  or  suffering,  or  what  not,  impressed  upon 
most  of  his  work,i  and  upon  all  the  best  parts  of  it,  a  character  not 
at  all  childish.  Crabbe  tried  several  poetic  ways;  some  of  his  early 
works,  such  as  The  Library  and  The  Newspaper,  being  little   more 

1  Works,  first  (1840-41)  in  8  vols,  with  his  son's  Life,  then  in  i  (London,  «.</.) 
There  is  said  to  be  a  good  deal  unpublished. 


CHAP.  I  THE   POETS   FROM   THOMSON  TO  CRABBE  591 

than  a  continuation  of  the  verse-description  of  Garth  and  Armstrong 
and  Falconer.  But  he  settled,  in  The  Village,  and  in  all  his  late* 
works,  into  a  very  peculiar  kind  of  "  criticism  of  life,"  anticipated,  as| 
has  been  said,  very  slightly  by  Langhorne,  but  in  the  main  original. 
^Crabbe  could  see  nature,  and  describes  it  —  especially  those  aspects 
which  may  be  symbolically  classed  as  autumnal,  the  aspects  suggest- 
ing failure,  decay,  disappointment  —  with  astonishing  truth  ;  but  he 
was  still  of  his  century  in  the  fact  that  he  preferred  characters  to 
scenes,  and  chiefly  set  the  latter  as  frames  to  the  former.  And  here, 
too,  grimness  prevails.  Not  only  in  the  famous  story  of  the  tyrant, 
Peter  Grimes,  but  in  such  milder  tragedies  as  ''  The  Natural  Death 
of  Love,"  and  the  enforced  constancy  of  the  repenting  lover  irL 
"  Delay  has  Danger,"  Crabbe  always  seems  to  incline  to  the  sternerl 
side,  to  a  quiet  and  undemonstrative  pessimism.  In  style  and  form 
he  is  a  curious  mixture.  He  early  struck  into,  and  always  kept,  a 
fashion  of  couplet-writing,  which  was  sometimes  almost  intolerably 
pedestrian  ;  but  he  could  diversify  it,  when  he  rose  to  the  class  of 
gloomy  subject  just  referred  to,  with  lines,  and  indeed  long  passages, 
of  astonishing  vigour.  On  the  whole,  Crabbe  is  the  least  poetical  of 
all  the  writers  who  can  be  called  in  any  way  as  good  poets  as  him- 
self, and  he  is  seldom  poetical  at  all  except  when  he  is  a  pessimist^ 
The  browner  shadows  seem  to  inspire  him  as  sunshine  does  others^ 
But  he  was  invaluable  to  his  generation,  and  can  never  lose  value  to 
others,  first  as  aLj)ainter  of_ nature,  and  then  as  one  of  manners  and 
character.  In  externals,  he  innovated  hardly  at  all;  in  essentials  he 
is  as  far  from  Goldsmith  or  from  Pope  as  Wordsworth  himself. 

The  third  Englishman  of  the  trio  stands  far  apart  both  from 
Cowper  and  Crabbe.  William  Blake  ^  is  one  of  the  eccentrics  of 
poetry ;  it  was  never  his  chief  business,  which  was  that  of  a  painter, 
or  his  chief  hobby,  which  was  that  of  a  seer.     He  pro-  ^^ 

duced  (or  in  the  first  case  had  produced  for  him,  for  he  - — ~ 

seems  to  have  taken  very  little  trouble  about  it)  three  very  small 
volumes  of  verse  —  the  Poetical  Sketches  of  1783,  the  Songs  of  In- 
nocence in  1789,  and  the  Songs  of  Experience  in  1794,  the  two  last 
being  not  in  any  sense  published,  and  hardly  in  any  sense  printed  at 
all,  being  worked,  text  and  designs  alike,  from  copper  plates,  and 
coloured  by  hand.  To  these  indeed  may  be  added,  if  the  extension 
of  the  term  poetry  be  tolerated,  a  great  mass  of  so-called  "prophetic" 
work,  rhapsodies  bearing  much  resemblance  to  Ossian  in  style,  and 
containing  the  exposition  of  a  visionary  theosophy-  HIake  was  a 
Londoner  for   the   whole    of    his    life,    with    the    rarest    and    briefest 

i  Complete  Works,  ed.  Ellis  and  Yeats.  3  vols.  London,  1893.  The  "Aldine" 
edition  of  the  Poems,  ed.  W.  M.  Rossctti,  London.  1874.  is  not  quite  complete. 
Gilchrist's  Life,  2nd  ed.  2  vols.  London,  1880,  is  almost  indispensable. 


592    MIDDLE  AND   LATER    18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

intervals;  he  was  born  in  1757,  and  died  in  1828.  He  married  early 
a  jewel  of  a  wife,  Catherine  Boucher,  and  he  supported  himself  partly 
by  engraving,  partly  by  selling  his  original  compositions  to  a  few 
private  customers.  His  character,  though  morally  stainless,  was 
extremely  odd ;  and  it  would  be  extremely  difficult  to  frame  any 
definition  of  complete  sanity  which  would  take  him  in.  The  greater 
part  of  his  prophetic  work  is  a  mere  curiosity,  and  his  critical  opinions 
in  art  and  literature,  if  sometimes  almost  inspired,  are  one-sided  and 
prejudiced  to  a  degree  sometimes  almost  ludicrous.  Nor  is  his  touch 
in  poetry  any  surer  than  his  hand  in  painting.  But  in  both  vocations, 
and  perhaps  especially  in  that  of  the  poet,  he  gives  flashes,  and  some- 
times more  than  flashes,  of  genius,  which  excel  anything  to  be  found 
^in  the  work  of  his  time.  There  are  at  least  half  a  dozen  things  in 
the  Poetical  Sketches  which  no  contemporary,  who  had  advanced 
beyond  the  nursery  or  at  best  the  schoolroom,  could  have  written ; 
while,  both  here  and  in  the  later  Songs,  there  are  pieces  which,  for  a 
certain  combination  of  extreme  simplicity  with  unearthly  music,  no 
contemporary  nor  any  follower,  except  Thomas  Beddoes,  was  to  equal. 
In  all  points  of  art,  both  pictorial  and  poetic,  Blake  was  an  gjctreme, 
indeed  an  extravagant,  Romantic  —  that  is  to  say,  he  set  convention 
utterly  at  naught,  despised  and  refused  rules  and  models,  and  aimed, 
rst  of  all,  at  the  vague  suggestion,  as  he  would  have  said,  of  truth, 
[as  we  may  put  it,  of  beauty.  The  presence  in  both  of  familiarity  with 
Biblical  images  and  phrase,  and  perhaps  the  presence  also  of  madness 
in  both,  make  a  certain  superficial  resemblance  between  Blake  and 
Christopher  Smart,  but  it  is  mainly  superficial.  Blake  really  belongs 
to,  and  is  almost,  if  not  quite,  the  chief  of,  that  small  but  very  precious 
band  of  poets  who  are  even  more  under  the  influence  of  Queen  Mab 
than  under  that  of  the  Muses.  He  is  elf-ridden,  but  his  tyrants  have 
more  than  compensated  him  for  the  tricks  they  play,  by  touching  his 
lips  with  the  gift  of  elfin  music. 

The  fourth.  Robert  Burns,^  to  a  gift  of  poetry  at  its  best  hardly 

inferior  to  Blake's,  and  far  fuller,  as  well  as  more  various,  consistent, 

intense,  and  human,  added  the  possession  of  a  certain  national  and 

inherited   capital   and   faculty   which    makes    him   one    of 

Burns.  ,  .  .  _  ... 

-  the  most  interestmg  figures  m  literary  history.  He  was 
born  in  the  "  blast  o'  Janwar  win',"  from  which  he  drew  unpleasant 
omens,  at  the  beginning  of  1759,  ^"^  his  father  was  a  very  small 
farmer,  of  extraction  rather  more  northern  than  the  part  of  Scotland 
(the  Kyle  district  of  Ayrshire)  which  saw  his  son's  birth.  Robert 
was  fairly  educated,  and  though  kept  to  the  plough-tail,  early  developed 

1  Editions,  selections,  criticisms,  and  biographies  innumerable.  For  this  very 
reason  perhaps,  in  the  case  of  no  poet  is  the  bare  text  (with  glossary,  if  necessary) 
more  to  be  preferred,  by  the  beginner  at  any  rate. 


CHAP.  I         THE   POETS    FROM   THOMSON  TO   CRABBE  593 

his  two  great  inclinations,  for  love  and  for  literature.  But  he  was 
twenty-seven  before  he  published,  in  1786,  at  Kilmarnock,  his  first 
volume  of  poems,  and,  had  it  been  only  a  little  less  successful,  he 
had  intended  to  expatriate  himself.  The  book,  however,  brought 
him  some  money  and  a  great  deal  of  fame ;  and  a  winter  of  welcome 
in  Edinburgh  sent  him  back  to  marry  Jean  Armour,  the  most  per- 
manent of  his  many  loves,  to  settle  at  Ellisland,  in  Dumfriesshire,  on 
a  small  farm,  and  to  combine  it  with  a  post  in  the  excise,  which 
latterly  formed  his  main  support.  Burns,  though  a  good  deal  too 
much  stir  has  been  made  about  his  delinquencies  (which  in  one 
direction  were  those  of  almost  all  classes  in  his  time,  and  in  another 
were  of  the  class  of  which  a  poet  is  tempted  to  convey  an  exagger- 
ated idea  to  his  readers),  was  a  wiser  man  in  theory  than  in  conduct, 
and  the  political  and  ecclesiastical,  no  less  than  the  social,  accidents 
of  his  time  and  country  contributed  to  his  mistakes  and  misfortunes 
in  life.  He  died  in  July  1796,  broken  in  health  and  fortune,  but 
with  a  reputation  absolutely  safe  as  far  as  literature  is  concerned, 
and  exercising  an  influence  the  greatness  of  which  was  hardly  recog- 
nised even  by  those  who  felt  it  most. 

In  estimating  both  the  positive  and  the  historical  importance  of 
Burns  as  a  poet,  we  must  keep  these  carefully  apart  from  his 
position  as  a  national  favourite.  It  is  certainly  no  small  thing  to 
have  thus  giveij  literary  expression  and  form  to  the  most  cherished 
tastes  and  feelings  of  a  whole  people.  Yet  this  touches  the  accidents, 
rather  than  the  essentials,  of  poetry  and  of  literature  generally,  and 
does  not  affect  either  his  positive  excellence  or  his  unique  historical 
value.  This  latter  depends  upon  the  fact  that  he  came  just  at  the 
time  when  the  constantly  tightening  bonds  between  Scotland  and 
England  were  to  some  extent  obliterating  the  distinctive  Scottish 
characteristics,  and  when  oral  ballad  literature  was  being  killed  in 
order  that  it  might  be  preserved  to  us  by  the  press. 

As  we  have  seen,  Scottish  poetry  during  the  eighteenth  century 
had  had  a  very  important  effect  on  English  indirectly  and  by  stimu- 
lation ;    but   the   actual   offspring   of  the    Scottish    muse,  since  Allan 
Ramsay  (1686-1758)  consoled  her  long  widowhood,  had 
been    rather   mterestmg    than    unportant.      This    is   espe-    sorsfrom 
cialiy  the   case  with    Ramsay's    own    orisrinal  work.     The    {^•'>'"'*='y '" 
famous  Gentle  Shepherd  (1725),  a  pastoral    "by  person- 
ages,"  in  the  Old  French  phrase,  rather  than  a  drama,  contains  some 
charming  description  and  some  pleasant  painting  of  manners,  Init  is 
not  strong,  while  most  of  his  other  work  is  distinctly  weak.     But  he 
had   some   share,  and    not   a    few   followers  —  Hamilton  of    Bangour 
(1704-54),  Alexander  Ross  (1698-1784),  John   Skinner   (1721-1807), 
Isabel    Pagan    (1740-1821),   Lady   Anne    Barnard    (1750-1825) — had 
2  n 


594    MIDDLE  AND   LATER   18TH-CENTURY  LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

much  more  —  of  the  strange,  not  easily  analysed,  and  hardly  at  all 
literary,  gift  of  folk-song,  which  it  is  perhaps  academic  to  try  to  dis- 
tinguish rigidly  from  poetry.  We  are  scarcely  able  —  and  perhaps 
we  do  not  greatly  care  —  to  set  down  the  exact  debt  of  such  things  as 
Lady  Anne's  "  Auld  Robin  Gray "  and  Isabel  Pagan's  "  Ca'  the 
yowes  to  the  knowes"  to  the  exquisite  plaintive  notes  from  which  they 
can  never  be  divided  in  memory.  But  the  efficacy  of  such  things  in 
keeping  alive  a  sense  of  the  poetic  "  over-soul  "  cannot  be  exaggerated. 
Robert  Fergusson  (1750-74),  Michael  Bruce  (1746-67),  and  John 
Logan  (1748-88)  approach  literature  nearer,  but  at  the  forfeit  of 
poetry.  The  first  wrote  partly  in  dialect,  was  adopted  by  Burns  as 
his  master,  and  has  been  a  good  deal  over-praised,  though  he  has  no 
small  merit,  especially  in  some  Edinburgh  pieces  and  in  "  The  Gowd- 
spink  "  (goldfinch) .  Another  bird,  the  Cuckoo,  acted  up  to  its  repu- 
tation by  inspiring  a  good,  though  not  consummate,  copy  of  verses, 
which  has  been  challenged  by  the  champions  of  Bruce  and  Logan 
for  both  those  writers.  In  such  a  quarrel,  especially  as  the  author- 
ship is  of  infinitesimal  importance,  no  wise  man  takes  a  side.  Bruce 
died  young,  and  certainly  wrote  some  pleasing  verse ;  Logan,  his 
friend,  hterary  executor,  and  (as  one  theory  holds)  supplanter,  died 
in  early  middle  age,  and  seems  to  have  had  rather  more  talent  than 
conduct.  But  all  the  poets  of  the  paragraph  must  rest  their  main 
claim  to  historic  interest  on  the  fact  that  they  exejnplify,  and  that 
they  handed  on,  the  vague  poetic  inspiration  which  was  to  take 
definite  form  in  Burns. 

This  he  caught  up,  and  with  an  intense  and  sovereign  poetical 
power,  fixed,  without  killing,  all  the  floating  folk-poetry  of  Scotland, 
effecting  this  to  no  small  extent  by  the  felicitous  audacity  (to  which  a 
writer  of  more  academic  cultivation  could  hardly  have  attained)  of 
actually  keeping  much  of  the  old,  while  he  purged  what  he  kept  of 
dross,  and  added  new  gold  of  his  own. 

Burns  was  a  prose-writer  as  well  as  a  poet,  and  took  much  pains 

with  his  prose  letters.     But,  though  clever,  they  are  distinctly  artificial, 

and   their   biographical   value   far   exceeds   their   value    as    literature. 

This   is   also,    though    not   so   universally,  the   case   with 

quality^  those  of  his  poems  which  were  written  in  literary  Eng- 
lish. He  had  not  proved  this  medium,  and  though 
nothing  that  he  wrote  could  well  be  quite  valueless,  he  has,  when  he 
has  gotten  to  his  English,  not  much  more  value  than  belongs  to  the 
usual  eighteenth-century  poet  of  the  better  class.  In  fact,  here  as 
elsewhere,  he  resembles  Chatterton.  With  his  poems  in  Scots  the 
case  is  entirely  different.  Here  he  did  not  merely  bring  to  bear  the 
inherited  attention  to,  and  familiarity  with,  nature,  which  has  been 
I  noted  throughout  as  characteristic  of  Scottish  poetry ;  indeed,  though 


CHAP.  I         THE   POETS   FROM   THOMSON  TO   CRABBE  595 

he  is  strong  in  this,  it  is  not  his  strongest  point.  What  he  brought 
was  first  of  all  the  accumulated  virtue  of  Scots  verse  and  phrase,  so 
different  from  English,  and  therefore  so  invaluable  as  an  alterative  ; 
and  secondly  his  own  special  poetic  gift. 

Even  the  mere  fact  that  his  favourite  metres  (especially  the 
popular  form  which,  coming  directly,  and  by  something  of  an  excep- 
tion, from  a  Provencal  original,  established  itself  for  good  in  Scots 
in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries)  were  constantly  different 
from  anything  usual  in  English,  must  be  allowed  its  importance. 
The  dialect,  so  rich  in  quaint  special  words,  that  of  themselves 
break  through  and  transform  the  hackneyed  generalities  of  eighteenth-) 
century  diction;  the  sharply-observed  and  faithfully  transcribed 
customs  and  characters;  the  peculiar  imagery, — all  these  must  be 
counted  in  to  understand  the  charm  and  the  value  of  The  Twa 
Dogs  and  The  Twa  Herds,  of  The  Brigs  of  Ayr  and  Death  and  Dr. 
Hornbook,  of  The  Cotter''s  Saturday  Night  and  The  Jolly  Beggars,  as 
well  as  of  the  innumerable  scraps  of  song  which,  more  than  anything 
else,  have  earned  Burns  his  immortality. 

But  there  is  much  in  the  poetry  of  Burns  besides  dialect  and 
local  colour,  fresh  versification,  and  special  scenery^  and  though 
this  much  is  of  the  indefinable  kind,  of  the  kind  that  escapes  all 
analysis,  one  thing  about  it  can  be  said  with  confidence,  that  it  was 
essentially  lyrical,  and  another,  that  lyric  was  what  was  chiefly  needed/, 
to  melt  the  eighteenth-century  frost.  From  the  death  or  silence  of  the 
last  Cavalier  singers  about  a  hundred  years  earlier,  there  had  been  in 
English  no  serious  lyric  of  an  impassioned  kind  that  possessed  the 
highest  qualities  of  music  in  verse,  there  had  not  even  been  any 
approach  to  such  verse.  But  it  not  only  existed  in  Burns ;  it  was 
almost  impossible  for  him  to  open  his  mouth,  to  dip  pen  in  ink, 
without  producing  it.  He  had  positively  to  constrain  himself,  to 
keep  his  eyes  fixed  on  some  false  model,  to  cramp  and  force  his 
voice  into  alien  speech,  before  he  could  become  prosaic,  or  even 
produce  the  kinds  of  poetry  that  are  nearest  to  prose.  They  do  him 
a  great  wrong  and  make  a  great  mistake,  who  dwell  upon  his  politics, 
his  philosophy,  or  anything  but  his  poetry.  As  a  matter  of  fact.  Burns 
felt  and  saw  too  much  to  have  much  time  for  tiiinking,  even  if  he  had 
been  educated  that  way.  And  very  fortunate  this  is.  The  lime  did 
not  want  thought ;  it  wanted  nature  and  song,  and  lie  gave  it  both.        \^ 

Except  for  these  four  great  writers,  the  poetical  production  of  the 
last  two  decades  of  the  century,  till  the  Lyrical  Ballads  themselves,  was 
all  but  of  the  lowest  order.  The  handful  of  .sonnets,  meditative  and  topo- 
graphical, published  by  William  ^owles^^  in  1789,  liad  extraordinary 

1  Bowles  (1762-18^0)  published  much  verse  later,  but  nothing  of  importance. 
His  edition  (and  depreciation)  of  I'opc  had  some. 


596     MIDDLE   AND   LATER    18TH-CENTURY  LITERATURE     bk.  ix 

influence  on  Coleridge  and  on  other  poets,  and  show  very  strongly 
the  nisHs,  the  still  inorganic  effort  of  the  age  towards  local  colour, 
the  "proper  word,"  the  linking  of  nature-aspect  to  human  feeling, 
and  other  characteristics  of  Romanticism.  The  unrhymed  Pindarics 
of  Sayers,  not  in  themselves  very  good  things,  though  they  produced 
good  work  by  the  hands  of  his  followers,  Southey  and  Shelley,  showed 
in  the  same  way  the  revolt  against  the  smooth  tyranny  of  the  rhymed 
couplet,  the  craving  for  something  different,  which  shows  itself  at  the 
beginning  of  each  new  poetic  age.  But  the  main  bulk  of  the  verse 
of  the  time,  which  has  not  passed  utterly  out  of  even  historic 
memory,  consists  of  satiric  work.  To  this  class  belong  the  clever 
lampoons  ^  of  the  Rolliad,  directed  against  the  younger  Pitt,  the  more 
varied  and  bulky,  but  even  less  poetic,  work  of  "  Peter  Pindar,"  and, 
above  all,  the  triumphant,  and,  as  literature  if  not  exactly  as  poetry, 
wholly  admirable,  parodies  and  diatribes  of  the  Anti-Jacobin,  the  chief 
contributors  to  which  were  Canning,  Ellis,  and  Frere,  while  it  was 
edited  by  William  Gilford  (i  756-1 826),  a  rough  critic  and  a  jejune 
versifier,  but  the  author  earlier  of  two  extremely  clever  satires,  the 
Baviad  and  Mceviad,  and  the  editor  later  of  some  of  the  great 
dramatists  and  of  the  Quarterly  Review. 

1  But  for  the  tyranny  of  space  a  chapter  might  be  occupied,  with  pleasure  at 
least  to  the  writer,  by  the  lighter  verse  of  this  century.  As  noted  more  than  once, 
more  than  one  poet,  mediocre  in  serious  work,  has  left  charming  light  things.  Of 
those  who  are  light  or  nothing,  the  chief  are  Isaac  Hawkins  Browne  (1706-60), 
whose  Pipe  of  Tobacco  (1736)  is  a  delightful  string  of  parodies  on  the  chief  poets  of 
the  day;  Christopher  Anstey  (1724-1805),  who  in  The  New  Bath  Guide  (1766) 
took  the  anapgestic  tetrameter  fromr  Prior,  gave  it  a  new  tune,  and  established  it  for 
a  century  and.  a  half  to  come  as  the  best  vehicle  for  certain  purposes ;  Sir  Charles 
Hanbury  Williams  (1709-59),  a  coarse  lampooner,  whose  poems,  not  published 
till  1822,  have  been  rather  overrated  for  wit  and  style ;  and  Sterne's  disreputable 
friend  John  Hall  Stevenson  (1718-85),  whose  Crazy  Tales,  etc.,  are  as  coarse  as 
Williams's  but  much  cleverer,  and  who  could  see,  as  his  description  of  the  Scotch 
fir  on  the  Cleveland  moors  — 

That  waves  its  arms  and  makes  a  stir. 
And  tosses  its  fantastic  head  — 

shows  sufficiently.  Of  the  persons  named  above,  "  Peter  Pindar  "  was  John  Wol- 
col  (1738-1819),  who  professed  both  physic  and  divinity,  and  during  the  last 
twenty  years  of  the  century  lampooned  George  HI.,  the  new  Royal  Academy, 
Tory  ministers,  and  things  and  persons  generally.  George  Ellis  (1753-1815)  gave 
his  talent  in  satirical  verse  first  to  the  Whigs  in  the  RoUiad,  then  to  the  Tories  in 
the  Anti-Jacobin,  but  did  his  best  service  to  literature  in  the  Specimens  of  poetry, 
and  romance,  referred  to  earlier.  Canning  (1770-1827)  belongs  primarily  to  his- 
tory. John  Hookham  Frere  (1760-1846)  was  a  man  of  very  great  talent,  chiefly 
spent  on  translations,  "  skits,"  and  the  remarkable  burlesque  romance  (variously 
referred  to  as  "  Whistlecraft,"  from  the  nom  de  guerre  assumed,  "  The  Monks 
and  the  Giants,"  etc.)  on  King  Arthur  and  the  Round  Table,  which  gave  Byron 
the  metre  and  style  of  Beppo  and  Don  Juan,  and  is  not  exceeded  by  either  in  spirit 
and  art. 


CHAP.  I  THE   POETS   FROM   THOMSON  TO  CRABBE  597 

In  serious  poetry  the  standard  names — -names,  alas  !  standing 
rather  as  marks  for  scorn  than  as  objects  of  veneration  —  are  those  of 
Erasmus  Darwin  (1731-1802)  and  WiUiam  Hayley  (1745-1820),  the 
former,  in  his  Botanic  Garden  (1789-92),  the  last  and  one  of  the  most 
polished,  but  also  one  of  the  most  frigid  and  unpoetic,  of  the  descriptive 
couplet-writers,  the  latter  a  respectable  and  amiable  dilettante,  who 
wrote  bombastic  or  namby-pamby  verse  with  a  fatal  facility.  Below 
them,  if  indeed  in  these  regions  of  poetry  higher  and  lower  are 
predicable  terms,  we  come  to  degrees  of  dulness  or  absurdity,  ending 
in  the  so-called  "  Delia  Cruscans,"  who  were  the  object  of  Giflforcrs 
scorn,  a  group  of  versifiers  at  the  head  of  whom  was  Robert  Merry 
(1735-98),  a  man  of  good  education  and  some  parts,  whose  exploits 
in  poetastry  show  better  perhaps  than  anything  else  the  poetical 
degradation,  or  rather  exhaustion,  of  the  time. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  NOVEL 

Richardson  —  Fielding  —  Smollett  —  Sterne  —  Minor  novelists  —  Walpole  — 
Beckford — Mrs.  Radcliffe —  Lewis 

Some  reference  has  been  made  earlier  to  the  differences,  or  rather 
the  hesitations,  of  opinion  in  reference  to  the  exact  history  of  the 
English  novel.i  But  for  general  purposes  these  may  be  neglected. 
The  early  prose  romance,  the  Euphuist  innovation,  major  and  minor, 
the  philosophical  or  Utopian  fantasy,  the  brief  Elizabethan  tale,  the 
long-winded  translations  or  imitations  of  the  Scuddry  Heroic  stor}-, 
the  picaresque  miscellany,  and  the  like,  are  stages  obvious  as  the 
general  history  unfolds  itself.  As  to  the  exact  position  which  the 
great  names  of  Bunyan  and  of  Defoe  hold,  difference  may  be  agreed 
to  with  resignation.  What  is  certain  is  that  about  the  beginning  of 
the  second  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  period  immediately 
succeeding  the  appearance  of  Defoe's  work,  there  began  a  develop- 
ment of  the  prose  novel,  and  that  this,  partly  though  by  no  means 
wholly  owing  to  one  group  of  great  writers  in  the  style,  had  made 
very  great  progress  by  the  beginning  of  the  third,  about  which  time 
we  find  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu  in  Italy  receiving  boxes  full  of 
new  novels  from  her  daughter  in  England. 

It  is  so  difficult  to  mark  out  the  precise  stages  by  which  the  modern 
novel  came  into  being,  that  the  wisest  critics  have  abstained  from 
attempting  it.  We  can  only  say  that,  for  the  nearly  three  genera- 
tions which  passed  between  the  Restoration  and  the  publication 
of  Richardson's  Pamela,  there  was  an  ever  greater  determination 
and  concentration  towards  completed  prose  fiction;  and  that  the 
use  of  the  general  form  in  two  such  different  ways  by  two  such 
different  men  as  Swift  and  Defoe  is  sufficient  proof  how  near,  by  the 
end   of    the   second   decade  or   so,   that   completed   form  was.      But 

1  This  history  has  been  put  briefly,  but  with  much  knowledge  and  grace,  in 
Mr.  W.  A.  Raleigh's  The  English  Novel  (London,  1894). 


CHAP.  11  THE   EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY   NOVEL  599 

there  was  not  much  general  practice  of  it.i  Mrs.  Manley  and  Mrs. 
Haywood,  women  of  no  very  good  reputation,  followed  in  the 
footsteps  of  Afra  Behn,  and  achieved  a  certain  popularity,  but  the 
novels  of  the  former  are  thinly-veiled  political  libels.  The  earlier 
books  of  Mrs.  Haywood  are  in  seventeenth-century  styles,  and  though 
she  lived  to  do  better  in  Betsy  Thoughtless  (1751)  dind  Jemmy  and 
Jenny  Jessamy  (1753),  these  were  not  published  till  long  after  the 
three  great  re-creators  of  the  novel  had  shown  the  way.  To  them, 
therefore,  we  may  as  well  turn  at  once. 

Samuel  Richardson,  by  a  great  deal  the  oldest,  by  a  little  the  pre- 
cursor in  actual  publication,  and  i'ldirectly  the  inspirer  of  his  greatest 
and  nearest  successor,  was  born  in  1689  in  Derbyshire,  his  father  being 
a  joiner,  his  mother  of  rather  higher  rank.     He  went  to    „.  ^    ^ 

■■  /  ,  .       ,    .  ,  .  Richardson. 

Charterhouse,  and  was  apprenticed  in  1706  to  a  printer, 
whose  daughter  he  afterwards  married.  After  setting  up  for  himself 
he  became  very  prosperous,  had  a  house  in  Salisbury  Court,  Fleet 
Street,  and  another,  first  at  North  End,  then  at  Parson's  Green,  was 
Master  of  the  Stationers'  Company  in  1754,  and  King's  Printer  in 
1761.  A  year  later  he  died  of  apoplexy.  He  was  contented  for 
many  years  to  print  books  without  writing  them,  and  he  was  past  fifty 
when  a  commission  or  suggestion  from  two  well-known  London  pub- 
lishers, Rivington  and  Osborne,  for  a  sort  of  Model  Leitcr<uriter  (he 
had  in  his  youth  practised  as  an  amateur  in  this  art)  led  to  the  com- 
position of  Pamela,  which  (at  least  the  first  part  of  it)  was  published 
in  1740,  and  became  very  popular.  Richardson  had  already  made 
some  acquaintance  with  persons  of  a  station  superior  to  his  own,  and 
the  fame  of  his  book  enlarged  this,  while  it  also  tempted  him  to  fly 
higher.  In  1748  he  produced  Clarissa,  which  is  usually  considered 
his  masterpiece,  and  in  1753  Sir  Charles  Grandison.  Except  one 
paper  in  The  Adventurer,  he  published  nothing  else,  but  left  an 
enormous  mass  of  correspondence.  Pamela,  or  Virtue  Rewarded, 
gives  the  history  of  a  girl  of  low  degree  who,  resisting  temptation, 
marries  her  master,  and  in  the  second  and  less  good  part  reclaims 
him  from  irregular  courses ;  Clarissa,  that  of  a  young  lady  of  family 
and  fortune,  who,  partly  by  imprudence,  partly  by  misfortune,  falls 
a  prey  to  the  arts  of  the  libertine  Lovelace  and,  resisting  his 
offers  of  marriage,  dies  of  a  broken  heart,  to  be  revenged  in  a 
duel  by  her  cousin  ;  Sir  Charles  Grandison,  that  of  a  young  man  of 
still   higher  family   and   larger  fortune,   who    is   almost    faultless,   and 

1  The  minor  novels  of  the  eighteenth  century  are  not  gener.-illy  accesslMc  save 
in  the  original  editions.  There  is,  indeed,  one  us.-fiil  and  ralh.-r  full  collection, 
Harrison's  Novelists,  but,  as  a  whole,  it  is  very  bulky,  and  duplicates  mmh  that 
everyone  has  on  his  shelves  in  other  forms.  Ridiaidson  has  liern  sometimes, 
Kielding,  Smollett,  Sterne,  and  Miss  Uurney  have  been  often,  reprinted. 


6oo    MIDDLE   AND   LATER    18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

constantly  successful  in  all  his  endeavours,  and  who,  after  being  the 
object  of  the  adoration  of  two  beautiful  girls,  the  Italian  Clementina 
della  Porretta  and  the  English  Harriet  Byron,  condescends  to  make 
the  latter  happy.  Richardson's  expressed,  and  beyond  the  slightest 
doubt  his  sincere,  purpose  in  all  was,  not  to  produce  works  of  art,  but 
to  enforce  lessons  of  morality.  Yet  posterity,  while  pronouncing  his 
morals  somewhat  musty  and  even  at  times  a  little  rancid,  has  recog- 
nised him  as  a  great,  though  by  no  means  an  impeccable,  artist.  It 
is  noteworthy  that  his  popularity  was  as  great  abroad  as  at  home  — 
indeed,  it  far  exceeded  that  which  any  English  writer,  except  Scott  and 
Byron,  has  obtained  on  the  Continent  during  his  lifetime.  His  adop- 
tion of  the  letter-form  influenced  novelists  very  powerfully,  and  though 
his  style  and  spirit  were  less  imitable,  there  is  no  doubt  that  they 
practically  founded  the  novel  of  analysis  and  feeling,  as  distinguished 
from  the  romance  of  adventure. 

His  faults"  are  an  excessive  long-windedness  {Clarissa  and  Sir 
Charles  Grandison  are  by  far  the  longest  novels  of  great  merit  in 
English,  if  not  in  any  language),  an  inability,  which  grew  upon  him, 
to  construct  a  story  with  any  diversified  and  constantly  lively  interest, 
an  almost  total  lack  of  humour,  and  a  teasing  and  meticulous  minute- 
ness of  sentimental  analysis,  and  history  of  motive  and  mood.  To 
these  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu,  a  formidable  critic,  added,  justly 
enough,  though  not  so  importantly  from  our  point  of  view  as  from 
hers,  an  ignorance  of  the  society  which,  in  his  two  later  novels,  he 
endeavours  to  depict.  His  merits,  on  the  other  hand,  are  a  faculty 
of  vivid,  though  too  elaborate,  presentation  of  the  outward  acces- 
sories of  his  scenes ;  a  real,  though  somewhat  limp,  grasp  of  conversa- 
tion ;  an  intense,  though  not  very  varied  or  extensive,  mastery  of 
pathos ;  and,  above  all,  a  one-sided,  partial,  but  intimate  and  true, 
knowledge  of  human  motive,  sentiment,  and  even  conduct,  his  time 
being  considered.  The  proviso  is  necessary;  and  the  overlooking 
of  it  (with  perhaps  some  personal  reasons)  was  at  the  bottom  of 
Johnson's  now  almost  incomprehensible  preference  of  Richardson 
over  Fielding.  Richardson  knew  the  feminine  character  of  his  time 
with  a  quite  extraordinary  thoroughness  and  accuracy,  though  his 
men  are  much  less  good ;  whereas  Fielding  knew  both  men  and 
women  first,  eighteenth-century  men  and  women  only  afterwards, 
and,  however  well,  in  a  minor  degree.  Nor,  though  Johnson  had 
plenty  of  humour  himself,  was  he  likely  to  resent  the  absence  of  it 
in  Richardson,  as  he  resented  the  presence  of  a  kind  different  from 
his  own  in  Fielding. 

Great,  however,  as, are  Richardson's  qualities,  and  immense  as 
was  the  impetus  which  his  popularity  and  his  merits  combined  gave 
to  the  English  novel,  he  cannot  be  said   to  have  given  that  novel 


CHAP.  II  THE   EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY   NOVEL  6oi 


anything  like  a  final  or  universal  form.  The  scheme  of  letters 
though  presenting  to  the  novelist  some  obvious  advantages  and  con- 
veniences, which  have  secured  it  not  merely  immediate  imitation  but 
continuance  even  to  the  present  day,  has  disadvantages  as  obvious, 
and  can  never  rise  to  the  merits  of  prose  narrative  from  the  outside. i 
But  it  is  one  of  not  the  least  curiosities  of  literature  that  the  attain- 
ment of  the  true  and  highest  form  actually  resulted  from  an  exercise 
in  parody,  which  certainly  cannot  be  regarded  as  in  itself  a  very  high, 
and  has  sometimes  been  regarded  as  almost  the  lowest,  form  of 
literature.  It  is  less  curious,  and  much  less  unexampled,  that  the 
author  of  this  parody  was  a  man  who  had  already  tried,  with  no  very 
distinguished  success,  quite  different  kinds  of  writing. 

Henry  Fielding  was  born  at  Sharpham  Park,  in  the  south  of 
Somerset,  on  22nd  April  1707.  His  birth  was  higher  than  that  of 
any  man  of  letters  of  all  work  who  had  preceded  him.  The  house 
of  Fielding  claimed  kindred  with  tliat  of  Hapsburg;  it 
had  ranked  among  English  gentry  since  the  twelfth  ^'=''^'"8- 
century;  and  in  the  century  before  the  novelist's  birth  it  had  been 
ennobled  by  two  peerages,  the  earldom  of  Denbigh  in  England  and 
that  of  Desmond  in  Ireland.  Henry  Fielding  himself  was  great- 
grandson  of  the  first  Earl  of  Desmond  of  this  creation,  but  was,  of 
course,  unconnected  with  the  great  Geraldines  who  came  to  an  end 
when  they  rebelled  against  Elizabeth.  His  grandfather  was  a  canon 
of  Salisbury,  his  father  a  general  in  the  army  who  had  seen  service 
under  Marlborough ;  his  mother's  father  was  a  Justice  of  the  King's 
Bench,  and  it  was  at  his  house  that  the  novelist  was  born.  Nor  is  it 
to  be  omitted  that  he  was  a  near  cousin  of  Lady  Mary  Wortley 
Montagu,  whose  mother  was  a  Fielding. 

But  though  his  pedigree  was  thus  undeniable,  his  immediate  fore- 
bears had  for  two  generations  been  younger  sons,  and  his  own 
patrimony  was  little  or  nothing.  He  was,  indeed,  well  educated  at 
Eton  and  at  Leyden,  but  he  seems  to  have  found  himself  at  twenty- 
one  in  London  with  a  nominal  allowance  and  no  particular  interest 
for  any  profession,  though,  like  other  young  gentlemen,  he  was  of 
the  Inns  of  Court.  He  turned  to  the  stage,  and  for  not  quite  ten 
years  produced  a  large  number  of  plays,  neither  very  bad  nor  very 
good,  of  wliich  Tom  Thumb,  a  burlesque  "  tragedy  of  tragedies,"  is 
perhaps  the  best,  and  certainly  the  only  one  which  has  kept  any 
reputation.  About  1735  he  seems  to  have  married  a  Miss  Charlotte 
Craddock,  who  was  very  beautiful,  very  amiable,  and  an  heiress  in  a 
small  way;  but  whether,  as  legend  asserts.  Fielding  really  set  up  for 
a  country  gentleman  on  the  strength  of  her  fortune,  and  spent  it  on 

1  In  combination  it  can  do  wondrously,  as  in  RedgaunHet. 


6o2     MIDDLE  AND  LATER   18TH-CENTURY  LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

hounds  and  showy  Hveries,  is  quite  uncertain.  His  theatrical 
enterprises  being  interfered  with  by  some  new  legislation  in  1737,  he 
turned  seriously  to  the  law,  was  called  to  the  Bar,  and  practised,  or 
at  least  went  on  circuit,  while  in  1739  ^e  contributed  largely  to  the 
Champion,  a  paper  on  the  Spectator  pattern.^  His  first  published, 
though  probably  not  his  first  written  novel,  The  History  of  the  Ad- 
ventures of  Joseph  Andrews  and  of-  his  Friend  Mr.  Abraham  Adams, 
appeared  in  February  1742,  when  its  author  was  almost  exactly 
thirty-five.  It  was  successful,  and  next  year  Fielding  published  three 
volumes  of  Miscellanies,  the  important  parts  of  which  are  A  Journey 
frof)i  this  World  to  the  Next,  in  the  Lucianic  manner  which  Tom 
Brown  had  made  popular,  and  the  mighty  ironic  story  of  Jonathan 
Wild.  His  wife  died  soon  after  this  publication,  and  he  married 
again,  but  not  for  some  years  afterwards.  He  returned  to  periodical 
dfesay-vvriting  (the  True  Patriot  and  the  Jacobite^s  Journal)  in 
'45  on  the  Whig  side,  and  in  1749  he  produced  his  third  and 
greatest  novel,  Tom  Jones.  Meanwhile  Lyttelton  had  obtained 
for  him  the  position  of  Bow  Street  Magistrate,  as  it  was  called,  or 
Justice  of  the  Peace  for  Westminster,  an  office  which,  though  poorly 
paid,  was  of  enormous  importance,  for  its  holder  practically  had  the 
police  of  London,  outside  the  City  walls,  in  his  hands.  He  discharged 
its  duties  to  admiration,  and  found  time  not  merely  to  publish  his  last 
novel,  Amelia,  in  175 1,  but  to  conduct  the  Covent  Garden  Journal 
for  the  greater  part  of  1752.  His  health,  however,  was  ruined,  and, 
trying  to  restore  it  by  travel,  he  undertook  in  June  1754  the  voyage 
to  Lisbon  which  forms  the  subject  of  his  last  book,  issued  after  his 
death.  He  reached  the  Portuguese  capital  in  August,  but  died  on 
the  8th  of  October. 

Fielding's  first  novel  started  as  a  deliberate  burlesque  of  Pamela. 
Its  hero  is  the  brother  of  Richardson's  heroine,  and  her  trials  are 
transferred  to  this  Joseph.  Nor  did  Fielding  ostensibly  give  up  his 
scheme  throughout  the  book ;  but  his  genius  was  altogether  too 
great  to  allow  him  to  remain  in  the  narrow  and  beggarly  elements  of 
parody,  and  after  the  first  few  chapters  we  forget  all  about  Richard- 
son's ideals  and  morals.  The  great  character  of  Mr.  Abraham 
Adams  —  a  poor  curate,  extremely  unworldly,  but  no  fool,  a  scholar,  a 
tall  man  of  his  hands,  and  a  very  Good  Samaritan  of  ordinary  life  — is 
only  the  centre  and  chief  of  a  crowd  of  wonderfully  lifelike  characters, 
all  of  whom  perform  their  parts  with  a  verisimilitude  which  had  never 

1  Fielding's  dramatic,  periodical,  and  miscellaneous  works  must  be  sought  in 
the  original  editions,  the  best  of  which  is  in  4  vols.  4to  (London,  1762),  or  in 
the  great  edition  de  luxe  of  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen.  The  present  writer  attempted  a 
selection  from  them  in  the  last  volume  of  an  issue  of  the  novels,  the  Journey,  and 
the  Voyage,  which  he  superintended  (12  vols.  London,  1893). 


CHAP.  II  THE   EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  NOVEL  603 

been  seen  before  off  the  stage,  and  very  seldom  there ;  while  the  new 
scheme  of  narrative  gave  an  infinitely  wider  and  more  varied  scope 
than  the  stage  ever  could  give.  Moreover,  one  of  the  instruments  of 
this  vivid  presentation  —  an  instrument  the  play  of  which  not  seldom 
sufficed  in  itself  to  make  the  literary  result  —  was  a  very  peculiar 
irony,  almost  as  intense  as  Swift's,  though  less  bitter,  indeed  hardly 
bitter  at  all,  and  dealing  with  life  in  a  fashion  which,  but  for  being 
much  more  personal  and  much  less  poetic,  is  very  nearly  of  the  same 
kind  as  Shakespeare's. 

In  his  next  published  hook,  Jonai/iaii  Wild,  this  irony  predomi- 
nates, and  is  more  severe.  The  hero  was  a  historical  personage,  an 
audacious  and  ingenious  blend  of  thief  and  thief-taker,  who  had  been 
hanged  ten  years  earlier.  Fielding's  ostensible  object  in  composing 
an  imaginary  party-history  of  him  was  to  satirise  the  ideas  of  "great- 
ness" entertained  by  the  ordinary  historian  —  a  design  showing  not 
imitation  of,  but  sympathy  with,  certain  ways  of  thought  diversely 
illustrated  by  Swift  and  Voltaire.  But  his  genius,  intensely  creative, 
once  more  broke  away  from  this  ideal  —  though  the  ironic  side  of 
Jonathan  IVild  is  stronger  than  anything  else  in  English  or  any 
literature  outside  the  Tale  of  a  Tub,  and  so  strong  that  the  book  has 
probably  on  the  whole  shocked,  pained,  or  simply  puzzled  more 
readers  than  it  has  pleased.  But  it  is  really  as  full  of  live  personages 
as  Joseph  Andrews  itself;  and  if  these,  being  drawn  almost  entirely 
from  the  basest  originals,  cannot  be  so  agreeable  as  the  not  more 
true  but  far  more  sympathetic  characters  of  the  earlier-published 
novel,  they  are,  as  literature,  equally  great,  and  perhaps  more 
astonishing. 

It  was,  however,  in  his  third  and  longest  novel,  Tom  Jones,  that 
Fielding  attained  a  position  unquestionable  by  anything  save  mere 
prejudice  or  mere  crotchet.  Joseph  Andrews  had  been,  at  least  in 
inception,  only  a  parody,  and  Jonathan  Wild  mainly  a  .satire ;  the 
former,  though  not  destitute  of  plot,  had  had  but  an  ordinary  and 
sketchy  one,  and  the  latter  chiefly  adapted  actual  facts  to  a  series  of 
lifelike  but  not  necessarily  connected  episodes.  Tom  Jones,  on  the 
contrary,  is  as  artfully  constmcted  as  the  most  nicely  proportioned 
drama,  and,  long  as  it  is,  there  is  hardly  a  character  or  an  incident 
(with  the  exception  of  some  avowed  episodic  passages,  made  toler- 
able and  almost  imperative  by  the  taste  of  the  day  and  the  sii])i)ost'd 
example  of  the  classical  epic)  whicii  is  not  strictly  adjusted  to  the 
attainment  of  the  story's  end.  To  us,  perhaps,  this  is  a  less  attraction 
than  the  vividness  of  the  story  itself,  the  extraordinarily  lifelike  iires- 
entation  of  character,  and  (tiiough  this  is  a  cliarm  less  universally 
admitted)  the  piquancy  of  the  introductory  passages.  In  these  — 
after  a  manner  no  doubt  copied  from  the  parahases  or  addresses  to 


6o4    MIDDLE   AND   LATER    18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk,  ix 

the  audience  in  the  chorus  of  the  older  Attic  comedy,  and  itself 
serving,  beyond  all  doubt  Jikewise,  as  a  model  to  the  later  asides  of 
Thackeray  —  Fielding  takes  occasion  sometimes  to  discuss  his  own 
characters,  sometimes  to  deal  with  more  general  points.  But  the 
characters  themselves,  and  the  vivacity  with  which  they  are  set  to 
work,  are  the  thing.  The  singular  humanity  of  Tom  Jones  himself, 
a  scapegrace  even  according  to  the  ideas  of  his  time,  but  a  good 
fellow ;  the  benevolence,  not  mawkish  or  silly,  of  AUworthy ;  the 
charms  and  generosity  of  Sophia ;  the  harmless  foibles  of  Miss 
Western,  the  aunt,  and  the  coarse  but  not  offensive  clownishness  of 
her  brother,  the  Squire,  with  the  humours  of  Partridge  the  school- 
master, and  others,  have  always  satisfied  good  judges.  Even  among 
the  black  sheep.  Lady  Bellaston,  shameless  as  she  is,  is  a  lady ;  and 
at  the  other  end  of  the  scale.  Black  George,  rascal  as  he  is,  is  a  man. 
Only  perhaps  the  villain  Blifil  is  not  exactly  human,  not  so  much  by 
reason  of  his  villainy,  as  because  Fielding,  for  some  reason,  has 
chosen  to  leave  him  so. 

There  is  somewhat  less  power  and  life  in  Amelia,  though  its 
sketches  of  London  society  in  the  lower  and  middle  classes  are 
singularly  vivid,  and  though  the  character  of  the  heroine  as  an 
amiable  wife,  not  so  much  forgiving  injuries  as  ignoring  their  com- 
mission, has  been  almost  idolised  by  some.  But  no  other  novelist  of 
the  time  —  and  by  this  the  novelists  wer^  numerous  —  could  have 
written  it. 

On  the  whole,  if  we  are  to  pronounce  the  novel  as  such  present 
for  the  first  time  in  the  pages  of  any  writer,  it  must  be  in  those  of 
Fielding  rather  than  in  those  of  Richardson.  Johnson,  in  his 
prejudice,  endeavoured  to  set  the  latter  above  the  former  by  com- 
paring Fielding  to  a  man  who  can  only  tell  the  time,  and  Richardson 
to  one  who  can  put  together  the  watch.  The  point  may  be  very 
stoutly  argued ;  but  if  it  be  admitted,  it  can  be  turned  against  John- 
son. For  Fielding  does  tell  the  clock  of  nature  with  absolute  and 
universal  correctness,  while  Richardson's  ingenious  machinery  some- 
times strikes  twenty-five  o'clock,  and  constantly  gives  us  seconds,  thirds, 
and  other  troublesome  details  instead  of  putting  us  in  possession  of 
the  useful  time  of  day.  And  in  fact  the  comparison  itself  will  not 
really  hold  water.  Fielding  does  not  parade  his  mechanism  as 
Richardson  does,  but  his  command  of  it  is  every  whit  as  true,  and  in 
reality  as  delicate.  He  first  in  English,^  he  thoroughly,  and  he  in 
a  manner  unsurpassable,  put  humanity  into  fictitious  working  after 
such  a  fashion  that  the  effect  hitherto  produced  only  by  the  dramatist 
and    poet,   the    practical    re-creation    and    presentation    of    life,   was 

1"  In  English,"  for,  as  he  himself  was  eager  to  confess,  Cervantes  in  Spanish 
had  not  merely  preceded  him,  but  had  served  as  his  model. 


CHAP.  II  THE   EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY   NOVEL  605 

achieved  in  the  larger  and  fuller  manner  possible  only  to  the  prose 
novelist. 

The  novels  of  Tobias  George  Smollett  relapse  in  appearance  and 
general  plan  upon  a  form  —  that  of  the  "  picaresque "  or  advent- 
ure-novel —  older  than  that  of  Fielding  or  even  of  Richardson  ;  but 
in  reality  they  contributed  largely  to  the  development 
of  the  new  fiction.  Their  author  was  born  in  1721  at  ■  ™°  ^  • 
Dalquhurn,  in  the  West  of  Scotland,  and  was  a  member  of  a  good 
family,  of  which,  had  he  lived  a  little  longer,  he  would  have  become 
the  head.  He  was  born,  however,  the  younger  son  of  a  younger  son, 
and  the  harsh  treatment  of  Roderick  Random  by  his  relations  has 
been  thought  to  reflect  upon  his  own  grandfather,  Sir  James 
Smollett  of  Bonhill,  Judge  of  the  Commissary  Court  of  Scotland, 
M.P.,  and  Commissioner  for  the  Union.  However  this  may  be, 
Smollett,  though  well  educated,  had  to  make  his  own  way  in  the 
world,  and  was  apprenticed  to  a  Glasgow  surgeon.  He  practised  at 
different  times  during  his  life,  but  his  real  profession  was  literature, 
by  which  he  set  out  to  make  his  fortune  in  London  at  the  age  of 
eighteen.  He  did  not  make  it  with  a  bad  and  boyish  tragedy,  77/1? 
Regicide,^  but  took  the  place  of  surgeon's  mate  on  board  a  man-of- 
war  in  the  Carthagena  expedition  of  1640.  He  does  not  seem  to  have 
served  long,  but  remained  for  some  years  in  the  West  Indies,  and 
probably  there  married  his  wife,  Anne  Lascelles,  a  small  heiress.  Re- 
turning to  England,  he  tried  poems  and  plays  with  no  success,  and 
then  in  1748  turned  to  novel-writing  with  a  great  deal,  as  the  deserved 
reward  oi  Roderick  Random. 

From  this  time  onward  Smollett  was  a  novelist  by  taste  and 
genius,  and  a  man  of  letters  of  all  work  by  necessity.  In  the  former 
capacity  he  wrote  and  published  Peregrine  Pickle  (1751),  Ferdinand,, 
Count  Fathom  (1753),  Sir  Laticelot  Greaves  in  1760,  and  in  1771 
Humphrey  Clinker.  In  the  latter  he  edited  the  Critical  Revic^u, 
wrote  a  very  popular  and  profitable  History  of  England,  gave  an 
account,  in  an  ill-tempered  but  not  uninteresting  book,  of  his  Praiu-ls 
in  France  and  Italy,  and  did  a  great  deal  of  miscellaneous  work, 
including  a  fierce  and  foul,  but  rather  dull,  political  lampcM>n,  Tlie 
Adventures  of  an  Atom.  His  health,  between  hard  work  ami  the 
hard  living  then  usual,  broke  down  early,  and  making  a  second  visit  to 
Italy,  he  died  at  Leghorn  in  October  1771. 

Smollett's    miscellaneous  work,  thougli    almost    always   com]K'tenl, 

1  Smollett's  plays  and  poems  are  seldom  rcprinlt-d  with  llic  numerous  editions 
of  his  novels,  but  may  be  found  in  Chalmers  ;  his  History  is  on  all  the  stalls ;  his 
criticisms  and  miscellaneous  works  have  never  been,  and  are  never  likely  to  be, 
collected  in  full.  The  Travels,  which  are  worth  reading,  have  been  more  than 
once  reprinted. 


6o6    MIDDLE   AND   LATER    18TH-CENTURY    LITERATURE   bk.  ix 

and  sometimes  much  more,  need  not  detain  us ;  his  novels,  excellent 
in  themselves,  are  of  the  highest  historical  importance.  It  has  been 
said  that  he  fell  back  on  the  adventure-scheme.  Plot  he  hardly 
attempted ;  and  even,  as  regards  incident,  he  probably,  as  Thackeray 
says,  "  did  not  invent  much,"  his  own  varied  experiences  and  his 
sharp  eye  for  humorous  character  giving  him  abundant  material.  In 
Roderick  Random  he  uses  his  naval  experiences,  and  perhaps  others, 
to  furnish  forth  the  picture  of  a  young  Scotchman,  arrogant,  un- 
scrupulous, and  not  too  amiable,  but  bold  and  ready  enough ;  in 
Peregrine  Pickle  he  gives  that  of  a  spendthrift  scapegrace,  heir  to 
wealth;  in  Fathom  he  draws  a  professional  chevalier  d''industrie. 
The  strange  fancy  which  made  him  attempt  a  sort  of  "  New  Quixote" 
in  Sir  Lancelot  Greaves  has  seldom  been  regarded  as  happy,  either 
in  inception  or  in  result;  but  in  Humphrey  Clinker  we  have  the  very 
best  of  all  his  works.  It  is  written  in  the  letter  form,  the  scenes  and 
humours  of  many  places  in  England  and  Scotland  are  rendered  with 
admirable  picturesqueness,  while  the  book  has  seldom  been  excelled 
for  humorous  character  of  the  broad  and  farcical  kind.  Matthew 
Bramble,  the  testy  hypochondriac  squire  who  is  at  heart  one  of  the 
best  of  men,  and  in  head  not  one  of  the  foolishest ;  his  sour-visaged 
and  greedy  sister  Tabitha;  her  maid  Winifred  Jenkins,  who  has 
learnt  the  art  of  grotesque  misspelling  from  Swift's  Mrs.  Harris,  and 
has  improved  upon  the  teaching ;  the  Scotch  soldier  of  fortune,  Lisma- 
hago, —  these  are  among  the  capital  figures  of  English  fiction,  as  in 
the  earlier  books  are  the  Welsh  surgeon's  mate  Morgan,  Commodore 
Trunnion,  and  others. 

Besides  this  conception  of  humorous  if  somewhat  rough  character, 
and  a  remarkable  faculty  of  drawing  interiors  which  accompanies  it, 
and  in  which  he  perhaps  even  excels  Fielding,  Smollett  made  two 
very  important  contributions  to  the  English  novel.  The  first  was 
the  delineation  of  national  types  in  which  he,  almost  for  the  first 
time,  reduced  and  improved  the  stock  exaggerations  of  the  stage  to 
a  human  and  artistic  temper.  The  second,  not  less  important,  was 
the  introduction,  under  proper  limitations,  of  the  professional  interest. 
He  had,  though  less  of  universality  than  Fielding,  yet  enough  of  it  to 
be  successful  with  types  in  which  he  had  only  observation,  not 
experiment,  to  guide  him,  but  he  was  naturally  most  fortunate  with 
what  he  knew  from  experience,  sailors  and  "  medical  gentlemen." 
Until  his  time  the  sailor  had  been  drawn  almost  entirely  from  the 
outside  in  English  literature.  Smollett  first  gives  him  to  us  in  his 
habit  as  he  lived,  and  long  continued  to  live.  To  these  great  merits 
must  be  added  one  or  two  drawbacks  —  a  hardness  and  roughness  of 
tone  approaching  ferocity,  and  not  more  distinguished  from  the  some- 
what   epicene    temper    of    Richardson    than    from    the    manly    but 


CHAP.  II  THE   EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY   NOVEL  607 

kindly  spirit  of  Fielding,  and  an  extreme  coarseness  of  imagery  and 
language — a  coarseness  which  can  hardly  be  called  immoral,  but 
which  is  sometimes  positively  revolting. 

One  element,  however,  or  one  special  commixture  of  elements, 
remained  to  be  added  in  fiction,  and  then  (if  we  except  such  minor 
varieties  as  the  terror-novel  to  be  handled  shortly)  it  remained  with 
no  important  addition  or  progress  until  the  day  of  Scott 
and  Miss  Austen  within  the  present  century.  This  was  "^""' 
supplied,  that  the  three  kingdoms  might  be  separately  and  proportion- 
ately represented,  by  Laurence  Sterne,^  an  Irishman  by  birth  at  least, 
and  something  of  an  Irishman  in  temperament.  The  Sternes  were 
an  East-Anglian  family  which,  after  a  member  became  Archbishop  of 
York  in  the  seventeenth  century,  was  chiefly  connected  with  York- 
shire. Laurence  was  the  son  of  Roger  Sterne,  a  captain  in  the 
army,  who  was  the  younger  son  of  Simon  Sterne  of  EIrington,  third  ' 
son  of  the  Archbishop,  and  he  was  born  at  Clonmell,  where  his  father 
was  quartered,  in  17 13,  was  educated  at  Halifax,  and  went  thence  to 
Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  of  which,  many  years  before,  the  Arch- 
bishop had  been  Master.  He  took  his  degree  in  1736,  and  orders 
soon  afterwards,  receiving  the  livings  of  Sutton  and  Stillington  as 
well  as  minor  preferment  in  York  chapter.  He  married  Elizabeth 
Lumley  in  1741.  and  for  some  twenty  years  seems  to  have  felt,  or  at 
any  rate  indulged,  no  literary  ambition.  But  on  New  Year's  Day  1760 
there  appeared  in  York  and  London  the  first  volume  of  The  Life  and 
Opinions  of  Tristram  Shandy,  Cent.  It  was  immediately  popular,  it 
made  its  author  a  lion  in  the  capital,  and  it  turned  his  attention 
definitely  to  literary  work,  society,  and  foreign  travel.  During  the 
remaining  nine  years  of  his  life  he  continued  Tristram  Shandy  at 
intervals,  issued  some  volumes  of  Sermons,  travelled  and  resided 
abroad,  and  embodied  some  of  the  results  of  this  travel  in  A  Senti- 
mental four  ney.  This  la.st  appeared  only  just  before  his  death,  after 
.some  previous  escapes  from  lung  disease,  on  i8th  March  1768. 

Sterne's  work  —  his  Sermons  even  to  some  degree,  his  two  novels 
to  a  much  greater — is  the  most  deliberately  and  ostentatiously 
eccentric  in  the  higher  ranges  of  English  literature ;  and  being  .so, 
contains  an  element  of  mere  trick,  which  inevitably  impairs  its  value. 
If  a  man  will  not,  and  does  not,  produce  his  effects  without  such 
mechanical  devices  as  continual  dashes,  stars,  points,  and  stopped 
sentences,  even  blank  pages,  blackened  pages,  marlilcd  pages,  and 
the  like,  he   must   lay   his   account   with    the    charge    that    he    cannot 

1  The  standard  edition  of  Sterne  —  novels,  sermons,  and  not  quite  complete 
letters — is  in  10  vols.  The  work  other  than  the  novels  has  been  often  otnittod  in 
reprints;  but,  as  in  the  case  of  Holding,  the  present  writer  has  arranged  a  selection 
from  it  in  2  vols.  (London,  1894). 


6o8     MIDDLE   AND   LATER   18TH-CENTURY  LITERATURE    bk.  ix 


produce  them  without  such  apparatus.  The  charge,  however,  is  in 
Sterne's  case  unjust;  for  though  the  "clothes-philosophy"  of  his  style 
is  fantastically  adjusted,  there  is  a  real  body  both  of  style  and  of 
matter  beneath. 

Tristram  Shandy,  the  pretended  history  of  a  personage  who 
rarely  appears,  is,  in  fact,  a  "  rigmarole "  of  partly  original,  partly 
borrowed,  humour,  arranged  in  the  style  which  the  French  z'aSS.  fatrasie, 
and  of  which  Rabelais'  great  books  are  the  most  familiar,  though 
not  quite  the  normal,  type.  Although  Tristram  himself  is  the  shadow 
of  a  shade,  Sterne  manages  to  present  the  most  vivid  character- 
pictures  of  his  father,  Walter  Shandy,  and  his  Uncle  Toby  (the  latter 
the  author's  most  famous,  if  not  his  greatest,  creation),  together  with 
others,  not  much  less  achieved,  of  Corporal  Trim,  Uncle  Toby's 
servant  and  comrade  in  the  Marlborough  wars,  Mrs.  Shandy, 
Widow  Wadman,  Dr.  Slop,  and  others.  And  he  thus  gives  a  real 
novel-substance  to  a  book  which  could  otherwise  hardly  pretend  to 
the  title  of  novel  at  all.  The  Sentunenial  Journey,  a  pretended  (and 
no  doubt  partly  real)  autobiographic  account  of  a  journey  through 
France  to  the  Italian  frontier,  is  planned  on  no  very  different  general 
principle,  and  has  its  own  medallions  of  character,  though  they  are 
less  elaborately  worked  and  less  closely  grouped- 

Both  books  depend  for  their  literary  effect  on  a  large  number  of 
means  —  out-of-the-way  reading,  of  which  Sterne  availed  himself  with 
a  freedom  which  has  brought  upon  him  the  charge  of  plagiarism ; 
very  real  though  occasionally  exaggerated  pathos ;  a  curiously 
fertile  though  not  extremely  varied  fancy ;  and  a  considerable  indul- 
gence, not  in  coarseness  of  the  Smollettian  kind,  but  in  indecent  hint 
and  innuendo.  But  their  main  appeal  lies  in  two  things  —  a  kind  of 
humour  which,  though  sometimes  artificial  and  seldom  reaching  the 
massive  and  yet  mobile  humanity  of  Fielding,  has  a  singular  trick  of 
grace,  and  a  really  intimate  knowledge  of  human  nature,  combined 
and  contrasted  with  a  less  natural  quality,  to  which  France  at  the 
time  gave  the  name  of  "  Sensibility  "  and  England  that  of  "  Senti- 
ment." It  was  this  last  which  gave  Sterne  his  immediate  popularity, 
though  perhaps  for  a  generation  or  two  past  that  popularity  has 
been  rather  endangered  by  it ;  and  it  is  still  this  which  gives  him  his 
most  distinct  place,  though  not  his  greatest  value,  in  literary  history. 
For  it,  like  the  prominence  of  a  less  definite  kind  of  the  same  quality 
in  Richardson,  shows  the  reaction  from  the  rather  excessive  hardness 
and  prosaic  character  of  the  earlier  decades.  This  reaction  was  not 
yet  directed  in  the  right  way.  It  was  still  powdered  and  patched, 
deliberate,  artificial,  fashionable.  It  bore  to  true  passion  very  much 
the  same  relation  which  the  mannerism  of  Ossian  bore  to  true 
romance,  and   Strawberry  Hill   Gothic   to  real   Pointed   architecture. 


CHAP.  II  THE   EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY   NOVEL  609 

It  was  theatrical  and  mawkish ;  it  sometimes  toppled  over  into  the 
ludicrous,  or  the  disgusting,  or  both.  But  it  shows  at  worst  a  blind 
groping  after  something  that  could  touch  the  heart  as  well  as  amuse 
the  head. 

Perhaps  it  was  the  popularity  of  Richardson  and  Fielding,  as 
early  as  the  first  years  of  the  fifth  decade  of  the  century,  but  more 
probably  the  aura  or  prevalent  tendency  of  general  thought,  which 
brought  about  a  great  expansion  and  multiplication  of  the 
novel  about  1750.1  Few  of  the  minor  results  of  this  noJeh°[s 
retain  much  reputation  even  '  with  students  of  the 
subject,  and  most  are  not  over-accessible.  Some  of  them  have 
obtained  an  additional  prop  from  the  mention  and  criticism  of  Lady 
Mary  {vide  supra  et  infra).  We  have  mentioned  Mrs.  Haywood's 
books.  Francis  Coventry's  Povtpey  the  Little  (1751)  was  the  most 
amusing,  as  Charles  Johnstone's  Chrysal,  or  The  Adventures  of  a 
Guinea  (1760)  was  the  most  powerful,  of  a  kind  of  personal  fiction 
whereof  a  memorable  example  survives  in  the  Memoirs  of  a  Lady  of 
Quality,  inserted  (one  regrets  to  .say  for  money)  by  Smollett  in 
Peregrine  Pickle,  and  doubtless  rewritten  by  him  from  the  materials 
of  the  beautiful  and  liberal  Viscountess  Vane.  The  too  notorious 
Dr.  Dodd  attempted  to  combine  Sterne  and  Smollett,  and  succeeded 
in  combining  the  most  objectionable  parts  of  each  without  any  of 
their  genius,  in  The  Sisters;  Dr.  Hawkesworth  followed  Dr.  Johnson 
with  steps  of  his  usual  inequality  in  Almoran  and  Hatnet  (1761). 
But  the  most  interesting  work  in  fiction  of  the  middle  of  the 
century  is  to  be  found  in  two  books,  eccentric  in  more  senses  than 
one,  fohti  B uncle  (1750-66)  and  The  Fool  of  Quality  (1766-70). 
The  first  was  the  work,  though  by  no  means  the  only  work,  of  a 
curious  Irishman  named  Thomas  Amory,  who  was  born  in  1691  and 
died  in  1788,  who  assures  us  that  he  was  intimate  with  Swift,  and 
on  whom  it  would  be  extremely  interesting  to  have  Swift's  opinion. 
Amory  began  in  1755,  with  a  book,  not  improbably  composed  on 
French  models  and  called  Memoirs  of  Several  Ladies  of  Great 
Britain.  But  this,  though  interesting,  pales  before  the  Life  of 
John  Liuncle,  Esq.  The  hero  is  an  enthusiastic  Unitarian,  the 
husband  of  seven  wives  of  surpassing  beauty,  a  man  of  letters  in  a 
way,  a  man  of  science,  and  distinctly  marked  witli  the  madness 
which   no  doubt  existed   in   a  temperate  and   intangible  form   in  liis 

1  Most  of  the  books  mentioned  from  tliis  point  to  the  end  of  the  cluijiter  will 
be  foimd  in  the  aliovc-nott'd  collection  of  Harrison,  or  in  .Scott's  H.illanlyne 
novels,  sometimes  in  both.  The  latti-r,  in  ten  capacious  but  unwieldy  volumes, 
contains  all  the  four  great  novelists  (includin^j  Smolleil'!^  translations),  the 
Adventures  of  a  Guinea,  Johnson's,  Walpole's,  and  CJolilsmith's  novels,  Mackenzie, 
Bage,  Mis.  RadclilTe,  Gulliver's  Travels,  Cumberland's  Henry,  and  Clara  Reeve's 
Old  English  Baron. 
2R 


6io      MIDDLE  AND  LATER  18TH-CENTURY  LITERATURE     bk.  ix 

creator.  The  book,  which  is  entirely  sui  generis,  fascinated  Hazlitt,  and 
has  been  reprinted,  but  never  widely  read. 

A  much  more  respectable  and  an  almost  equally  interesting  book, 
though  a  worse  novel,  seeing  that  it  attempts  innumerable  things 
which  the  novel  cannot  manage,  is  The  Fool  of  Quality.  The  author 
of  this,  Henry  Brooke,  was  like  Amory  an  Irishman,  was  born  in 
County  Cavan  in  1703,  and  died  at  Dublin  in  1783.  He  was,  also 
like  Amory,  mad,  and  died  so.  He  had  money,  education,  and 
abundant  ability,  while  in  his  earlier  manhood  he  was  familiar  with 
the  best  literary  society  of  London.  •  In  1735  ^e  published  a  poem 
called  Universal  Boiitity,  which  is  worth  notice,  though  it  has  been  too 
highly  praised;  four  years  later  a  play,  Gustavus  Vasa.  The  Fool  of 
Quality,  or  The  Adventures  of  Henry,  Earl  of  Morland,  is  a  wholly 
unpractical  book  and  a  chaotic  history,  but  admirably  written,  full  of 
shrewdness  and  wit,  and  of  a  singularly  chivalrous  tone.  Nor  must 
we  leave  out  the  really  exquisite  Peter  IVilkins,  of  an  almost  unknown 
author,  Robert  Paltock,  which  appeared  in  1751.  In  conception  it  was 
a  sort  of  following  of  Gulliver,  but  Paltock  has  little  satire  and  no 
misanthropy,  and  the  charm  of  his  book,  which  once  was  a  boys' 
book,  and  now  delights  some  men,  depends  on  his  ingenious  wonders, 
and  on  the  character  of  the  flying  girl  Youwarkee,  the  only  heroine 
(except  Fielding's)  of  the  eighteenth-century  novel  who  has  very 
distinct  charm. 

The  contributions  of  Johnson  and  Goldsmith  to  the  novel  will  be 
best  mentioned  with  their  other  work.  But  the  history,  as  we  can 
give  it  here,  of  eighteenth-century  fiction  proper  is  incomplete  without 
,„  ,  ,  a  notice  of  the  curious  terror-novel  which,  anticipated 
by  Horace  Walpole,  had  its  special  time  in  the  last  decade 
of  the  century,  the  work  of  Fanny  Burney,  that  of  Mackenzie,  and 
some  others.  Walpole  himself  will  occupy  us  later.  The  incongruity 
of  most  of  his  work  and  character  with  the  Castle  of  Otranto  has 
always  attracted  and  puzzled  critics ;  nor  is  there  perhaps  any  better 
explanation  than  that  the  Castle,  momentous  as  its  example  proved, 
was  mainly  an  accident  of  that  half-understood  devotion  to  "the 
Gothick  "  which  was  common  at  the  time  (1764),  and  of  which  Walpole 
as  a  dilettante,  if  not  as  a  sincere  disciple,  was  one  of  the  chief  Eng- 
lish exponents.  The  story  is  a  clumsy  one,  and  its  wonders  are 
perpetually  hovering  on  the  verge  of  the  burlesque.  But  its  influence, 
though  not  immediate,  was  exceedingly  great. 

Its  nearest  successor,  the  Old  English  Baron  of  Clara  Reeve  in 
1777,  imitated  rather  Walpole's  Gothicism  than  his  ghostliness. 
Nor  can  the  extremely  remarkable  and  almost  isolated  novelette 
of  Vathek  (1783)  be  set  down  to  Walpolian  influence  though  it 
undoubtedly   did    exemplify   certain   general   tendencies    of   the   day. 


CHAP.  II  THE  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  NOVEL  6ir 

Its  author.  William  Beckford,  was  the  son  of  a  rather  prominent 
politician  in  the  City  of  London,  and  inherited  very  great  wealth. 
He  travelled  a  good  deal,  leaving  much  later  literary 
memorials  of  his  travels ;  he  collected  books ;  he  built 
two  gorgeous  palaces,  one  in  England,  at  Fonthill  in  Wiltshire,  and 
another  in  Portugal,  at  Cintra ;  and  he  in  many  respects  was,  and 
perhaps  deliberately  aimed  at  being,  the  ideal  English  "milord"  of 
continental  fancy  —  rich,  eccentric,  morose,  generous  at  times,  and 
devoted  to  his  own  whimsical  will.  Such  a  character  is  generally 
contemptible  in  reality,  but  Beckford  possessed  very  great  intellectual 
ability,  and  Vatliek  stands  alone.  Its  debts  to  the  old  Oriental  tale 
are  more  apparent  than  real ,  those  to  the  fantastic  satirical  romance 
of  Voltaire,  though  larger,  do  not  impair  its  main  originality ;  and  a 
singular  gust  is  imparted  to  its  picture  of  unbridled  power  and 
unlimited  desire  by  the  remembrance  that  the  author  himself  was,  in 
not  such  a  very  small  way,  the  insatiable  voluptuary  he  draws.  The 
picture  of  the  Hall  of  Eblis  at  the  end  has  no  superior  in  a  certain 
slightly  theatrical,  but  still  real,  kind  of  sombre  magnificence,  and  the 
heroine  Nouronihar  is  great. 

Mrs.  Radcliffe  (Anne  Ward)  —  who  was  born  in  1764,  and  did  not 
die  till  1822,  but  who  published  nothing  after  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  though  soAie  work  of  hers  appeared  post- 
humously—  produced  in  the  course  of  a  few  years  a  series  ^^^  Radcliffe 
of  elaborate  and  extremely  popular  work,  which  has  not 
retained  its  vitality  so  well  as  has  Vathek  —  The  Castles  of  AtJilin 
and  Dunbayne  (1789),  A  Sicilian  Romance  (1790),  The  Romance  of 
the  Forest  (1791),  the  celebrated  Mysteries  of  Utiolpho  (i795)'  ^"d 
The  Italian  (1797)  ■  Mrs.  Radcliffe  is  prodigal  of  the  mysteries  which 
figure  in  the  title  of  her  most  famous  work,  of  castles  and  forests,  of 
secret  passages  and  black  veils ;  but  her  great  peculiarity  is  the  con- 
stant suggestion  of  supernatural  interferences,  which  conscientious 
scruple,  or  eighteenth-century  rationalism,  or  a  mere  sense  of  art,  as 
constantly  leads  her  to  explain  by  natural  causes. 

Matthew  Lewi.s,  her  successor,  and  (though  he  denied  it)  pretty 
certainly  her  imitator,  had  no  such  scruples,  and  in  his  notorious 
A/on/:  and  other  stories  and  dramas  simply  lavished  ghosts  and 
demons.  This  department  of  the  novel  produced,  unless  ^^^.^ 
yathek  be  ranked  in  it,  nothing  of  very  high  literary 
value,  but  its  popularity  was  immense,  and  it  probably  did  sonic  real 
good  by  enlarging  the  sphere  and  quickening  the  fancy  of  the 
novelist. 

There  are  more  than  a  few  names  of  note  who  might  be  criticised 
if  space  permitted,  and  who  must  at  any  rate  be  mentioned.  Henry 
Mackenzie   (1745-J831)!  ^^'^'o    followed    Sterne    in   sentiment,   though 


612     MIDDLE  AND  LATER   18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

not  in  other  ways,  drew  floods  of  tears  with  The  Man  of  Feeling 
(1771),  The  Man  of  the  World,  and  fulia  de  Rotibigne ;  the  political 
philosopher  Godwin,  who  will  reappear,  produced,  besides  his  still 
famous  Caleb  Williams  (1794),  other  novels,  St.  Leon  {\yc)()),  Fleet- 
wood, Mandeville,  etc.;  Holcroft  the  dramatist  (i 745-1 809)  gave 
Alwyn,  Hugh  Trevor,  and  especially  Anna  St.  Ives  (1792)  ;  Robert 
Bage,  a  freethinking  Quaker  and  a  man  of  business,  wrote  no  less 
than  six  fictions,  some  of  them  of  great  length  ;  Mrs.  Inchbald  (1753- 
1821),  a  beauty,  an  actress,  a  dramatist,  and  a  novelist,  gave  to  her 
Simple  Story  a  certain  charm;  Hannah  More  (1745-1833),  who  was 
petted  by  Johnson  in  her  youth,  and  petted  the  child  Macaulay  in 
her  age,  wrote  Coelebs  in  Search  of  a  Wife,  a  moral  novel  not  untinged 
with  social  satire.  The  Zeluco  of  Dr.  John  Moore  (1719-1802)  is 
not  insignificant.  But  the  most  important,  though  far  from  the  most 
gifted,  novelist  of  the  latter  years  of  the  century  was  Frances  Burney 
(1752^1840),  the  daughter  of  a  historian  of  music,  who  was  the  intimate 
friend  of  Johnson  and  most  of  the  men  of  letters  of  his  time,  a  pet 
of  the  great  lexicographer  and  of  the  society  of  the  Thrales,  for  some 
time  a  member  of  the  household  of  Queen  Charlotte,  and  then  the 
wife  of  a  French  refugee.  From  him  she  took  the  name  Madame 
D'Arblay,  by  which  she  is  more  commonly  known  as  a  diarist,  though 
almost  the  whole  of  that  delightful  part  of  her  work  deals  with  her 
maiden  years.  Miss  Burney  wrote  in  Evelina  (1778)  a  not  very 
well-arranged  but  extremely  lively  picture  of  the  entrance  of  a  young 
girl  into  society;  in  Cecilia  (1781)  a  much  more  ambitious  and 
regular  but  less  fresh  story  of  love  and  family  pride.  Her  later 
novels,  Camilla  (1796)  and  The  Wanderer  (1814),  were,  the  former 
a  partial,  the  latter  a  complete,  failure.  Her  importance,  however, 
consists  in  the  fact  that,  at  any  rate  in  youth,  she  had  a  singular  knack 
of  catching  the  tone  and  manners  of  ordinary  and  usual  society,  and 
that  by  transferring  these  to  her  two  first  books  she  showed  a 
way  which  all  novelists  have  followed  since.  Her  great  predecessors 
of  the  middle  of  the  century  had  not  quite  done  this.  Some  of  the 
stock  ingredients  of  the  older  novel  are  indeed  thrown  in  for  Evelina's 
benefit, — the  discovery  of  parentage,  the  bold  attempts  of  unscrupulous 
lovers,  etc.,  —  but  they  are  of  no  real  importance  in  the  story,  which 
draws  its  entire  actual  interest  from  the  faithful  presentation  of  the 
most  possible,  probable,  and  ordinary  events  and  characters. 


chaptp:r  III 

JOHNSON,    GOLDSMITH,   AND   THE   LATER   ESSAYISTS 

Writers-of-all-work  —  Johnson's  life  —  His  reputation  —  Work  —  And  style- 
Goldsmith  —  His  verse  —  His  prose  —  Other  essayists 

The  establishment  of  the  calling  of  man  of  letters  as  an  irregular 
profession,  and  a  regular  means  of  livelihood,  almost  necessarily 
brought  with  it  the  devotion  of  the  man  of  letters  himself  to  any  and 
every  form  of  literature  for  which  there  was  a  public 
demand.  Addison  was  enabled  by  his  preferments  to  ^ai"'"ork!' 
confine  himself  mainly  to  the  essay — the  new  popular 
form  of  the  time  —  and  to  the  old  popular  form,  the  drama ;  and  Pope's 
paternal  means,  with  the  profits  of  the  Homer,  in  the  same  way  enabled 
him  to  be  nothing  but  a  poet.  But  the  more  evil  days  of  the  central 
decades  necessitated  a  greater  distribution  of  talent.  The  essay, 
succeeded  though  not  ousted  by  the  novel,  continued  to  be  the  most 
strictly  popular  form  of  writing.  But  the  drama  had  not  ceased  to 
be  the  most  easily  profitable  —  a  man  might  throughout  the  eighteenth 
century  make  three  or  four  hundred  pounds  much  more  readily  by 
dramatic  writing  than  by  any  other  kind.  The  poem,  at  least  of  the 
didactic  kind  dear  to  the  time,  continued  to  be  the  most  dignified  — 
the  novice  who,  as  most  novices  generously  do,  aspired  to  the  praise 
as  well  as  the  pay,  must  still  attempt  a  poem.  And  lastly,  there  was  an 
ever-widening  demand  for  those  kinds  of  writing  which  may  be  hack- 
work or  something  more,  according  to  the  abilities  and  dispositions 
of  their  executants  —  for  translation,  historical  and  miscellaneous 
compilation,  popular  science.  It  became,  therefore,  almost  ncccssar}' 
on  the  one  hand,  and  comparatively  easy  on  the  other,  for  the 
denizen  of  "Grub  Street "  — that  partly  real,  partly  imaginary,  wholly 
debatable  abode  of  the  average  author  from  .somewhat  before  1725 
to  considerably  after  1775  —  to  be  everything  by  turns  and  nothing 
long.  The  most  distinguished  members  by  far  of  the  class  were 
Johnson  and  Goldsmith,  and  it  has  therefore  .seemed  desirable  to 
notice  all  their  work    together   here.     But   since   perhaps    their  best, 


6i4    MIDDLE  AND   LATER   18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

and  certainly  their  most  congenial,  work  partook  of  the  essay 
kind,  they  have  been  set  at  the  head  of  the  essayist  class  more 
particularly. 

Samuel  Johnson  ^  was  born  at  Lichfield  on  i8th  September  1709. 
He  was  the  son  of  a  bookseller,  and  therefore  had  ample  and  early 
opportunity  to  become  acquainted  with   books.     And   his   education, 

though   fitful,  was  sufficient.     After  private  schooling,  he 
^°'li"e°"'^     was   able   to   go    to    Pembroke    College,   Oxford,   in   his 

twentieth  year,  but  his  father,  who,  though  of  some  posi- 
tion among  his  townsmen,  had  never  been  prosperous,  died,  and  in 
1 73 1  Johnson,  whose  actual  career  at  the  University  was  spoilt  by  his 
poverty,  had  to  leave  without  a  degree.  For  a  time  he  tried  school- 
mastering —  the  almost  invariable  refuge  of  the  destitute  with  literary 
tendencies.  But  he  had  no  degree,  his  temper  was  unaccommodating, 
and  his  strange  physical  defects  —  very  bad  sight,  convulsive  move- 
ments, and  other  scrofulous  symptoms  —  were  about  the  worst  possible 
equipment  for  the  task.  In  his  six-and-twentieth  year  he  married  a 
widow  some  twenty  years  his  senior  (with  a  little  money,  but  not  for 
it,  for  he  was  dotingly  fond  of  her),  and  set  up  a  private  academy.  But 
it  was  not  successful,  and  in  1737  he  went  to  London  with  his  pupil 
Garrick.  Few  details  of  his  life  for  many  years  are  known,  for  Boswell, 
his  biographer  later,  could  get  at  little.  What  is  certain  is  that  he 
suffered  all  the  pangs  and  rebuffs  of  poverty ;  what  is  not  quite  so 
certain  is  whether  his  curious  fitful  indolence  and  his  irritable  temper 
had  not  more  to  do  with  this  than  sheer  "  inauspicious  stars."  Before 
coming  to  London  he  had  translated  Lobo's  Voyage  to  Abyssinia;  a 
year  after  he  came  he  was  a  regular  contributor  to  Cave's  GentlemafC s 
Magazine,  for  which,  from  1740  to  1743,  he  wrote  half-real,  half- 
imaginary  debates  in  Parliament.  In  1738  he  had  attracted  the 
attention  of  Pope  by  publishing  London,  an  imitation  of  Juvenal, 
which  he  was  far  to  surpass  later  by  another  of  the  same  kind,  the 
sad  and  splendid  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes  (1749).  In  1747  he 
planned,  and  persuaded  the  booksellers  to  adopt,  the  scheme  of  his 
famous  Dictionary,  which  was  completed  in  eight  years,  and  for  which 
he  received  fifteen  hundred  pounds,  a  sum  not  inconsiderable  in  itself, 
and  large  for  the  time,  but  naturally  amounting  to  little  more  than 
starvation  wages  when  the  expenses  were  deducted,  and  the  time  of 
composition  taken  in.  In  1750,  having  already,  in  ways  not  entirely  com- 
prehensible, attained  a  high  literary  reputation,  he  issued  the  Rambler 
in  the  revived  Spectator  vein,  and  when  he  had  finished  it  his  wife 
died,  never  to  be  forgotten.  Later  he  followed  the  Rambler  with  the 
Idler  (not  separately  published),  and  wrote,  to  pay  the  expenses  of  his 

1  The  best  complete  edition  of  Johnson  is  that  of  the  "  Oxford  Classics,"  pub« 
lished  three-quarters  of  a  century  ago. 


CH.  Ill    JOHNSON,  GOLDSMITH,  AND  THE  LATER  ESSAYISTS     615 

mother's  funeral,  the  tale  of  Rasselas  (1759),  less  a  novel  than  a  grave 
satire  on  human  life.  At  last,  in  the  new  reign  (1762),  he  received 
a  pension  of  three  hundred  a  year,  which  to  him  was  wealth.  The 
last  twenty-two  years  of  his  life  are  better  known,  and  were  happier, 
owing  to  his  friendship  with  the  Thrales  and  Boswell,  his  clubs,  and 
his  position  as  literary  dictator.  But  he  wrote  little,  his  Journey  to 
the  Western  Islands  of  Scotlatid  (1774),  an  agreeable  book,  with  one 
immortal  passage,  and  his  admirable  Lives  of  the  Poets  (1779-81) 
being  the  chief  exceptions.  His  health,  which  had  never  been  good, 
gave  him  some  respite  in  early  old  age,  but  became  worse  again 
later,  and  after  suffering  from  paralysis,  dropsy,  and  asthma,  he  died 
on  13th  December  1784,  being  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey,  and 
commemorated  by  a  monument  in  St.  Paul's. 

During  the  later  part  of  his  lifetime,  Johnson  was  undoubtedly 
regarded  as  a  sort  of  unofficial  head  of  English  literature,  and 
also  as  a  great  philosopher  and  sage ;  while  the  reaction  and 
oblivion  which  so  often  follow  in  such  cases  were  pre- 
vented by  the  singular  charms  of  BoswelFs  Life  (see  last  reputation, 
chapter  of  this  Book).  But  the  Romantic  school  bitterly 
disliked  Johnson's  literary  principles  and  practice,  though  not  his 
political  and  religious  theories,  while  these  latter  have  become 
unpopular  since.  It  has  thus  been  usual  during  the  greater  part  of 
the  present  century  to  extol  Johnson's  moral  character,  and  feel  or 
affect  delight  in  his  biography,  while  assigning  him  no  high  place  as 
a  writer.  It  is  true  that  with  the  not  quite  certain  exception  of  the 
Lives  of  the  Poets,  Johnson  can  claim  no  single  work  uniting  bulk 
with  value  of  matter  and  originality  of  form.  His  work  in  verse  is 
very  small,  and  though  all  of  it  is  scholarly  and  some  elegant,  it  is 
universally  composed  in  obedience  to  a  very  narrow  and  jejune 
theory  of  English  versification  and  English  poetics  generally. ^ 
Nothing  perhaps  but  the  beautiful  epitaph  on  his  friend  Levett.  and 
the  magnificent  statement  of  his  religious  pessimism  in  the  I'anity  of 
Human  Wishes,  distinctly  transcends  mediocrity.  His  tragedy  of 
Ire7ie  is  a  not  very  good  example  of  an  entirely  artificial  and  lifeless 
kind.  Although  his  essays  have  been  oftener  under-  than  over- 
valued of  late,  they  are  far  from  original  in  conception,  and  tliose 
at  least  of  the  Rambler  are  too  often  injured  by  the  cxces-  ^^^^^ 
sively  stiff  and  cumbrous  style  which  has  been  rather 
unjustly  identified  witli  Johnson's  manner  of  writing  generally.  His 
Dictionary,  though  a  wonderful  monument  of  enterprise  and  labour,  and 
though  containing  many  acute  and  some  witty  definitions,  is,  as  he  well 
knew  himself,    but    "drudgery,"  and    his    political    pamplilels,  though 

iThe  poems  on  the  Seasons  are  well  worth  study  as  instances  of  this.     But  it 
is  fair  to  say  that  their  authorship  is  not  quite  certain. 


6i6     MIDDLE  AND  LATER  18TH-CENTURY  LITERATURE     bk.  ix 

forcible  and  sensible,  and  his  Journey  to  the  Hebrides,  though  inter- 
esting, suffer  also  from  "Johnsonese."  His  often  beautiful  prayers 
and  meditations,  his  occasional  work  in  inscriptions  and  the  like,  are, 
as  well  as  the  Dictionary,  not  easily  classifiable  literature,  though, 
like  that,  they  testify  to  the  literary  saturation  of  his  mind  and 
thought.  Rasselas,  an  admirable  though  a  mannered  composition, 
and  perhaps  the  chief  document  for  Johnson's  practical  though  melan- 
choly wisdom,  must  always  underlie  the  objection  that  it  holds  itself 
out  as  a  story,  but  has  really  no  story  to  tell,  nor  even  (save  in 
Imlac,  who  is  partly  Johnson)  any  character  to  bring  out. 

It  is  extremely  fortunate  that  very  late,  and  as  it  were  acciden- 
tally, he  was  induced  to  leave  an  adequate  and  permanent  monument 
of  his  powers  in  the  Lives  of  the  Poets.  In  these  literary  biographies, 
of  which  long  before  he  had  given  an  example  in  the  Life  of  Savage, 
he  practically  struck  into  a  new  development  of  the  essay  —  one  to 
which  Dryden  had  sometimes  come  near,  and  which  he  would  have 
carried  out  with  surpassing  excellence  had  the  time  been  ripe,  but 
which  had  not  been  actually  anticipated  by  any.  It  is  no  matter  that 
Johnson's  standards  and  view-points  are  extravagantly  and  exclusively 
of  his  time,  .so  that  occasionally  —  the  cases  of  Milton  and  Gray  are 
the  chief — he  falls  into  critical  errors  almost  incomprehensible  except 
from  the  historic  side.  Even  these  extravagances  fi.x  the  critical  creed 
of  the  day  for  us  in  an  inestimable  fashion,  while  in  the  great  bulk  of 
the  Lives  this  criticism  does  no  harm,  being  duly  adjusted  to 
the  subjects.  Johnson's  estimate  of  Chaucer  doubtless  would  have 
been,  as  his  Rambler  remarks  on  Spenser  actually  are,  worthless, 
except  as  a  curiosity.  But  of  Dryden,  of  Pope,  and  of  the  numerous 
minor  poets  of  their  time  and  his,  he  could  speak  with  a  competently 
adjusted  theory,  with  admirable  literary  knowledge  and  shrewdness, 
and  with  a  huge  store  of  literary  tradition  which  his  long  and  conver- 
sation-loving life  had  accumulated,  and  which  would  have  been  lost  for 
us  had  he  not  written. 

But  it  would   be  unjust   to   limit  Johnson's   literary  value  to  this 

book,  or  even  to  this  plus  the   Vanity  of  Htanan   Wishes,  Rasselas, 

and   the   best   of  his   essays.      It   was   far   more   extensive,   and   the 

above   referred    to    Johnsonese,    the   "great-whale"   style 

And  style.  ,  •   ,       ^    ,  ,        .  ,  ...  ,         ,     1  1 

which  Goldsmith  so  wittily  reprehended,  was  only  an 
exaggeration  of  its  good  influence.  Of  the  alternate  fashions  of 
prose  which  we  have  already  surveyed  in  some  instances,  and  shall 
survey  in  more,  the  dangers  are  also  alternate.  The  ornate  and 
fanciful  style  tends  to  the  florid  and  the  extravagant,  and  needs  to  be 
restrained  and  tamed ;  the  plain  style  tends  to  the  slipshod  and 
jejune,  and  needs  to  be  raised  and  inspired.  We  have  seen  how, 
during  the  earlier  prevalence  of  this  latter,  Addison  and  Swift  came 


CH.  Ill     JOHNSON,  GOLDSMITH,  AND  THE  LATER  ESSAYISTS      617 

to  its  rescue  from  the  mere  colloquialism  which  distinguishes  writers 
like  L'Estrange.  So  Johnson  in  its  later  came  (as  in  different  ways 
did  Gibbon  and  Burke)  to  its  rescue  from  the  jejuneness  and  lack  of 
colour  which  distinguish  writers  like  Middleton. 

His  means  may  not  have  been  perfect.  His  Latinising  (not  im- 
probably helped  by  some  early  work  of  his  on  Sir  Thomas  Browne), 
his  somewhat  ponderous  swing  of  balanced  phrase,  his  too  mechanical 
antithesis,  lie  open  to  much  easy  ridicule  and  to  some  just  censure. 
But  even  his  more  pompous  and  rhetorical  style  has  nobility  and 
dignity,  while  the  vigorous  conversational  directness  which  he  always 
maintained  in  speech,  and  by  no  means  neglected  wliolly  in  writing, 
served  to  preserve  it  from  mere  stilted  bombast.  And  as  this 
characteristic  pervades  all  his  prose  work,  all  his  prose  work  possesses, 
and  to  the  true  historic  judgment  will  always  retain,  interest  and  value 
accordingly.  As  a  poet  he  can  only  rely  on  a  few  trifles,  playful  or 
pathetic,  and  on  the  gorgeous  declamation,  rising  to  the  level  of  true 
verse-eloquence,  of  The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes. 

Oliver  Goldsmith  —  "Dr.  Minor"  to  Johnson's  *•  Ur.  Major,"  a 
curious  parallel,  complement,  and  twin,  almost  as  conventional  in 
theory,  but  with  wider  and  sweeter  humanity,  less  massive  in  thought 
as   in   form,  but    more    mobile,    with    less    wisdom    and    ^,  , ,     _ 

,  .  '  ,  Goldsmith. 

conduct,  but  far  more  grace,  fineness,  and  range  —  was 
bom  at  or  near  Pallasmore,  in  County  Longford,  on  loth  November 
1728.  The  same  neighbourhood,  though  not  the  same  county, 
furnished  the  village  of  Lissoy,  in  West  Meath,  which  has  been 
identified  as  the  suggesting,  rather  than  the  actual,  scene  of  The 
Deserted  Village.  His  father,  a  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  Ireland 
(as  was  afterwards  the  brother  to  whom  he  dedicated  The  Traveller), 
was  curate  of  both  places.  Oliver  was  educated  at  various  schools  and 
at  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  which,  however,  had  not  much  better  success 
with  him  as  a  student  than  it  had  had  with  Swift.  He  succeeded  in 
taking,  his  degree,  but  failed  to  qualify  for  orders,  and  after  other 
failures  went  to  Edinburgh  to  study  physic.  But  after  two  years  his 
restlessness  sent  him  abroad,  nominally  to  continue  his  studies  at 
Leyden  and  Paris,  really,  it  seems,  to  wander  about  the  Continent, 
whence  he  returned  with  no  money,  some  useful  and  stimulating 
experiences,  and  an  exceedingly  dubious  degree  of  Baclielor  of 
.Medicine  in  the  University  of  Louvain,  or  of  Padua,  or  perliaps  of 
Weissnichtwo,  on  the  strength  of  which  he  was  "  Dr.  Goldsmith  "  ever 
afterwards  and  sometimes  attempted  to  practise.  On  his  return  he 
became  an  usher,  a  printer's  reader,  a  reviewer,  and  hack  to  Giitfiths 
the  publisher. 

At  last,  in  1759,  he  attracted  some  attention  hy  liis  Enquiry  iuto 
the   Present   State   of  Polite   Learning  in    Europe,   an    e.xtraordinary 


6i8     MIDDLE  AND  LATER   iSTH-CENTURY  LITERATURE     bk.  ix 

compound  of  good  writing,  bad  taste,  ignorance,  mother-wit,  and 
literary  originality.  He  started  The  Bee,  a  short-lived  periodical 
containing  the  earlier  forms  of  some  of  his  best  essay-work,  and 
wrote  for  divers  others  (it  was  in  Newbery's  Public  Ledger  that  the 
"  Chinese  Letters,"  which  became  The  Citizen  of  the  World,  first 
appeared).  The  exact  date  and  origin  of  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield 
form  a  curious  bibliographical  puzzle,  for  though  not  published  till 
later,  it  had  probably  been  finished  by  1762.  He  also  did,  at  all 
times  of  his  life,  a  great  amount  of  hackwork,  at  first  anonymous  and 
wretchedly  paid,  afterwards  signed  and  very  well  rewarded,  though 
his  incurable  thriftlessness  always  kept  him  in  difficulties.  The 
Traveller,  which,  small  as  it  is,  gave  him  a  very  high  reputation, 
appeared  in  1 764 ;  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield  two  years  later ;  and  a 
third  achievement  in  a  third  line,  the  comedy  of  The  Good-natured 
Man,  two  years  later  still ;  while  after  a  similar  interval  The  Deserted 
Village  ratified  his  poetical,  and  in  three  more  She  Stoops  to  Conquer 
his  dramatic,  position.  He  died  in  April  1774  of  fever,  much  in 
debt  and  disturbed  in  mind,  but  beloved  and  lamented  by  all  the 
best  and  greatest  men  of  his  day.  His  foibles  were  numerous.  The 
odd  contradictions  of  Goldsmith's  mind  and  temper  have  been  a 
favourite  subject  with  biographers  and  essayists.  Garrick's  femous 
line  — 

He  wrote  like  an  angel,  but  talked  like  poor  Poll  — 

seems  to  have  been  generally  justified,  though  occasionally  Goldsmith 
was  more  than  a  match  for  his  society.  His  work  —  not  merely  his 
hack  compilations  —  abounds  in  the  most  ludicrous  blunders  and 
evidences  of  ignorance ;  his  critical  faculties  were  utterly  haphazard. 
As  for  moral  traits,  though  the  idleness  of  his  youth  certainly  did  not 
characterise  his  manhood,  and  though  there  is  not  much  proof  that 
after  he  became  industrious  he  was,  as  he  certainly  was  earlier,  a 
gambler,  he  had  none  of  the  prudential  virtues.  With  an  income 
probably  at  least  three  times  as  large  as  Johnson's  ever  was,  he  died 
two  thousand  pounds  in  debt.  But  much  of  this  seems  to  have  been 
due  to  his  generosity  to  others  —  a  quality  which,  with  his  general 
kindliness  of  heart,  has  never  been  denied.  And  in  literature  he 
was,  as  Johnson  himself  emphatically  said,  "a  very  great  man."  His 
plays  had  best  be  left  to  give  some  savour  and  substance  to  that  chapter 
on  eighteenth-century  drama,  which,  but  for  him  and  for  Sheridan, 
would  be  indeed  a  thin  thing;  the  rest  of  his  work  may  be  noticed 
here. 

The  poetical  part  is  surprisingly  small  in  bulk,  but  full  of  quality, 
though  not  always  of  strictly  poetical  quality.  It  consists  of  The 
Traveller  and  The  Deserted   Village,  each  of  rather  more  than  400 


CH.  Ill     JOHNSON,  GOLDSMITH,  AND  THE  LATER  ESSAYISTS     619 

lines ;  of  the  pretty  but  not  very  strong  ballad  of  The  Hermit,  better 
known  as  '•  Edwin  and  Angelina  '' ;  of  the  two  capital  light  poems 
in  swinging  anapaest,  The  Haunch  of  Venison  and  Re- 
taliation; of  a  quite  unimportant  Oratorio;  and  of  a  ^'^^^■■"• 
few  pages  of  miscellaneous  verse,  the  best  things  of  which  are  the 
quaint yk-w  d' esprit, ''The  Description  of  an  Author's  Bed-chamber," 
'•  The  Elegy  on  the  Death  of  a  Mad  Dog,"  the  famous  Stanzas  on 
Woman  —  "When  lovely  woman  stoops  to  folly,"  the  pathetic-humorous 
epitaph  on  Ned  Purdon,  and  the  sardonic  elegy  on  Mrs.  Mary  Blaize. 
This  latter  division,  especially  with  the  brilliant  Retaliation,  a  string  of 
consummate  repartees  on  his  mentors  of  the  Club  {except  Johnson), 
displays,  with  the  additional  zest  of  verse,  the  qualities  which  we  shall 
note  more  fully  in  Goldsmith's  prose.  His  two  serious  and,  so  to 
speak,  ''full-dress"  poems  are  a  curious  contrast.  It  is  certain  that 
they  enjoyed  the  benefit  of  Johnson's  criticism,  and  not  improbable 
that  they  underwent  rehandling  from  him ;  and  they  show  not  merely 
that  rigid  adherence  to  the  older  couplet  as  vehicle  which  he  preferred, 
but  a  great  similarity  to  his  general  ways  of  thought.  They  e.xcel  the 
London  and  The  Vanity  of  Hianan  Wishes  as  much  in  grace,  variety, 
and  sense  of  nature  as  they  fall  short  of  the  Vanity  in  grandeur  and 
force ;  but  they  are  not  in  their  own  fashion  devoid  either  of  force  or 
of  grandeur.  They  were  the  last  really  great  work  of  the  artificial- 
conventional  school  of  verse,  and  not  far  from  its  greatest. 

In  prose-writing,  when  he  did  not  endeavour  to  be  critical  of 
literature,  Goldsmith  was  exposed  to  few  disadvantages  by  his  time 
and  school,  and  he  brought  extraordinary  gifts  of  his  own.  In  the 
first  place,  he  could  be  almost  as  sentimental  as  Sterne 
and  even  more  pathetic,  without  Sterne's  approaches  '^  v^o'^- 
either  to  the  maudlin  or  the  grotesque.  In  the  second  place,  he  iiad 
a  quite  miraculous  gift  of  seizing,  in  the  re-creative  fashion,  touches 
and  traits  in  humanity  —  a  gift  shared  by  no  one  else  in  his  centurv 
save  Fielding,  and  of  a  kind  quite  different  from  Fielding's.  Lastly, 
and  for  the  purposes  of  literature  most  important  of  all,  he  had  the 
gift  of  an  altogether  charming  style,  which  is  impossible  to  analyse 
and  very  difficult  even  to  describe  vaguely ;  so  tiiat  it  has  never  been 
successfully  imitated,  though  Thackeray  has,  by  a  different  route,  some- 
times reached  very  similar  effects. 

Goldsmith  put  a  little  of  this  style  in  his  merest  hack  com|)ila- 
fions,  but  he  used  it  to  the  best  effect  partly  in  scattered  essay 
productions  loosely  following  the  Spectator  model,  partly  in  The  Vicar 
of  IVakefeld,  and  partly  in  the  book  called  The  Citizen  of  the  World. 
The  ostensible  scliemc  of  this  last  follows  Montcs(|uicu  and  many 
others  so  as  to  satirise  English  .society  by  representing  it  as  it  aiij)e.irs 
to  an  Oriental.     This  scheme  as  .such  was  a  liitlc  stale;  it  had  been 


620     MIDDLE  AND  LATER  18TH-CENTURY  LITERATURE     bk.  ix 

used  again  and  again  from  Tom  Brown  downwards,  nor  were 
Goldsmith's  powers  of  philosophic  reflection  or  of  social  satire  exactly 
those  required  for  it.  But  in  his  hands  it  served  as  the  opportunity 
for  the  creation  and  working  out  of  the  most  delightfully  live  figures, 
of  whom  the  shabby  Beau  Tibbs  is  only  the  most  famous  and  hardly 
the  best.  Perhaps  his  most  wonderful  thing  is  the  "  Reverie  at  the 
Boar's  Head,"  which,  though  some  of  it  is  cut-and-dried  political  or 
religious  polemic,  is  unique  in  the  work  of  the  eighteenth  century 
outside  Swift,  and  possesses  an  easy  lambent  light  of  fancy  which 
the  fierce  blaze  of  Swift's  genius  rarely  allowed  him  to  give. 

It  was  in  the  handling  of  the  Essay  —  for  all  his  important  prose 
work  really  belongs  to  this  class,  even  the  Vicar  having  strong  inclina- 
tions thereto  —  that  Goldsmith's  greatest  importance  in  the  history  of 
English  prose  literature  consists.  Johnson  had  not  carried  the  scheme 
or  scope  of  his  Ramblers  and  Idlers  much,  if  at  all,  beyond  the 
Steele-Addison  model ;  and  though  the  contemporary  revivers  of  this, 
who  will  presently  be  noticed,  modernised  the  subjects  a  little,  they 
did  not  much  alter  the  style.  But  Goldsmith  holds  out  a  hand  to 
Leigh  Hunt  on  one  side  as  he  does  to  Steele  on  the  other  in  point  of 
selection  of  subjects  and  mode  of  treatment ;  while  he  far  excels 
both  in  that  quintessential  quality  of  style  which  is  of  more 
supreme  importance  in  the  Essay  than  anywhere  else.  The  greatest 
of  all  miscellaneous  writers  on  the  lighter  side  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  as  Johnson  is  the  greatest  of  its  miscellaneous  writers  on  the 
more  serious  —  this  is  a  title  which  Goldsmith  cannot  be  grudged  or 
denied ;  and  when  it  is  remembered  that  he  was  also  one  of  its  best 
tale-tellers,  the  best,  with  only  one  possible  rival,  of  its  dramatists, 
and  one  of  the  most  noteworthy  of  its  poets,  Johnson's  verdict  will 
hardly  be  thought  undeserved. 

The    Rambler    and    at    least    the    earlier    essays    of    Goldsmith 

were   part   of  a  second   blossoming   of  the   periodical  or   occasional 

essay,  which  appeared  about  the  middle  of  the  century,  and  continued 

with  intervals  to  the  very  eve   of  the  appearance   of  the 

essayists.      "^^^^  reviews  and  magazines  of  the  modern  kind.     There 

had   indeed   been   things    of  the    sort  in  the  thirty  years 

between  the  last  attempts   of  Addison   and    Steele   and   the   first   of 

Johnson,  but  they  had  had  little  or  no  interest  save  such  as  is  derived 

from   the   already  mentioned  fact  that  Fielding  had  a  hand  in  some 

of  them. 

The  most  noticeable  except  the  Rambler  and  the  Adventurer 
(a  sort  of  imitation  Rambler,  edited  by  Hawkesworth,  the  great  ape 
of  Johnson,  and  contributed  to  by  Johnson  himself)  was  the  World, 
which  appeared  between  1753  and  1756.  This  is  noteworthy, 
because    an    attempt   was    made    to   make   it   a   distinct  "journal   of 


CH.  Ill     JOHNSON,  GOLDSMITH,  AND  THE  LATER  ESSAYISTS     621 

society."  The  editor,  Edward  Moore,  was  a  man  of  letters  of  some 
ability,  who  played  the  main  part  of  '-Adam  FitzAdam "— the 
eidolon  who,  according  to  the  etiquette  of  the  scheme,  was  supposed 
to  produce  the  paper  —  very  fairly.  Its  interest  for  us  consists  in  the 
fact  that  among  the  contributors  were  some  of  the  very  chief  of  those 
men  of  fashion,  Chesterfield,  Horace  Walpole,  Soame  Jenyns,  Han- 
bury  Williams,  who  at  the  time  affected  literature.  It  was  in  the 
World,  for  instance,  that  Chesterfield's  well-meant,  and  in  recent 
days  rather  unfairly  treated,  attempt  to  do  a  good  turn  to  Johnson's 
Dictionary  appeared,  and  drew  from  the  nettled  lexicographer  the 
famous  letter,  which,  though  a  magnificent  piece  of  English,  is  not 
perhaps  as  magnanimous,  or  even  as  just,  as  it  is  magnificent.  Soon 
after  the  World  appeared,  with  a  less  brilliant  staff,  but  still  written 
"by  gentlemen  for  gentlemen,"  the  Connoisseur  of  Colman  the 
Elder  and  Bonnel  Thornton,  where  the  eidolon  was  '"Mr.  Town," 
and  where  Cowper  produced  the  few  examples  of  literature  that  we 
have  from  him  before  his  terrible  ailment  and  his  long  abstinence 
from  writing.  Another  long  gap,  with  nothing  of  importance  except 
(and  this  is  of  very  great  importance)  the  work  of  Goldsmith,  brings 
us  to  the  two  interesting  periodicals,  the  Mirror  (1779-80)  and  the 
Lounger  (1785-87),  issued  at  Edinburgh,  not  in  London,  by  Henry 
Mackenzie,  the  '•  Man  of  Feeling "  {vide  supra),  and  a  knot  of  Scot- 
tish wits,  lawyers,  and  literati  generally.  These  periodicals  give 
the  usual  direct  and  indirect  information  on  costume,  the  manners 
of  society,  and  the  like,  some  vivid  sketches  of  the  Pitt  and  Fox 
struggle,  some  valuable  literary  criticism  (Mackenzie's  review  of  Burns, 
for  instance),  some  interesting  details  about  "  nabobs,"  and,  above  all, 
numerous  evidences  of  the  growing  taste  for  the  picturesque. 

In  the  very  last  attempts  to  carry  out  the  Spectator  tradition,  that 
have  attained  a  sort  of  shelter  from  oblivion  in  the  cavern  of  the 
British  Essayists,'^  the  Observer  of  Cumberland,  and  the  Looker  On 
of  a  clergyman  named  Roberts,  there  is  little  of  interest  except  the 
proof  that  the  form  was  really  dead,  though  two  respectable  persons 
were  trying  to  galvani.se  it.  The  actual  Essay  was  I)efore  many  years 
were  over  to  break  fresh  ground  in  every  direction,  and  with  the  novel 
to  become  the  distinguishing  form  of  the  literature  of  the  nineteenth 
century.     But  in  this  particular  shape  it  had  done  its  work. 

1  It  has  been  thought  sufficient  to  confine  notice  here  to  the  contents  of  llie 
standard  collection  of  /Iritish  Essayists  liy  Ciialmers  (45  vols.  1808),  ihoiigii  it 
does  not  contain  even  the  last  and  minor  essays  of  Steele  and  Addison,  or  those 
of  Fielding,  much  less  the  numerous  attempts  of  less  famous  persons  in  the  kind 
throughout  the  century. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE   GRAVER   PROSE 

Lateness  of  history  in  English  —  Hume  —  Robertson  —  Minors  —  Gibbon  —  The 
Autobiography —  The  Decline  and  Fall — His  style  —  Burke — His  rhetorical 
supremacy — Qualities  of  his  style  and  method  —  Theology  and  philosophy  — 
Warburton  —  Paley  —  Adam  Smith  —  Godwin  —  His  importance  and  position 

Although  the  separation  of  this  chapter  from  the  last  may  seem 
questionable,  inasmuch  as  most  things  that  Johnson  at  least  wrote 
were  grave,  and  as  Goldsmith  wrote  copiously  what  he  at  least  called 
history,  there  is  sufficient  justification  for  it  in  the  fact  that  the  Essay 
always  and  properly  tends  to  lightness,  to  popular  treatment,  and  that 
the  historical  school  of  the  time  is  sufficiently  important  to  have  the 
principal  place  in  a  chapter  which  may  also  have  other  constituents. 
We  may  pass  from  it,  taking  the  great  figure  of  Burke  as  a  point  of 
junction,  through  writers  on  political  philosophy  to  those  on  philoso- 
phy proper,  and  may  also  include  the  (for  us  and  at  this  time)  less 
important  section  of  theology. 

The  development  of  historical  writing,  as  apart  from  mere  chron- 
icling, is  necessarily  somewhat  late,  but  it  was  later  in  England  than 
in   any   other   country.      At    the    close    of    the   seventeenth    century 
Lateness  of    Raleigh,  Knolles,  and  Clarendon   stood   practically  alone 
history  in     jn  English  literature  (nor  was  Clarendon   yet  printed)  as 
historians  who   united   bulk  of  work   to   historical   sense 
and  merit  of  literary  style.     Even  of  these  Raleigh  is  chiefly  qualified 
by  the  beauty  of  his   purple   patches.     Nor  for  some  time  after  the 
beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  itself  was  there  much  improve- 
ment.    But  towards  the  middle  of  it  remarkable  changes  were  made 
by  two   Scottish  scholars,  Hume  and  Robertson,  while  towards  the 
end   the   greatest    historian   in   every  sense   that    England    has    yet 
seen  arose  in  Gibbon. 

David  Hume  belongs  to  this  chapter  by  a  double  title  as  philos- 
opher and  as  historian,  while  he  might  almost  have  appeared  in 
the  last  as  essayist.     He  was  born  at  Edinburgh  in  171 1,  his  father 

622 


CHAP.  IV  THE   GRAVER   PROSE  623 

being   of  the   border   clan   of  Home    or   Hume,  and   a   Berwickshire 
laird ;  but  David  was  not  the  eldest  son.     He  went  to  the  University 
of  his  native  town,  tried  law,  tried  commerce  in  England, 
but  liked  neither,  and  had  just  sufficient  means  to  enable  "™^" 

him  to  fall  back  on  private  study.  It  was  after  a  visit  to  France  that 
he  published  (in  1739)  his  remarkable  Treatise  of  Hitman  Nature, 
and  he  followed  it  up  two  or  three  years  later  with  Essays  Moral 
and  Political.  But  he  still  had  no  fixed  employment,  and  for  some 
years  he  tried  tutorships,  secretaryships,  and  the  like.  He  competed 
in  vain  for  more  than  one  professorship  in  the  Scottish  Universities, 
but  was  appointed  Keeper  of  the  Advocates'  Library.  Before  this  he 
had  published  (1748)  an  Enquiry  concerning  Human  Understanding 
and  (1751)  an  Enquiry  into  the  Principles  of  Morals.  These  later 
books  were  in  some  sort  refashionings  of  the  earlier.  It  was  not  till 
1754  that  he  began  his  celebrated  History  of  England  m\.\\tvMAd\t 
by  a  volume  on  the  two  first  Stuarts,  which  he  afterwards  extended 
forward  to  the  Revolution  and  backward  to  the  beginnings.  The 
whole  took  eight  years  to  finish.  He  also  publislied  Dissertations 
in  1762,  and  some  posthumous  work  has  to  be  added.  His  later 
years  were  as  prosperous  as  his  earlier  had  been  uncertain.  In  1763 
he  was  made  Secretary  of  Legation  in  Paris,  where  he  was  quite  at 
home,  and  three  years  later  he  became  Under  Secretary  for  the  Home 
Department.  He  died  in  Edinburgh  (1776).  Hume  was  an  amiable 
and  friendly  person,  with  some  slight  foibles  of  vanity  and  epicure- 
anism. His  religious  scepticism,  which  was  at  least  as  much  a 
fashion  of  his  time  as  it  was  necessarily  connected  with  his  philo- 
sophical views,  does  not  directly  concern  us  here. 

This  sceptical  tendency,  however,  applied  in  other  direction.s, 
made  him  very  important  in  philosophy  and  history,  while  his  gifts 
of  expression  as  applied  to  these  two  subjects  made  him  at  least 
equally  important  in  literature.  In  philosophy  he  applied  his  criti- 
cism to  the  furthering  of  the  Lockian  system,  not  in  the  idealist- 
constructive  direction  of  Berkeley,  but  in  an  almost  wliolly 
destructive  way,  abolishing  the  connection  of  cause  and  effect  in 
favour  of  mere  sequence,  substituting  a  bare  chain  of  thoughts  for  an 
independently  thinking  mind,  and  reducing  everything  to  sensation; 
in  history  he  applied  himself  to  the  dissolution  of  the  Whig  myths. 
His  philosophical  importance  has  lasted  better  than  his  historical, 
because  his  history,  though  full  of  ability,  was  written  without  access 
to  many  documents  since  laid  open,  and  with  a  somewhat  insuffi- 
cient attention  to  careful  use  of  those  that  were  accessible ;  while  his 
philosophy,  needing  nothing  but  the  furniture  of  his  own  mind,  and 
employing  that  in  the  best  way  on  one  side  of  perennially  interesting 
and    insoluble   questions,  remains  a  point   de  repire  for  ever.     It  is 


624      MIDDLE  AND  LATER  18TH-CENTURY  LITERATURE     bk.  ix 

indeed  admitted  to  have  practically  restarted  all  philosophical  in- 
quiry, being  as  much  the  origin  of  German  and  other  theory  as  of  the 
Scottish  school  and  of  later  English  negative  materialism.  Luckily,  too, 
the  value  of  literary  work  as  such  is  far  more  enduring  than  that  of 
either  philosophy  or  history  by  themselves.  For  they  may  be  super- 
seded, but  it  never  can.  And  Hume's  expression  was  for  his  special 
purposes  supreme  —  perfectly  clear,  ironical,  but  not  to  the  point  of 
suspicious  frivolity,  and  as  polished  as  the  somewhat  dead  and  flat 
colour  of  the  style  of  the  time  would  admit. 

William  Robertson,  a  man  of  less  original  mental  force  than 
Hume,  but  nearly  as  good  a  writer,  and  a  more  careful  historian, 
was  born  at  Borthwick  in  Midlothian  on  igth  September  1721. 
His  father  was  a  minister,  and  he  himself,  after  school 
and  university  education  at  Dalkeith  and  Edinburgh, 
became  one.  At  about  the  age  of  thirty  he  became  conspicuous  in 
the  General  Assembly  as  leader  of  the  "  Moderate  "  or  Latitudinarian 
party.  And  in  1759  he  became  joint  minister  of  Greyfriars  in 
Edinburgh ;  his  amicable  differences  with  his  Evangelical  col- 
league Dr.  Erskine  are  commemorated  in  Guy  Mannering.  He  had 
just  in  the  winter  of  1758-59  published  his  History  of  Scotland  viiih. 
very  great  success,  and  in  consequence  of  it  he  became  chaplain  to 
the  King  in  1761,  Principal  of  the  University  a  year  later,  and 
historiographer-royal  in  1764.  His  second  great  work,  ten  years 
later  than  his  first,  was  his  History  of  the  Reign  of  Charles  /.,  which 
brought  him  in  a  very  large  sum  of  money.  He  issued  a  third,  the 
History  of  America,  in  1777,  and  a  Disquisition  on  the  Knowledge 
which  the  Ancients  had  of  India  in  1791.  Two  years  later  he  died. 
Robertson  was  a  very  popular  man  —  even  Johnson  loved  him,  in  spite 
of  what  might  seem  the  three  fatal  defects  of  Scottish  nationality, 
Whig  politics,  and  Latitudinarian  religion  — -  but  his  personal  popu- 
larity had  no  unfair  influence  on  his  historical  successes.  His  style 
is,  in  the  merely  correct,  but  not  merely  jejune,  kind,  singularly 
good ;  his  conception  of  history,  though  not  answering  to  that  of 
more  modern  times,  and  tinged  with  the  idiosyncrasies  of  his  age, 
is  philosophical  and  shrewd ;  and  above  all,  he  had,  what  modern 
historians,  with  all  their  pretensions  and  all  their  equipment,  have  too 
often  lacked,  a  thorough  sense  of  rhetorical  fitness  in  the  good,  not 
the  empty,  sense,  and  could  make  his  histories  definite  works  of  art 
and  definite  logical  presentments  of  a  view.  Nor  was  he  by  any 
means  careless  of  research  according  to  his  own  standard,  which  was 
already  a  severer  one  than  that  of  Hume. 

A  great  deal  of  history  was  written  in  the  third  quarter  of  the 
century,  most  of  which  has  in  due  course  become  waste-paper. 
The  most  characteristic  specimens  of  this  are  naturally  to  be  found 


CHAP.  IV  THE   GRAVER   PROSE  623 

in  the  historical  work  of  Goldsmith  and  Smollett.  The  qualifica- 
tions, however,  of  neither  were  those  of  the  historian  proper.  Both 
were  writing  rapidly  as  hacks ;  and  there  is  perhaps  no 
department  of  literature  which  is  so  impatient  of  hack- 
work as  history.  But  though  neither  had  anything  like  the  requisite 
knowledge,  or  gave  anything  like  the  requisite  time  and  pains  to  his 
work,  both  had  attractiveness.  Goldsmith's  exquisite  style  and 
singular  instinctive  knowledge  of  humanity,  Smollett's  faculty  of 
narrative,  and  his  strong,  though  not  always  impartial,  sense,  took 
their  work  out  of  the  merely  ephemeral  as  literature,  though  perhaps 
without  giving  it  the  qualities  or  the  dignity  of  history.  Of  the 
numerous  and  sometimes  not  unnoteworthy  writers  of  their  own 
class  and  beneath  them  —  the  Psalmanazars,  the  John  Campbells,  and 
the  rest  —  it  is  impossible  to  write  here. 

But  they  lielped  the  vogue  of  history,  and  so  may  have  given  a 
little  impetus  to  the  greatest  historical  book  of  the  century,  if  not  of 
all  time,  The  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Edward 
Gibbon  was  born  at  Putney  in  the  spring  of  1737.  of  a      ^., , 

r       -1  TT  •   1  .  Gibbon. 

good  and  rather  wealthy  family.  He  was  a  very  sickly 
child  (indeed,  he  never  had  very  good  health),  and  seems  to  have 
been  as  unhappy  as  Cowper  during  his  two  years  at  Westminster. 
Nor  was  his  stay  at  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  more  fortunate. 
He  went  up  too  young  (in  April  1752),  disliked  the  place  and  the 
college,  and  took  into  his  head  to  profess  himself  converted  to  Roman 
Catholicism.  After  an  interval  his  father  sent  him  to  Switzerland  to 
be  reconverted  by  a  Protestant  minister  at  Lausanne,  M.  Pavillard, 
whose  endeavours  were  crowned  by  the  rather  dubious  success  that 
Gibbon  on  Christmas  Day  "received  the  sacrament  with  Protestant 
rites,  and  suspended  his  religious  inquiries."  The  tone  of  his  sub- 
sequent work  would  seem  to  indicate  that  the  pendulum  remained  in 
an  abnormal  deflection  from  the  perpendicular.  He  remained,  how- 
ever, at  Lausanne  for  some  five  years,  reading  much,  as  well  as 
falling  in  love,  and,  at  his  father's  command,  out  of  it,  with  Mile. 
Suzanne  Curchod,  the  future  Madame  Necker,  and  mother  of  Madame 
de  Stael,  to  whom  she  did  not  transmit  her  own  delicate  beauty. 
Gil)bon  returned  to  England  in  1758,  writing  French  nearly  as  well 
as  English,  and  witli  strong  but  indefinite  literary  aspirations.  He 
served  in  the  militia  for  some  years  and  then  again  went  abroad, 
finally  conceiving,  as  he  has  told  in  one  of  the  magical  sentences  of 
his  autobiography,  the  definite  idea  of  his  great  work  on  the  15th  of 
October  1764.  But  he  was  in  no  hurry,  and  twelve  years  of  residence 
in  Switzerland  and  at  home,  of  business  anxieties  after  liis  father's 
death,  of  silent  membership  of  Parliament,  and,  for  a  time,  of  tenure 
of  office  as  a  Commissioner  of  Trade  and  I'lantations,  passed  before 
2  s 


626      MIDDLE  AND  LATER  18TH-CENTURY  LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

the  first  volume  appeared  in  February  1776.  Another  twelve,  great 
part  of  which  was  passed  in  Switzerland,  saw  the  completion,  the 
actual  moment  of  which  he  has  recorded  in  as  stately  a  fashion  as 
that  accorded  to  its  beginning.     In  1794  he  died  in  London. 

Gibbon's  miscellaneous  work,  both  in  English  and  French,  is  not 
inconsiderable,  and  it  displays  his  peculiar  characteristics ;  but  the 
only  piece  of  distinct  literary  importance  is  his  Autobiography.  This, 
upon  which  he  seems  to  have  amused  himself  by  spend- 
Autobiography.  i"&  much  pains,  was  left  unsettled  for  press.  Edited 
with  singular  judgment  and  success  under  the  care  of 
his  intimate  friend  and  literary  executor  Lord  Sheffield,  it  has  been 
for  three  generations  one  of  the  favourite  things  of  its  kind  with  all 
good  judges,  and  is  likely  to  continue  so  in  the  textiis  receptus.,  for 
which  the  fussy  fidelity  of  modern  literary  methods  will  probably  try 
in  vain  to  substitute  a  chaos  of  rough  drafts. 

Even  this,  however,  is  a  mere  hors  d''ce2ivre  and  kickshaw  in 
comparison  with  the  great  History.  According  to  the  severest  and 
most  exacting  conception  of  what  history  should  be,  it  should  satisfy 
three  conditions.  In  the  first  place,  the  author  should 
and  Fa]"."  ^^"^^  thoroughly  studied  and  intelligently  comprehended 
all  the  accessible  and  important  documents  on  the 
subject.  In  the  second,  he  should  have  so  digested  and  ordered  his 
information  that  not  merely  a  congeries  of  details,  but  a  regular 
structure  of  history,  informed  and  governed  throughout  by  a  philo- 
sophical idea,  should  be  the  result.  In  the  third,  this  result  should, 
from  the  literary  as  well  as  the  historical  side,  be  an  organic  whole 
composed  in  orderly  fashion  and  manifesting  a  distinct  and  meri- 
torious style.  It  was  in  the  first  of  these  requisites,  and  to  some 
extent  in  the  second,  that  Gibbon's  forerunners,  including  Robertson 
and  Hume,  had  been  chiefly  deficient ;  it  is  in  the  second,  and  to 
some  extent  in  the  third,  that  his  successors  of  the  modern  historical 
school  have  fallen  short. 

In  the  first  two  points,  by  common  consent  of  all  the  competent. 
Gibbon  attains  an  excellence  which,  when  his  time  and  circumstances 
are  considered,  is  simply  marvellous,  and  which  does  not  lose  much 
of  its  wonder  even  when  the  proviso  is  withdrawn.  The  unceasing 
rummage  of  a  hundred  years  has  added,  of  course,  much  in  bulk  to 
the  mass  of  his  information,  but  it  has  added  much  less  in  substance. 
For,  on  the  one  hand,  Gibbon  has  the  gift  of  understanding  the  true 
sense  of  all  that  he  read ;  and  on  the  other,  the  gift  of  divining 
much  that  he  could  not  or  did  not  read.  But  his  faculty  of  getting 
at  individual  truths  is  of  less  importance  than  his  faculty  of  historical 
••  architectonic,"  his  grasp  of  the  historic  sense.  Almost  his  only 
drawback    in    this   respect   lay   in   the   peculiarity   of  which    he   was 


CHAP.  IV  THE   GRAVER   PROSE  627 

probably,  as  men  usually  are  of  their  weaknesses,  most  proud  —  his 
attitude  of  sceptical  belittlement  towards  Christianity  in  particular, 
though  not  much  more  to  Christianity  than  to  all  forms  of 
"enthusiastic"  religion.  For,  though  he  was  far  too  acute  a  thinker 
and  too  much  of  a  born  historian  not  to  see  how  great  a  part  forces 
derived  from  this  source  had  played,  he  was  bound,  on  his  own 
principles,  to  regard  these  results  as  merely  due  to  folly  and  vanity,  to 
something  negative  and  false  —  a  most  unphilosophical  theory,  which 
Carlyle  has  executed  in  one  of  his  greatest  sentences  about  another 
matter.  But  Gibbon  had  no  other  fault  as  a  historian  (though  as  a 
man  this  lack  of  enthusiasm,  and  of  comprehension  of  it,  seems  to 
have  led  him  into  some  vanities  and  meannesses)  than  this,  and  even 
this  was  not  fatal. 

Of  his  greatness  as  a  man  of  letters  there  should  have  been  even 
less  doubt ;  but  it  has  not  been  invariably  acknowledged.  The  strong 
reaction  of  early  Romanticism  involved  him  in  the  dislike  with  which  it 
regarded  all  its  more  immediate  predecessors  of  the  eighteenth  century  ; 
and  Coleridge,  who  gave  the  tone  to  all  English  criticism 
for  many  years,  was  particularly  unjust  to  Gibbon's  style. 
Even  his  own  day  was  half-puzzled  and  half-repelled  by  the  gorgeous- 
ness  of  it,  just  as  the  succeeding  age  was  by  its  extreme  stateliness 
and  want  of  alert  variety.  For  Gibbon,  like  Johnson,  of  whom  we 
have  spoken,  and  Burke,  of  whom  we  are  to  speak,  was  a  most 
prominent  representative  of  the  attempt  once  more  to  rescue  the 
plain  style  from  its  own  plainness,  to  give  it  ornament,  while  not 
relaxing  its  general  laws  of  almost  compulsory  balance  and  of  a 
certain  consecrated  phraseology.  He  attained  this  effect,  not  like 
the  one  by  a  heavily  classicised  vocabulary  and  by  exaggerated 
antithesis,  nor  like  the  other  by  accumulations  of  simile  and  metaphor 
and  epexegetic  statement.  He  was  indeed  not  very  unlike  either, 
though  he  far  surpassed  both,  in  adorning  his  writing  with  set  pieces 
of  description ;  but  the  most  characteristic  part  of  his  style  does 
not  lie  in  these.  It  lies  mainly  in  a  peculiar  roll  of  sentence, 
conducted  throughout  with  a  wavelike  movement,  and  ending 
with  a  sound  so  arranged  as  to  echo  over  the  interval  of  sense 
and  breath,  till  the  next  is  well  on  its  way.  That  this  should  be 
achieved  without  monotony  is  almost  inconceivable ;  and  Gibbon  has 
been  accused  of  this  fault,  but  not  with  much  justice.  Of  his  minor 
devices,  the  chief  is  a  peculiar  adaptation  of  the  taste  of  the  age  for 
periphrases,  which  at  once  gives  a  more  sounding  plirase  and  sug- 
gests interesting  associations  to  the  mind.  Constantius  for  him  is 
'*  the  son  of  Constantine,"  the  rostiiim  is  "the  tribunal  which  Cicero 
had  so  often  ascended"  —  a  device  much,  and  too  often  witli  disastrous 
consequences,  imitated  since,  but  in  him  of  admirable  effect. 


628      MIDDLE  AND  LATER  18TH-CENTURY  LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

The  transition  from  Gibbon  to  Burke  is  interesting  and  not 
fortuitous.  They  were  not  merely  contemporaries,  but  (though 
hardly  friends)  members  of  the  same  society;  nor  is  it 
a  mere  accident  that  Burke  was  instrumental,  by  his 
financial  reforms,  in  depriving  Gibbon  of  his  comfortable  sinecure. 
They  were  the  two  Englishmen  of  their  century  who  wrote  the  most 
gorgeous  English,  and  the  two  men  of  their  century  (with  Vico 
and  Montesquieu)  who  had  most  sense  of  historical  continuity,  of 
that  philosophic  union  of  all  times  and  countries,  one  aspect  of  which 
Burke  has  celebrated  in  brilliant  words.  But  personally  there  could 
hardly  be  a  greater  unlikeness  between  any  two  men  than  between 
Gibbon's  sluggish  nature,  his  intense  self-centredness,  not  to  say 
selfishness,  his  limited  tastes  and  interests,  and  the  enthusiastic 
manysidedness  and  impulsiveness  of  Burke.  He  was  born  at  Dublin 
in  1729,  and  was  educated  in  Ireland,  graduating  at  Trinity  College, 
Dublin,  in  1748.  He  then  went  to  London,  exactly  at  the  middle 
of  the  century,  and  kept  terms  at  the  Middle  Temple,  but  was  never 
called.  We  do  not  know  much  about  his  early  manhood,  but  in 
the  year  1756  he  published  two  small  but  very  notable  treatises, 
A  Vindication  of  Natural  Society  (following  the  style  but  ironically 
rebutting  the  argument  of  Bolingbroke)  and  A  Philosophical  Inquiry 
into  the  Origin  of  our  Ideas  of  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful,  the  first, 
and  for  a  long  time  the  only,  important  and  original  aesthetic  essay 
in  English.  In  this  same  year  he  married,  and  three  years  later  he 
planned  the  well-known  Annual  Register,  to  which  for  the  greater 
part  of  his  life  he  was  the  largest  contributor.  He  became  private 
secretary,  first  to  Gerard  Hamilton,  the  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland, 
and  then  in  1765  to  the  Marquis  of  Rockingham. 

As  this  latter  was  Prime  Minister,  Burke  was  at  once  returned  to 
Parliament,  and  continued  till  his  death  to  make  a  very  important, 
though  a  rather  curious,  figure  in  the  State.  In  the  merely  partisan 
politics  of  the  third  quarter  of  the  century  he  classed  himself  with 
the  Whigs,  and  as  the  American  Revolution  was  brought  about 
under  a  Tory  administration,  he  supported  it  as  heartily  as  he  after- 
wards opposed  the  French.  His  speeches  were  never  very  effective 
as  delivered,  but  they  had  a  great  effect  when  printed,  and  he 
constantly,  at  all  times  of  his  life,  supported  them  by  pamphlets  which 
are  almost  undistinguishable  from  the  speeches  themselves  in  kind. 
The  first  of  these  to  attract  great  attention  was  the  Observations  on 
the  Present  State  of  the  Natioti,  in  1 769 ;  but  its  follower,  next  year. 
Thoughts  on  the  Present  Discontents,  was  superior,  and  still  ranks 
among  the  very  best  of  the  class  of  writings  in  which  admirable 
literary  quality  and  great  intellectual  force  are  put  at  the  service  of 
party.     After  representing  Wendover  for  nearly  ten  years,  he  sat  for 


CHAP.  IV  THE   GRAVER   PROSE  629 

Bristol  during  six  more,  and  many  of  his  most  important  speeches 
and  tracts  were  addressed  to  this  constituency.  Afterwards,  losing 
Bristol  owing  to  his  support  of  Roman  Catholic  claims,  he  sat  for 
Malton.  When  the  North  ministry  at  last  fell,  Burke  was  Paymaster 
of  the  Forces,  in  1782-83;  he  never  held  any  other  office.  Opinions 
differ  as  to  the  reason  which  made  him,  in  1788,  join,  and  indeed 
head,  the  crusade  against  Warren  Hastings ;  but  this,  whatever  may  be 
thought  of  it,  gave  splendid  openings  for  his  rhetoric.  And  the 
almost  immediate  outbreak  of  the  French  Revolution  at  last  supplied 
his  true  subject.  Although  he  had  sometimes  been  led  astray  by 
party,  Burke's  sympathies  were  always  with  order,  humanity,  the 
distribution  to  every  class  in  the  state,  and  not  to  one  only,  be  it 
highest  or  lowest,  of  its  fair  rights,  and  above  all,  that  continuity  of 
institutions  and  of  historical  development  which  has  been  glanced  at 
above.  The  riot,  the  bloodshed,  the  gross  unfairness  to  classes, 
however  unfairly  privileged  before,  and  above  all,  the  mischievous 
and  impossible  breach  with  the  whole  history  of  the  French  nation, 
stimulated  him  not  merely  to  the  most  strenuous  action  in  Parliament, 
but  to  the  publication  of  a  series  of  works  which,  for  combined 
literary  merit  and  political  effect,  stand  alone.  The  series  began 
with  the  famous  Refleclions  on  the  French  Revolution  in  1790,  and 
it  was  continued  by  A  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord  (1790),  An  Appeal  from 
the  New  to  the  Old  Whigs  (1791),  Thoughts  on  Fretich  Affairs^  and 
the  great  Letters  on  a  Regicide  Peace,  where  in  some  cases  no  doubt 
Burke's  passionate  feeling  and  his  wonderful  command  of  language, 
not  quite  sufficiently  restrained  by  a  sense  of  humour,  led  him  to 
exaggeration  and  bad  taste,  but  which  in  the  main  are  magnificent 
examples  of  his  passionate  love  of  justice  and  freedom.  He  died  in 
1797.  Burke's  amiable,  thougii  both  excitable  and  irritable,  character 
and  temper,  his  various  conversational  ability,  and  his  other  personal 
qualities,  are  well  known  from  Boswell's  Johnson,  Miss  Burney's 
Diary,  and  other  famous  biographies  and  memoirs  of  the  period. 
His  work  —  though  some  of  it  excites  the  dislike  of  partisans  in  one 
way  and  some  in  the  other  —  has,  for  this  very  reason,  never  wanted 
admirers  of  either  party,  while  the  fortunate  impartiality  of  literature 
can  admire  tlic  whole. 

The  style  of  Burke  is  necessarily  to  be  considered  throughout  as 
conditioned  by  oratory.     For  the  last  thirty  years  of  his  life  this  was 
inevitable ;    and    though    in    his   earlier   days   he    had   not         j^j^ 
the   same    constant   practice    in    speaking,   his  undoubted     rhetorical 
selection  of  Bolingbroke  as  model  predisposed  him  in  the 
same  way.      In   other  words,  he  was    first  of  all  a  rhetorician,^  and 

1  Using  rhetoric  in  its  best  modern  genera!  sense  as  "  the  art  of  prose  literature," 
but  with  the  ancient  specialising  addition,  "applied  to  the  purpose  of  suasion." 


630     MIDDLE  AND  LATER  18TH-CENTURY  LITERATURE     bk.  ix 

probably  the  greatest  that  modern  times  have  ever  produced.  But 
his  rhetoric  always  inclined  much  more  to  the  written  than  to  the 
spoken  form,  with  results  annoying  perhaps  to  him  at  the  time, 
but  even  to  him  satisfactory  afterwards,  and  an  inestimable  gain  to 
the  world.  The  ordinary  orator's  and  debater's  work,  if  preserved 
at  all,  constantly  loses  value :  there  is  no  danger  of  Burke  being 
forgotten  while  English  literature  exists.  In  the  Vindication  (which 
is  better  Bolingbroke  than  Bolingbroke  himself)  the  sentences  are  as 
a  rule  short  and  crisp,  arranged  within  succinct  antithetic  parallels, 
which  seldom  exceed  a  single  pair  of  clauses.  In  the  Siibli7ne  and 
Beautiful  long  and  short  sentences  are  more  mixed,  and  there  is 
even  a  distinct  tendency  to  the  former.  And  in  this  treatise  we 
perceive,  though  not  yet  in  anything  like  full  development,  the  genuine 
properties  of  Burke's  own  style,  which  henceforward  become  more  and 
more  apparent. 

The    most    important    of    these,    in    so   far    as    it    is   possible    to 

enumerate    them    here,    are    as    follows.       First    of    all,   and    most 

distinctive,   so    much    so    as   to    have  escaped   no   competent   critic, 

Qualities      ^^  ^  ^^^Y  curious  and,  until  his  example  made  it  imitable, 

of  his  style    nearly  unique   faculty  of  buildins^  ufi  an   argfument  or  a 

and  method.       ■   ^  y  •  r  1^  , 

picture  by  a  succession  of  complementary  .strokes,  not 
added  at  haphazard,  but  growing  out  of  and  on  to  one  another.  No 
one  has  ever  been  such  a  master  as  was  Burke  of  the  best  and 
grandest  kind  of  the  figure  called,  in  the  technical  language  of 
rhetoric,  Amplification,  and  this,  which  in  ordinary  hands  often,  if 
not  always,  leads  to  tedious  verbiage,  is  the  direct  implement  by  which 
he  achieves  his  greatest  effects. 

In  the  work  which  succeeds  his  entrance  into  political  life,  fresh 
devices  of  ordonnance  appear,  and  the  Thoughts  on  the  Present 
Discontents  present  them  in  very  interesting  exhibition.  The  piece 
may  be  said  to  consist  of  a  certain  number  of  specially  laboured 
paragraphs,  in  which  the  arguments  or  pictures  just  spoken  of  are 
put  as  forcibly  as  the  author  can  put  them,  and,  as  a  rule,  in  a 
succession  of  shortish  sentences,  built  up  and  glued  together  with 
the  strength  and  flexibility  of  a  newly-fashioned  fishing-rod.  In  the 
intervals  the  texts  thus  given  are  turned  about,  commented  on,  justified, 
or  discussed  in  detail,  in  a  rhetoric  for  the  most  part,  though  not 
always,  rather  less  serried,  less  evidently  burnished,  and  in  less 
full  dress.  And  this  general  arrangement  proceeds  through  the 
rest  of  his  works,  with,  in  the  latest  and  most  brilliant  (those  on  the 
French  Revolution),  a  less  orderly  arrangement,  compensated  by  a 
greater  rush  of  thought  and  rhetoric. 

In  his  ornaments,  whether  of  idea  or  of  imagery,  Burke  is  better 
worth  studying  than  almost  any  other  English  writer.     In  simile  and 


CHAP.  IV  THE   GRAVER   PROSE  631 

trope  generally,  he  is,  though  often  wonderfully  brilliant,  distinctly 
uncertain,  quite  untrustworthy  in  the  direction  of  humour,  and  in 
some  of  his  more  forcible  images  apt  even  to  be  positively  disgusting. 
On  the  other  hand,  his  grandeur  seldom  falls  into  the  grandiose,  and 
the  magical  effect  of  more  imaginative  passages  (of  which  the  famous 
one  about  Marie  Antoinette  is  only  the  stock  example)  has  never 
been  exceeded  in  political  writing.  Epigram  he  can  occasionally 
manage  with  great  etTect,  but  it  is  not  by  any  means  so  specially  and 
definitely  his  weapon  as  imaginative  argument,  and  the  marshalling  of 
vast  masses  of  complicated  detail  into  properly  rhetorical  battalions 
or  (to  alter  the  image)  mosaic  pictures  of  enduring  beauty.  The 
equally  famous  sentence-picture,  in  the  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord,  of 
Windsor  Castle,  "girt  with  the  double  belt  of  its  kindred  and  coeval 
towers,"  is  an  instance,  not  excelled  by  any  sentence  in  all  the 
literatures  from  Greek  to  English,  of  words  so  used  as  to  get  out 
of  them  the  very  last  possibility,  the  full  triple  effect  —  first  of  mere 
beauty  of  sound ;  secondly,  of  conveying  with  the  utmost  force  the 
immediate  meaning  and  image  intended ;  and  thirdly,  of  urging  the 
intended  argumentative  application,  not  more  by  the  general  conduct 
of  the  sentence  than  by  the  very  ornaments  and  accessories  of  the 
phrase.  Only  a  great  imagination  would  have  been  seized  with  this 
use  of  the  inner  and  outer  bailey  and  the  keep  of  a  Gothic  fortress ; 
only  a  consummate  faculty  of  expression  could  have  so  arranged  it 
as  at  once  to  make  a  perfect  harmonic  chord,  a  complete  visual 
picture,  and  a  forcible  argument.  The  minor  rhetoric,  the  suasive 
purpose,  must  be  kept  in  view ;  if  it  be  left  out  the  thing  loses,  and 
this  is  one  of  the  points  in  which  Burke  is  far  below  Browne,  who 
has  no  need  of  purpose.  But  he  is  the  king  of  his  own  business-like 
century  in  point  of  prose. 

Theology  and  philosophy  proper  provide  us  with  lesser,  though 
in  some  cases  by  no  means  little,  men.  The  former,  indeed,  contrasts 
very  remarkably  and  unfortunately,  as  literature,  with  the  work  of  the 
preceding  age.  The  Sherlocks  in  one  half  of  the 
century,  and  Samuel  Horsley  (i 733-1 806)  in  the  other  ^p''h^°os^h>"'^ 
half,  have  a  certain  traditional  reputation,  sustained 
occasionally  by  praise  from  those  who  have  perhaps  no  very  wide 
acquaintance  with  the  profane  authors  of  the  period.  The  Deist 
controversy  produced,  chiefly  from  the  ranks  of  the  Nonjurors,  who 
included  a  disproportionate  number  of  the  most  learned  and 
able  of  the  English  clergy,  some  great  controversialists,  notably  the 
redoubtal)]e  polemic  Charles  Leslie  and  the  by  no  means  unpractical 
mystic  William  Law.  In  Nonconformity  and  its  fringes,  the  Wesleys 
and  Doddridge  were  greater  men  at  verse  than  at  literary  prose. 
Warburton    earlier    and    Paley    later    may   almost    suffice    for    more 


632    MIDDLE   AND    LATER    18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

detailed  mention  in  this  particular  brancli.  So  too  the  philosophers 
of  the  older  kinds  — Reid,  Brown,  Stewart  —  give  little  that  is  litera- 
ture after  Berkeley  and  Hume,  and  in  the  newer  sorts  Adam  Smith 
and  Godwin  may  do  duty  as  samples.  For  though  no  literary  con- 
tempt is  more  unliterary  than  that  so  long  and  so  widely  entertained 
for  the  eighteenth  century,  this  century  does  display  a  certain  want 
of  individual  difference  in  the  form  of  its  writers.  Their  thought  is 
often  highly  original,  and  their  application  of  literary  treatment  still 
more  so.  But  the  qualities,  for  instance,  which  earned  a  place  in 
literature  for  Sir  WiUiam  Blackstone  (1723-80)  and  for  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds  (1723-92),  men  born  in  the  same  year  with  Adam  Smith, 
were  really  literary.  It  is  not  for  nothing,  even  from  the  mere 
bookish  point  of  view,  but  of  right  as  a  man  of  letters,  that  Black- 
stone  sits  enthroned  in  the  vast  library  of  All  Souls  College.  Yet 
the  main  interest  of  his  Commentaries  on  the  Laws  of  England 
(1765,  sq.')  for  us,  like  the  main  interest  of  Sir  Joshua's  presiden- 
tial Discourses  to  the  Royal  Academy,  lies  in  the  application  of  a 
literary  common  form,  at  once  easy  and  stately,  to  technical  subjects. 
Earlier  such  subjects,  if  treated  at  all,  would  have  been  treated 
more  probably  in  Latin ;  later  experience  makes  it  scarcely  unjust 
to  say  that  increase  in  technical  precision  has  not  always  or 
often  been  accompanied,  in  the  sciences  at  least,  if  not  in  the 
arts,  by  increase  of  literary  quality.  But  still  all  eighteenth-cen- 
tury writers  have  a  certain  community,  and  must  be  dealt  with  rep- 
resentatively. 

William  Warburton  was  a  rather  typical  divine  of  the  age,  who, 
after  perhaps  occupying  too  high  a  position  in  it,  has  been  unduly 
depreciated  in  this.  He  was  an  older  man  than  most  who  have 
been  mentioned  in  this  chapter,  and  was  born  at  New- 
ark in  1698.  He  went  to  no  university,  and  at  first 
adopted  law  as  a  profession,  but  was  ordained  in  1723.  His  famous 
Divine  Legatio7i  of  Moses,  which  would  have  been  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  paradoxes  in  literature  if  the  author  had  kept  it  down  in 
size,  and  one  of  the  most  learned  of  works  if  he  had  attended  a  little 
more  to  accuracy,  began  to  appear  in  1738.  Henceforward  the 
prosperity  of  Warburton,  who  was  accused  by  his  numerous  enemies 
of  being  as  sycophantic  in  private  relations  as  he  was  rough  and 
rude  in  public  controversy,  was  unbroken.  An  odd  friendship  with 
Pope  gave  him  prominence  in  the  world  of  belles  lettres,  his  marriage 
with  Gertrude  Tucker,  niece  of  Allen  of  Prior  Park  (the  Allworthy 
of  Fielding),  supplied  money,  and  a  steady  tide  of  professional 
advancement  landed  him  in  the  bishopric  of  Gloucester,  which  he 
held  for  twenty  years,  dying  in  1779.  Warburton  just  came  short 
of  being  a  great  theologian  and  a  great    man    of  letters.      His  con- 


CHAP.  IV  THE   GRAVER   PROSE  633 

troversial  manners  cannot  be  defended,  but  we  should  probably  have 
heard  a  good  deal  less  of  them  if  he  had  been  on  the  unorthodox 
side. 

Something  of  the  same  character,  with  less  arrogance,  appears  in 
William  P.'^ley,  who  was  born  at  Peterborough  in  1743,  was  educated 
at  Giggleswick  School  and  Christ's  College,  Cambridge,  was  Senior 
Wrangler  in  1763,  obtained  a  Fellowship,  and  then  a 
succession  of  preferments  in  the  Church.  He  died 
Archdeacon  of  Carlisle  and  Rector  of  Bishop  Wearmouth  in  1805. 
His  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy  (1785),  his  Horcs  PatdincB 
(1790),  his  Evidejices  of  Christianity  (1794),  and  his  Natural  Theology 
(1802),  at  once  attained,  long  kept,  and  have  by  no  means  wholly 
lost,  a  great  reputation.  As  an  apologist  and  expositor,  Paley  has 
been  accused  of  a  too  business-like  and  profit-and-loss  view  'of 
religion ;  but  those  who  call  him  interested  perhaps  use  an  unfair 
presumption,  and  his  popularity  has  no  doubt  suffered  from  his 
having  served  for  generations  as  a  pass-textbook  in  the  University 
of  Cambridge.  As  a  philosopher  in  things  divine  and  human,  he  has 
a  little  too  much  of  the  merely  forensic  competence  of  the  advocate 
about  him.  But  this  same  competence  extends  (it  may  be  not  in  the 
most  interesting  manner)  to  his  work  as  literature.  Paley  gets  the 
full  value  out  of  tlie  plain  style,  for  purposes  to  which  it  is  far  better 
adapted  than  anything  more  imaginative  could  possibly  be.  His 
arguments,  if  far  lower  and  less  noble,  are  much  more  easily  intelligible 
than  Butler's ;  his  style  is  perfectly  clear ;  he  sees  his  point  and  his 
method  distinctly,  and  seldom  or  never  fails  to  prove  the  one  to  the 
best  of  the  other. 

Adam  Smith,  the  first  great  political  economist  in  Enghsh,  and 
almost  the  founder  of  the  study  of  that  subject  as  understood  in 
modern  times,  was  born  at  Kirkcaldy  in  June  1723,  and  was  thoroughly 
educated    at    his    native    place,     Glasgow,   and    Oxford,  c   •  i, 

where  he  went  as  Snell  Exhibitioner  to  Balliol.  He  was 
an  only  and  a  posthumous  child,  and  read  quietly  at  home  or  in 
Edinburgh  till,  in  1751,  he  was  elected  to  the  Glasgow  Chair  of 
Logic,  from  which  he  passed  to  that  of  Moral  Philosophy.  His 
Theory  of  Moral  Scntiineuts  appeared  in  1759,  ^'''^  Inquiry  into 
the  Nature  and  Causes  of  the  Wealth  of  N'ations  not  till  seventeen 
years  later,  in  1776,  the  year  of  the  death  of  Hume,  Smith's  greatest 
friend,  and  it  would  seem  the  greatest  influence  upon  him.  Smith 
lived  in  London  for  a  time,  and  later  at  Edinburgh,  where  he  had  a 
Commissionership  of  Customs.  He  died  in  1790.  The  far-reaching 
consequences  of  Smith's  theories  as  to  free  trade  do  not  here 
concern  us ;  it  is  sufficient  that  he  possessed,  and  applied  to  two 
great   subjects   in   not    much    sliort    of  perfection,    that   clear,  rather 


634     MIDDLE  AND   LATER    18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk,  ix 

colourless   and    passionless,    but   admirably   business-like   as   well   as 
artist-like,  style  which  is  the  glory  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

There  are  others  whom  one  would  fain  discuss,  such  as  Abraham 
Tucker  (1705-74),  the  author  of  the  voluminous  but  fascinating 
Light  of  Nature  Pursued  (1765),  a  huge  storehouse  of  thought  that 
is  not  seldom  original,  put  with  constant  vividness  and  much  humour, 
though  diffusely  and  without  order.  And  the  vulgar  vigour  of  Thomas 
Paine  (i  737-1 809),  a  great  influence  directly  on  popular  thought,  and 
a  greater  through  his  disciple  Cobbett,  must  at  least  be  mentioned. 
But  we  can  give  space  to  but  one  more  name. 

William  Godwin,  the  author  of  Political  Justice,  was  born  at 
Wisbeach  in  1756,  and  spent  most  of  his  earlier  years  in  the  eastern 
counties.     He  was  for  a  time  a  Nonconformist  minister,  but  drifted 

•       .         from  Christianity,  took  to  literature,  and  did  a  great  deal 

o  win.  ^^  early  hackwork,  much  of  it  unidentified,  and  none  of  it 
now  read.  It  was  in  1793  that  the  Inquiry  concerning  Political 
Justice  appeared,  and  the  author  only  escaped  prosecution  (which 
befell  not  a  few  of  his  friends  of  less  anarchic  principles)  because  it 
was  (no  doubt  wisely)  judged  that  a  very  large  and  expensive  book, 
written  in  a  style  not  in  the  least  likely  to  appeal  to  the  vulgar,  was 
not  dangerous.  Next  year  appeared  Caleb  Williams,  in  which  some 
of  the  doctrines  of  Political  Justice  received  illustration,  but  which 
attained  great  popularity,  and  has  never  lost  some.  In  1797  Godwin 
married  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  herself  a  "  she-philosopher,"  who  died 
soon  afterwards.  He  lived  nearly  forty  years  longer,  marrying 
again,  becoming  Shelley's  father-in-law,  publishing,  bookselling,  and 
writing  continually,  but  always  an  unprosperous  man.  He  received 
a  sinecure  office  when  his  Radical  friends  came  into  power  after 
the  first  Reform  Bill,  and  died  in  April  1836. 

Godwin  is  by  far  the  most  important  instance,  for  the  last  quarter 

of  the  century,  of  the  man-of-letters-of-all-work  approaching,  but  not 

yet  fully  enlisted  in,  actual  journalism,  of  whom  we  find  the  first  and 

„.  .  greatest    example    in    Dryden,   and,    during    the   middle 

tance  and     of  the  eighteenth  century   itseli,    remarkable   instances  in 

position.  Johnson  and  Goldsmith.  He  is  also  almost  the  last 
who  does  not  avail  himself,  or  avails  himself  only  to  a  small  extent, 
of  the  newspaper  to  spread  his  views ;  and  in  this  he  differs  from  his 
contemporary  Cobbett,  who  for  this  reason  will  not  be  noticed  till 
the  next  Book.  Godwin  is  essentially  a  prose-writer,  and  his 
style,  though  it  has  been  over-praised,  is  of  considerable  merit. 
Although  his  exaggerated  anarchism  and  determination  to  regard 
everything  as  an  open  question  are  absurd  enough  in  principle  and 
lead  to  the  most  unimaginable  absurdities  in  detail,  yet  they  give 
his   thought   always   the  appearance,   and  sometimes   the   reality,   of 


CHAP.  IV  THE   GRAVER   PROSE  635 

freer  play  than  had  been  enjoyed  by  any  English  writer  since  Hobbes. 
His  novels  have  been  more  than  once  referred  to.  His  philosophical 
and  critical  writings  are  chiefly  contained  in  the  Political  Justice  (which 
he  altered  and  made  much  tamer  in  subsequent  editions),  in  the 
somewhat  later  Enquirer,  a  very  interesting  collection  of  essays,  and 
in  a  second  collection,  published  towards  the  extreme  end  of  his  life, 
called  Thoughts  on  Man. 

His  drama  of  Antonio,  which  produced  an  exquisitely  character- 
istic piece  from  his  friend  Charles  Lamb,  has  no  merit,  and  his  his- 
torical and  biographical  works,  History  of  the  Commonwealth,  Life  of 
Chaucer,  Lives  of  the  Necromancers,  are  compilations,  though,  at  least 
in  the  first  case,  compilations  much  above  the  average.  It  was  God- 
win, more  than  any  one  else,  who  introduced  the  mischievous  but 
popular  practice  of  bolstering  out  history  by  describing  at  great  length 
the  places  and  scenes  which  his  heroes  might  have  seen,  the  trans- 
actions in  which,  being  contemporary,  they  might  have  taken  an 
interest,  and  the  persons  with  whom  they  either  were,  or  conceivably 
might  have  been,  acquainted.  In  this,  as  in  other  things,  he  belonged 
to  the  class  of  "germinal "  writers.  And  his  influence  on  the  early, 
although  impermanent,  creeds  and  tempers  of  the  most  brilliant  young 
men  of  his  day  was  quite  extraordinary. 


CHAPTER   V 

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  DRAMA 

The  conundrum  of  the  drama  —  Fading  of  eighteenth-century  tragedy — Minor 
comic  writers:  the  domestic  play — Goldsmith  —  Sheridan — His  three  great 
pieces 

If  the   suddenness  of  the  rise  of  the  English  drama,  though  some- 
times exaggerated,  is  still  one  of  the  most  striking  facts  in  literary 
history,  the  suddenness,  and  the  enduring  nature,  of  its  collapse  are 
„,  hardly    less    curious.      For    rather   less   than   a   hundred 

Iheconun-  -  i  .    i    i       i  i         r     i  •  i 

drum  of  the  and  fifty  years,  from  the  eighth  decade  of  the  sixteenth 
drama.  cgutury  to  the  second  of  the  eighteenth,  there  was  no 
time,  save  that  of  the  closing  of  the  theatres  under  the  Rebel- 
lion, when  work  at  once  of  great  literary  merit  and  of  acting  value, 
according  at  least  to  the  idea  of  the  time,  was  not  produced.  For  a 
good  deal  more  than  another  hundred  and  fifty,  from  the  second 
decade  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  the  end  of  the  nineteenth,  only 
two  dramatists  have  appeared  who  have  combined  very  high  literary 
with  distinctly  high  acting  value  in  their  plays,  and  these  two  both 
appeared  during  the  first  half  of  the  time.  To  add  to  the  puzzle,  the 
popularity  and  the  profits  of  the  theatre  have  steadily  increased,  and 
the  touch  of  discredit  which  once  attached  to  writing  for  the  stage  has 
all  but  entirely  disappeared.  No  plausible  guess  at  the  solution  of 
this  problem,  on  any  of  the  grounds  of  so-called  scientific  criticism,  has 
ever  been  made  except  the  concurrent  rise  of  the  novel,  and  this, 
though  not  exactly  nugatory,  is  clearly  insufficient.  We  have,  in 
short,  here  one  of  the  capital  instances  of  that  fact  which  coinmuni- 
cates  to  the  study  of  literature  itself  a  vast  proportion  of  its  fascination 
and  its  value,  the  fact  of  incalculableness. 

One  of  the  signs  of  this  change  was  a  curious  separation  which 
appeared  early  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  has  maintained  itself 
more  or  less  ever  since,  between  the  literary  drama,  which  was 
sometimes  acted,  but  never  with  any  real  acting  success,  and  the 
acting  drama,  which,  though  not  immediately  abandoning  (as  some- 
times later)  all  pretensions  to  be  literature,  yet  practically  does 
not   aim    at   being   read   at   all.      At   every  time   from  Johnson's   to 

636 


CHAP.  V  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY   DRAMA  637 

Tennyson's,  poets  and  men  of  letters,  who  were  not  to  the  manner 
born,  have  tried  the  stage.  But  with  the  exception  (and  hardly  that) 
of  the  late  Mr.  Browning,  there  is  not  a  single  one  of  Fading  of 
them  whose  dramatic  work  has  kept  any  fame,  or  who  is  ^'fentur"*^" 
ever  thought  of  as  a  dramatist.  Young's  Revenge,  acted  tragedy. 
1721,  connects  itself  rather  with  the  older  than  with  the  newer 
school,  and  is  perhaps  the  very  last  example  of  an  acting  tragedy  of 
real  literary  merit,  but  it  is  to  be  feared  that  few  even  of  those  who 
have  read  the  Night-Thoiighis  and  the  Ujiiversal  Passion  have 
read  it.  The  dramas  of  Thomson  are  far  worse,  and  far  more  utterly 
forgotten ;  hardly  any  edition  of  him  for  years  has  contained  them. 
Johnson's  Irene  is  a  byword,  not  altogether  justly  perhaps,  for  it  is  a 
fine  piece  of  writing ;  and  Mason's  Elfrida  and  Caractaais  are 
chiefly  known,  even  to  students  of  eighteenth-century  literature, 
because  they  make  some  figure  in  the  letters  of  their  author's  faithful 
and  too  indulgent  friend.  Gray.  Of  the  work  of  men  like  Mallet, 
Glover,  and  others,  so  little  of  any  kind  is  retained  by  the  general 
memory  that  their  dramas  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  in  exceptional 
oblivion ;  but  the  gloom  of  this  is  never  pierced  even  by  these  feeble 
gleams  which  faintly  reveal  "William  and  Margaret"  and  "Admiral 
Hosier's  Ghost."  A  sort  of  affection,  mingled  with  contempt,  and 
connected  with  the  universally  known  "  My  name  is  Norval,"  keeps 
in  twilight  rather  than  utter  darkness  the  once  famous  Douglas  (1754) 
of  Home  (i 724-1808).  But  it  is  pretty  certain  that  most  audiences, 
and  almost  all  modern  readers,  would  be  affected  by  it  with  the  same 
sort  ol  foil  rire  as  that  which  Thackeray,  by  a  slight  anachronism, 
ascribes  to  General  Lambert  and  Mr.  George  Warrington  at  an  early 
performance  of  the  play. 

The  fact  is  that  the  whole  cast  of  eighteenth-century  thought  and 
style  was  unfavourable,  and  almost  fatal,  to  the  composition  of  tragedy 
that  should  be  at  once  practicable  and  poetic.  Its  conventions,  its 
artificial  poetical  diction,  and  its  dread  of  anytliing  irregular,  could 
at  the  best  have  produced  something  of  the  Racinian  kind,  a  kind  to 
which  the  English  genius  is  utterly  recalcitrant,  and  which  does  not 
suit  itself  to  the  English  theatre.  Alternate  tameness  and  rant 
accordingly  disfigure  it,  though  no  philosophical  explanation  quite 
attains  to  explaining  the  ineffable  sham-tragic  lingo  which,  from 
Rowe  downwards,  took  firmer  and  ever  firmer  possession  of  the 
English  stage,  till  it  was  finally  driven  therefrom,  by  literary  satire  and 
popular  disgust,  within  living  memory. 

Comedy,  as  is  usually  the  case,  was  somewhat  less  unfortunate. 
To  get  tragic  action  adjusted  to  literary  form  requires  not  merely  a 
rare  talent  in  the  playwright,  but  an  atmos])here,  an  aura  of  recep- 
tiveness    in    the   audience,   which    exists    only    at    times    few   and    far 


638    MIDDLE   AND   LATER    18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

between.      The  problem  of  the  comic  writer  is  far  simpler,  and  his 

atmosphere,  though  it  varies  in  fineness  and  freshness,  always  exists. 

„•  During:    the    eighteenth    century    especially    the    general 

Minor  comic  °  o  . 

writers:  the  tone  of  manners,  and  the  clearly  recognised  divisions  of 
omestic  p  ay.  gQ(,jg^y^  jgj^j  themselves  to  an  easy  adaptation  of  the 
perennial  commonplaces  of  comedy.  When  the  last  minorities  of  the 
great  comic  school  —  Steele,  Cibber,  Mrs.  Centlivre  —  ceased  to  write, 
the  stage  was  by  no  means  left  bare  of  stuff,  which  generally  showed 
familiarity  with  its  own  requirements  and  traditions,  and  which 
occasionally  displayed  tolerable  literary  form. 

There  was  indeed,  between  tragedy  and  comedy,  and  of  the  kind 
which,  popular  at  the  same  •  time  in  France,  was  called,  according 
as  it  inclined  to  one  side  or  the  other,  tragedie  bourgeoise  or  coviidie 
larmoyaitte,  a  certain  production  during  the  time.  Two  or  three 
pieces,  the  George  Barnwell  and  Fatal  Curiosity  of  Lillo  (i  693-1 739) 
and  the  Gatnester  of  Edward  Moore,  held  the  stage  with  some 
tenacity,  and  made  a  sort  of  lodgment  in  literary  history,  but  they 
can  hardly  be  called  of  much  importance.  Yet  George  Lillo,  as  a 
curiosity  at  least,  and  because  of  the  constant,  and  sometimes  excellent, 
fiin,  of  which  his  chief  play  was  long  the  subject,  must  always  retain 
some  interest.  His  editor,^  Johnson's  friend  and  butt,  Tom  Davies, 
could  find  out  very  little  about  him,  except  that  he  "  learned  and 
practised  the  trade  of  a  jeweller."  His  work  is  not  extensive,  but  it 
is  very  representative.  He  adapted  Pericles  and  Arden  of  Fever- 
sham,  and  spoilt  both.  His  Silvia,  or  The  Country  Burial  is  an 
opera-bouffe  of  an  incoherency  which  would  be  triumphant  if  it  were 
intended.  The  Fatal  Cjiriosity  in  verse  and  George  Barnwell  in 
prose  (the  latter,  from  the  supposed  usefulness  of  its  moral  to  appren- 
tices, constantly  acted)  are  the  strangest  muddles  of  broken,  or  sound 
but  stiff,  decasyllabics  (^Barnwell  itself  is  full  of  the  former),  the 
impossible  lingo  above  referred  to,  action  more  impossible  still,  and, 
notwithstanding  all  this,  touches  of  humanity,  good  feeling,  and 
genuine,  though  awkward,  pathos. 

Comedy,  besides  the  two  great  exceptions,  was  but  a  little 
better  off,  though  a  great  deal  was  written.  Charles  Shadwell, 
apparently  a  nephew  of  "  Og,"  wrote  some  lively  plays,  one  of  them. 
The  Fair  Quaker  of  Deal,  anticipating  Smollett  in  studying  the  sailor 
from  life.  Fielding,  as  has  been  said,  before  he  found  his  proper 
vocation,  did  much  for  the  stage,  and  in  the  middle  and  later  days 
of  the  century  there  were  many  playwrights  who  came  nearer  to  the 
union  of  theatrical  and  literary  competence  than  any  tragedian  of 
their  time  —  or  ours.     George  Colman  (1732-94),  a  Westminster  boy,^ 

12nd  ed.  2  vols.  London,  1810. 

2  To  be  distinguished  from  his  son,  George  Colman  the  younger  (1762-1836), 


CHAP.  V  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY   DRAMA  639 


manager  of  Covent  Garden,  was  a  very  prolific,  if  not  exactly  a 
very  original,  dramatist,  and  his  Clandestine  Marriage  (1766)  is  the 
least  forgotten  of  more  than  a  score  of  plays.  Garrick  had  a  hand  in 
it,  as  he  had  in  others,  and  he  did  some  work  of  the  kind  indepen- 
dently. Arthur  Murphy,  the  biographer  of  Fielding  and  the  friend 
of  Johnson,  also  wrote  plays  with  great  freedom,  and  The  Way  to 
Keep  Him  survives  in  much  the  same  relation  to  literature  as  that  of 
The  Clandestine  Marriage.  The  Suspicious  Husband  (1747)  of 
Benjamin  Hoadly,  a  clever  son  of  the  Arian  Bishop,  who  did  other 
dramatic  work,  half  original,  half  adapted,  belongs  to  the  same  class, 
as  does  the  False  Delicacy  of  Hugh  Kelly.  Farce  and  comic  opera, 
the  latter  stimulated  by  the  great  success  of  Gay,  kept  also  near  to 
literature,  and  Fielding's  Tom  Thumb  was  kept  in  company  by  the 
Chrononhotonthologos  of  Henry  Carey,  a  son  of  Halifax  and  an  ancestor 
of  Kean,  and  author  of  the  delightful  "  Sally  in  our  Alley."  Mrs. 
Cowley  (1743-1809)  produced  some  lively  pieces,  of  which  The 
Beliefs  Stratagem  (1780)  has  best  kept  name  and  (sometimes)  the 
stage.  Macklin's  Man  of  the  World  (1764),  Townley's  High  Life 
Below  Stairs  (1759),  and  several  works,  especially  The  Minor  and 
The  Mayor  of  Garrat  of  Samuel  Foote,  may  join  the  catalogue. 
Towards  the  close  of  the  century  Richard  Cumberland,  a  rather 
curious  person,  and  better  known  to  literature  as  Sir  Fretful  Plagiary, 
but  a  scholar,  a  skilful  playwright,  and  no  contemptible  man  of  letters, 
represented  the  sentimental  side  of  drama,  John  O'Keefe  the  wilder 
farce,  and  Holcroft,  the  friend  of  Godwin,  a  rather  powerful  variety 
of  what  the  French  call  dratne.  The  Jl^est  /ndian  of  Cumberland, 
which  appeared  in  1771,  O'Keefe's  Agreeable  Surprise,  and  Holcroft's 
Road  to  Ruin  (1792)  are  their  chief  remembered  things. 

Goldsmith  and  .Sheridan  stand  far  apart  from  these.  Both,  it 
will  be  observed,  were  Irishmen,  like  Farquhar,  Charles  Shadwell, 
Murphy,  and  O'Keefe.  Goldsmith's  dramas,  as  noted  in  the  sketch  of 
his  life   above,  were  the   result   of  his  later   years.     The    ^  ,,     ., 

.  r.^i  I'll  1  Goldsmun. 

Good-natured  Man  has  admirable  scenes  and  passages 
and  some  good  character,  but  in  all  respects  it  is  far  the  inferior  of 
She  Stoops  to  Conquer.  In  this  delightful  play  Goldsmith  may  have 
taken  some  of  the  incidents  (as  he  is  said  to  have  taken  the  central 
one)  from  real  life,  and  some  of  the  characters  from  Steele  {vide 
supra,  p.  535).  But  this  is  less  than  nothing.  The  bright,  fantastic, 
yet  not  unreal  atmosphere  of  whimsical  incident,  the  gracious 
humanity  of  the  characters  generally,  and  the  exquisite  literary  quality 
of  the  dialogue,  compose  such  a  thing  as  the  English  stage  had  not 
seen   since   it  was  reopened  after  the  Restoration.     The  wit,  if  less 

like  him,  but  in  the  next  generation,  a  busy  and  clever  playwright  and  comic 
misccUanist.     His  Heir-at-Law  {\TSf])  is  a  notable  piece. 


640    MIDDLE  AND   LATER   18TH-CENTURY  LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

volleyed  and  regular,  was  not  inferior  to  Congreve's,  the  action  was  not 
really  less  probable,  and  while  there  was  nothing  mawkish  about  the 
sentiment  (there  was  perhaps  a  little  about  that  of  The  Good-natu}-ed 
Maji),  its  sweet  and  healthy  good-nature  contrasts,  in  a  fashion  inex- 
pressibly agreeable,  with  the  loveless  license  and  the  brutal  ferocity  of 
the  Restoration  drama. 

The  fame  of  Richard  Brinsley  Butler  Sheridan  in  literature  is  far 
more  exclusively  dramatic,  for  his  theatrical  and  rather  brassy  oratory 
holds  little  place  in  literary  memory.  He  was  born  in  Dublin  in  1751, 
and  was  the  grandson  of  Swift's  friend,  Dr.  Sheridan, 
a  clergyman  not  much  inferior  to  the  Dean  himself  in  a 
certain  reckless  wit,  though  possessed  of  little  or  nothing  of  his 
friend's  magnificent  intellect.  His  second  son,  Richard  Brinsley's 
father,  was  a  teacher  of  elocution,  and  one  of  Dr.  Johnson's  associ- 
ates and  butts.  This  man,  whose  dulness  was  declared  by  the 
dictator  to  be  beyond  the  reach  of  nature,  unassisted  by  art  and  by 
patient  and  careful  eflfort,  married  Miss  Frances  Chamberlaine,  who 
contributed  a  novel  {Sidney  Biddnlpli)  to  the  crop  of  fiction  in  the 
middle  of  the  century.  Sheridan  himself  was  a  Harrow  boy,  and 
attempted  literary  work  very  early.  In  1773,  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
two,  he  eloped  from  Bath,  where  his  family  were  then  living,  with 
Elizabeth  Linley,  a  very  beautiful  girl  with  an  exquisite  voice,  which 
her  husband  very  properly  refused  to  allow  her  to  use  on  the  stage. 
But  he  himself  turned  to  play-writing  (which,  indeed,  he  had 
attempted  earlier),  and  in  January  1775,  when  he  was  not  four-and- 
twenty,  produced  at  Covent  Garden  the  famous  farce-comedy  of  The 
Rivals,  which  at  once  (or  almost  at  once)  established  his  fame.  He 
followed  this  up  with  the  bad  St.  Patrick^s  Day,  and  the  better, 
though  still  hardly  good,  Diie7tna.  Next  year  Sheridan,  with  some 
assistance  from  friends,  bought  first  half  and  then  the  whole  of  the 
patent  of  Drury  Lane,  of  which  he  became  manager  as  well  as 
owner.  This  provided  him  with  an  income,  and  ought  to  have  pro- 
vided him  with  an  ample  one  for  the  remainder  of  his  life,  but  his 
whole  money  affairs,  from  the  way  in  which  he  found  the  means  to 
buy  the  theatre  onward,  are  much  of  a  mystery. 

In  1780  he  entered  Parliament,  attached  himself  to  the  Whig 
Opposition,  and,  rather  later,  became  very  intimate  with  the  Prince  of 
Wales.  He  had  office  under  the  Rockingham  ministry  and  the  Coali- 
tion, and  attracted  great  attention  by  effective  but  meretricious  speeches 
against  Warren  Hastings.  He  was  faithful  to  the  extremer  Whigs, 
and  took  the  opposite  side  to  Burke  (whom  he  had  previously 
followed)  in  regard  to  the  French  Revolution.  In  1795,  his  wife 
having  died  some  years  earlier,  he  married  again;  and  he  survived 
till   1 816,  when  he  died  with  bailiffs  in  his  house. 


CHAP.  V  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY   DRAMA  641 

An  extravagant  hyperbole  of  Byron's  as  to  the  relative  excellence  of 
Sheridan's  plays  has  perhaps  done  him  some  harm,  but  his  three 
best  pieces  are  of  extraordinary  merit.  They  were  all 
produced  between  1775  and  1779;  each  is  a  master-  gr^atpkces. 
piece  in  its  kind,  and  the  kinds  are  not  identical.  The 
Rivals  is  artificial  comedy,  inclining  on  one  side  to  farce,  and,  in 
the  parts  of  Falkland  and  Julia,  to  the  sentimental.  But  it  is,  on  its 
own  rather  artificial  plan,  constructed  with  remarkable  skill  and  tight- 
ness ;  and  the  characters  of  Sir  Anthony  Absolute,  Mrs.  Malaprop, 
Sir  Lucius  O'Trigger,  and  Bob  Acres,  with  almost  all  the  rest,  combine 
fun  with  at  least  theatrical  verisimihtude  in  a  very  rare  way.  Indeed, 
Sir  Anthony  and  Mrs.  Malaprop,  though  heightened  from  life,  can 
hardly  be  said  to  be  false  to  it,  and  though  in  the  other  pair  the 
license  of  dramatic  exaggeration  is  pushed  to  its  farthest,  it  is  not 
exceeded.  The  effect  could  not  have  been  produced  without  the 
sparkling  dialogue,  but  this  alone  could  not  have  given  it. 

The  School  for  Scandal  flies  higher,  but  not  quite  so  steadily. 
Pedants  of  construction  fall  more  foul  of  it,  and  even  those  who  do 
not  accept  their  standards  must  admit  that  the  characters  are  less 
uniformly  alive.  But  they,  like  the  play  generally,  aim  higher;  it  is 
no  longer  artificial  comedy  with  stock  personages,  but  a  great  comic 
castigation  of  manners  that  is  attempted.  In  The  Rivals  Sheridan 
had  vied  with  Vanbrugh  and  had  beaten  him ;  in  The  School  for 
Scandal  he  challenges  Moli^re,  and  is  hardly  beaten  except  in  a 
certain  universality.  As  for  his  third  masterpiece.  The  Critic,  it  is 
simply  a  farce  in  excelsis,  designedly  extravagant  and  chaotic,  but  all 
the  more  successful.  The  mock -play  is  admittedly  almost,  if  not  quite, 
the  best  thing  of  the  kind,  and  the  by-play  of  Sneer,  Puff,  Dangle, 
and  the  immortal  Sir  Fretful  Plagiary  requires  none  of  the  illegiti- 
mate attraction  of  identification  with  real  personages  to  give  it  zest. 
The  Critic  forms  with  The  Rehearsal  and  The  Rovers  a  triad  of 
which  English  literature  may  well  be  proud.  It  is  difficult,  allowing 
for  the  scale  of  each,  to  choose  between  the  three,  but  in  variety  and 
reach  The  Critic  may  be  allowed  frankly  to  carry  it. 

Of  the  state  of  things  in  drama  which  followed  Sheridan's  time, 
and,  as  some  hold,  has  lasted  without  much  change  to  the  present 
day,  Joanna  Baillie  (i 762-1 851),  whose  life  stretched  from  a  few  years 
past  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  a  few  after  the  middle 
of  the  nineteenth,  is  an  interesting  illustration.  She  had  some  poetic 
faculty;  but  her  Plays  on  the  Passions  (1768  and  later)  and  others, 
though  admired  at  the  time,  and  sometimes  acted,  are  neither  great 
drama  nor  great  literature,  the  author  never  seeming  quite  to  know 
whether  slv?  is  writing  for  the  theatre  or  the  study,  and  not  producing 
the  best  things  for  either. 

2T 


CHAPTER   VI 

MISCELLANEOUS   WRITERS 

The  letter-writers  —  Lady  Mary  —  Chesterfield  —  Horace  Walpole  — 
"  Junius  "  —  Boswell 

The  heading  of  this  chapter  is  not  a  mere  capitulation  to 
difficulties.  Very  little  is  gained  by  sorting  out  authors  too  exactly 
into  d'visions  and  compartments,  and  something  would  be  lost  by 
omitting  to  indicate  within  the  classification  two  distinct  features 
of  our  eighteenth-century  literature  —  the  constant  divergence  and 
diversion  of  literary  energy  into  new  directions  and  efforts,  and  the 
increase  of  the  practice  of  writing  for  amusement  merely.  Some  of 
the  most  celebrated  books  of  the  century  were  never  intended  for 
publication  at  all  —  Lord  Chesterfield's  Letters  certainly  were  not, 
though  we  cannot  be  so  sure  about  those  of  Horace  Walpole  and 
Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu.  Moreover,  the  diffusion  of  reading,  the 
removal  of  the  censorship  of  the  press,  and  the  mitigation  of  the  legal 
tribulations  to  which  authors  and  publishers  were  liable,  encouraged 
the  production  of  books  of  all  kinds. 

The  three  writers  named  in  the  last  paragraph  themselves  form  a 
very  interesting  trio  from  many  points  of  view.  They  as  letter- 
writers,  like  Pepys  and  Evelyn  earlier  as  diarists,  supply  the  chief 
examples  in  English  of  that  memoir-literature  in  which 
write"*!'^'  our  language  is,  as  compared  with  French,  rather 
poor,  but  which  in  their  case,  as  in  a  few  others,  can  very 
well  hold  up  its  head. 

The   lady   who   bears   in   English    literature    the   courtesy  title  of 

"  Lady   Mary,"   without  any    necessary   addition,   was,  oddly  enough, 

connected  with  Evelyn  by  blood  and  with  Pepys  by  marriage.     Her 

,    ,     ,         maiden    name    was  Pierrepont,  and  she  was  daughter  of 

Lady  Mary.       ,  „      ,         -     ^..  ,,.,  .  ,  ,  , 

the  Earl  oi  Kmgston,  a  Whig  noble,  who  was  suc- 
cessively raised  to  the  Marquisate  of  Dorchester  and  the  Dukedom 
of  Kingston.  Her  extreme  beauty  as  a  child  —  beauty  which 
continued    till    early     middle    life    at    least  —  made    her  the  heroine 

642 


CHAP.  VI  MISCELLANEOUS   WRITERS  643 

of  a  well-known  anecdote  to  the  effect  that  she  was,  when  eight  years 
old,  not  merely  toasted  at,  but  introduced  to,  the  Kit-Cat  Club  of 
Whigs  and  wits  by  her  father.  She  seems  to  have  been  born  in 
1689,  and  at  twenty-two  eloped  with  Edward  Wortley  or  Wortley 
Montagu,  grandson  of  Pepys'  relation  and  patron,  the  first  Earl  of 
Sandwich,  and  heir  to  the  great  Yorkshire  estate  of  Wharncliffe. 
When  George  I.  came  to  the  throne  Mr.  Wortley  Montagu  had 
preferment,  and  in  1716  he  went  as  ambassador  to  Constantinople, 
his  wife  accompanying  him,  and  so  obtaining  the  materials  for  her 
best-known,  though  not  best.  Letters.  When  she  came  back  she 
brought  inoculation  with  her —  there  is  at  least  one  story  that  the  loss 
of  her  own  beauty  was  due  to  smallpox  —  and  made  it  fashionable  in 
England.  She  lived  at  home  for  nearly  the  whole  of  the  third  and 
fourth  decades  of  the  century,  became,  for  what  cause  is  uncertain,  an 
object  of  hate  from  Pope  as  furious  as  his  admiration  had  formerly 
been  fantastic,  and  in  1739  went  abroad  without  her  husband,  with 
whom,  however,  she  never  seems  to  have  had  the  least  quarrel.  She 
lived,  in  Italy  chiefly,  for  some  twenty  years  more,  and  returned  to 
England  in  1761  after  her  husband's  death,  to  die  herself  of  cancer 
next  year.  She  had  two  children  —  a  daughter,  who  married  the 
famous  Lord  Bute,  and  a  very  worthless  and  probably  insane  son. 

Lady  Mary  might  probably  have  attained  distinction  in  several 
different  kinds  of  literature.^  She  was  actually,  and  rather  to  her  own 
misfortune,  a  very  deft  writer  of  light  satirical  verse,  while  much  no 
doubt  that  she  did  not  write  was  attributed  to  her.  Her  Tow7i 
Eclogues  are  distinctly  good ;  but  the  best  thing  she  ever  did  in  this 
kind  is  the  famous  piece  beginning  — 


and  ending  — 


Good  madam,  when  ladies  are  willing 
A  man  can  but  look  like  a  fool, 

The  fruit  that  can  fall  without  shaking 
Is  rather  too  mellow  for  me. 


Her  prose  work  is  much  more  extensive  and  important.  It  consists 
of  a  large  collection  of  Letters  extending  over  some  fifty  years. 
There  are  some  difficulties  about  their  text  and  first  publication,  and  the 
authenticity  of  some  lias  l^een  doubted,  perhaps  with  not  much  justice. 
They  fall  generally  into  four  divisions  —  those  before  the  Turkish  journey, 
containing  a  very  odd  picture  of  a  courtshi])  and  some  lively  sketches 
of  George  L's  iiousehold  ;  the  Turkish  and  other  continental  letters 
of  the  first  sojourn  abroad,  which  are  very  lively  and  interesting,  but 
a  trifle  artificial ;  those  of  the  middle  period,  few  in  comparison  and 

"^Letters,  etc.,  ed.  Moy  Thomas,  2  vols.  London,  1861. 


644    MIDDLE   AND    LATER    iSTH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

too  often  distinguished  by  the  ill-nature  of  a  Queen  of  Society  whose 
charms  and  power  are  passing ;  and  those  of  the  last,  mainly  written 
to  Lady  Bute,  and  the  most  interesting  of  the  whole,  alternating  as 
they  do  between  curious  pictures  of  Italian  country  life,  the  Jacobite 
society  of  Avignon,  the  tracasseries  of  the  English  colony  at  Venice 
and  the  like  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  full,  shrewd,  and 
invaluable  criticisms  of  the  new  novels  of  the  day  from  Fielding 
and  Smollett  downwards.  There  is  a  certain  hardness  about  Lady 
Mary,  and  she  exhibits  to  the  very  full  the  indifference  of  her  age  to 
all  high  things  in  religion,  poetry,  and  elsewhere.  But  her  clever- 
ness is  astonishing,  and  one  can  see,  if  only  by  glimpses,  that  she 
must  have  been  lovable  once. 

Philip  Dormer  Stanhope,  fourth  Earl  of  Chesterfield,  the  author  of 
the  most  famous  and  widely  known,  if  not  the  most  voluminous  or  best, 
letters  in  English,  was  a  few  years  younger  than  Lady  Mary,  having 
been  born  in  September  1694.  He  too  was  of  a  Whig 
family,  and  went  to  the  Whig  University,  Cambridge. 
After  this  experience  and  its  completion  of  foreign  travel  (by  which 
he  profited  a  good  deal  more  than  most  of  the  English  tutor- 
conducted  youths  upon  whom  both  he  and  Lady  Mary  are  so  severe), 
he  sat  in  the  House  of  Commons  for  ten  years,  until  his  succession  to 
the  earldom  in  1726.  For  all  his  devotion  to  "the  Graces,"  his 
gambling,  and  his  other  condescensions  to  the  ways  of  his  time, 
Chesterfield  was  a  man  of  political  ability,  which  did  not  fall  far  short 
of  positive  statesmanship,  and  he  distinguished  himself  in  various 
offices,  the  most  important  of  which  was  the  Lord  Lieutenancy  of 
Ireland.  But  he  became  deaf,  and  perhaps  disgusted,  and  retired 
from  active  public  life  about  1748.  He  had  written  earlier  in  the 
Craftsman,  as  he  wrote  later  in  the  World.  A  few  other  minor 
things,  "Characters  "  and  the  like,  show  the  great  literary  ability  and 
the  thorough  knowledge  of  part  of  human  nature  which  he  possessed. 
But  his  literary  fame  was  derived  from  a  publication  which  (unlike 
some  letter-writers)  he  never  intended,  that  of  his  correspondence  with 
his  illegitimate  son  Philip  Stanhoj)e,  printed  by  that  son's  widow.  He 
also  wrote  a  good  many  other  letters,  and  within  recent  years  a  fresh 
batch  of  advices  to  the  young,  addressed  this  time  to  his  godson  and 
successor  in  the  title,  was  added  by  the  late  Earl  of  Carnarvon. 

The  hardness  which  has  been  noted  in  Lady  Mary  appears  to  a 
greater  extent,  as  was  natural,  in  Chesterfield ;  and  though  Johnson's 
undying  grudge  exaggerated  the  immorality  wliich  accompanies  it, 
that  immorality  certainly  exists.  But  as  a  letter-writer,  in  his  few 
excursions  into  the  essay,  and  in  such  other  literary  amusements  as 
he  permitted  himself,  he  stands  very  high,  and  the  somewhat  artificial 
character  of  his  etiquette,  the  wholly  artificial  character  of  his  standards 


CHAP.  VI  MISCELLANEOUS   WRITERS  645 

of  literary,  aesthetic,  and  other  judgment,  ought  not  to  obscure  his 
excellence.  Devoted  as  he  was  to  French,  speaking  and  writing  it 
as  easily  as  he  did  English,  he  never  Gallicised  his  style  as  Horace 
Walpole  did,  nor  fell  into  incorrectnesses  as  did  sometimes  Lady  Mary. 
The  singular  ease  with  which,  not  in  the  least  ostentatiously  conde- 
scending to  them,  he  adjusts  his  writing  to  his  boy  correspondents  is 
only  one  function  of  his  literary  adaptability.  Nor  is  it  by  any  means 
to  be  forgotten  that  Chesterfield's  subjects  are  extremely  various,  and  are 
handled  with  equal  information  and  mother-wit.  He  was  not  exactly 
a  scholar,  but  he  was  a  man  widely  and  well  read,  and  the  shrewd- 
ness of  his  judgment  on  men  and  things  was  only  conditioned  by  that 
obstinate  refusal  even  to  entertain  any  enthusiasm,  anything  high- 
strung  in  ethics,  cesthetics,  religion,  and  other  things,  which  was 
characteristic  of  his  age.  Had  it  not  been  for  Chesterfield  we  should 
have  wanted  many  lively  pictures  of  society,  manner,  and  travel ; 
but  we  should  also  have  wanted  our  best  English  illustration  of  a 
saying  of  his  time,  though  not  of  his  —  "If  there  were  no  God,  it 
would  be  necessary  to  create  one." 

Lady  Mary  and  Lord  Chesterfield  were  persons  of  extreme  and 
even  talent,  which  never  quite  reached  genius.  In  the  third  of  the 
great  trio  of  letter-writers  we  find  a  curious  mixture  of  something  by 
no  means  unlike  genius,  and  of  most  undoubted  origi- 
nality, with  the  qualities  and  the  limitations  of  a  very  Walpole 
decided  fribble  and  coxcomb.  •  Horace  Walpole  ranked 
as  the  third  son  of  the  great  Sir  Robert,  to  whose  late  and  not  fortunate 
title  of  Earl  of  Orford  he  —  himself  very  late  in  his  life  —  succeeded. 
He  was  born  in  London  in  September  1717,  and  after  passing  through 
Eton  and  Cambridge,  travelled,  as  noted  above,  in  Italy  with  Gray. 
After  his  return  to  England,  and  for  long  afterwards,  he  sat  in  Parlia- 
ment, but  he  had  no  political  ability,  and  only  partisan  political 
interests.  Being  comfortably  provided  for  by  office  and  bequest,  he 
was  able  to  live  very  much  as  he  pleased,  and  soon  established  him- 
self at  Strawberry  Hill,  near  Twickenham,  where  he  built,  affecting 
"the  Gothick  taste"  more  well  than  wisely,  his  famous  villa.  After 
a  time  he  even  set  up  a  press  there,  and  throughout  his  long  life  he 
maintained  not  merely  a  constant  interest  in  literature,  but  a  very 
considerable  literary  production.  Besides  an  enormous  number  of 
letters,  never  yet  fully  collected,  he  wrote  in  the  World,  produced 
the  wonderfully  original,  if  not  wonderfully  good,  novel  of  T/ie  Castle 
of  Otranto.  and  the  strong,  though  again  not  good,  tragedy  of  The 
Mysterious  Mother,  compiled  Anecdotes  of  Painting,  Catalogues  of 
Engravers,  Catalogues  of  Royal  and  Noble  Authors,  Historic  Doubts, 
and  other  things,  besides  editing  or  reprinting  Grammont,  Lord 
Herbert  of  Cherbury,  and  much  else. 


646    MIDDLE   AND   LATER    18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

In  literary  history  Horace  Walpole  has  no  small  importance  as 
the  author  of  The  Castle  of  Oiraiito,  and  is  not  quite  devoid  of  it  as 
the  author  of  The  Mysterious  Mother.  But  to  the  reader,  and  not 
the  mere  reader  only,  his  Letters  give  him  far  greater  interest.  Their 
enormous  bulk  is  not  marred,  as  is  the  case  in  some  other  collections, 
by  a  constant  repetition  of  the  same  subject  to  different  correspond- 
ents, and  the  variety  of  the  subjects  themselves  is  altogether  extraor- 
dinary. For  part  of  the  politics,  much  of  the  personal  history,  and 
almost  all  the  social  gossip,  chit-chat,  manners,  and  what  not  of  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Walpole  is  an  authority  to  be 
trusted  indeed  with  caution  (for  he  was  extremely  spiteful,  and  by  no 
means  scrupulous),  but  to  be  enjoyed  almost  without  alloy  or  satiety. 
No  matter  whether  it  be  the  execution  of  the  Jacobite  lords,  or  a 
frolic  to  the  public  gardens  with  madcap  ladies,  who  insist  on  cook- 
ing chickens  in  a  china  dish  which  is  expected  every  minute  to  fly 
about  their  ears,  whether  it  be  bric-a-brac  or  scandal,  Walpole  con- 
trives to  be  always  amusing  and  never  silly,  though  he  may  sometimes 
be  not  wholly  sensible.  And  it  is  only  fair  to  admit  that  the  intrinsic 
charm  of  his  matter  is  very  much  helped  by  the  peculiarities  of  his 
style.  It  is  not  by  any  means  wholly  natural  —  it  would  not  have 
suited  the  hour  or  the  man  if  it  had  been ;  but  its  affectation  and 
its  frippery  are  exactly  suited  to  the  part  which  the  writer  wished  to 
play,  and  seldom  out  of  keeping  with  the  matters  he  had  to  handle. 
There  is  plenty  of  ill-nature  in  Walpole,  some  snobbery,  a  good  many 
other  failings  positive  and  negative ;  but  there  is  also  genius,  and 
the  genius  is  of  a  distinctly  literary  kind. 

Of  minor  memoir-  and  letter-writers  it  would  be  possible  to  name 
not  a  few,  from  Lord  Hervey,  the  friend  of  Lady  Mary  and  the 
enemy  of  Pope,  downwards ;  but  hardly  any  absolutely  demands 
^  .  „  mention.  There  is,  however,  one  writer  who,  from  the 
mystery  attending  his  person  at  least  as  much  as  from 
the  excellence  of  his  writings,  has  attracted  in  the  past,  and  still  to 
some  extent  attracts,  a  rather  disproportionate  attention,  and  this  is 
the  author  of  the  Letters  of  Junius.  Into  the  personal  and  identify- 
ing question  there  is  not  any  need  to  enter  deeply  here,  for  it  has  no 
literary  consequence,  if  indeed  it  has  any  consequence  at  all,  and, 
as  in  all  much-debated  problems,  the  heat  which  the  discussion  of  it 
excites  is  sometimes  in  inverse  proportion  to  the  importance  of  the 
decision.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  the  series  of  letters  signed 
"Junius,"  and  published  by  Woodfall,  who  himself  was  ignorant  of 
the  identity  of  his  contributor,  appeared  in  the  Public  Advertiser 
from  January  1769  to  a  period  some  three  years  later.  They 
attacked  the  king,  the  ministers  (especially  the  Duke  of  Grafton), 
and  a  great  number  of  things  and  persons  connected  with  the  admin- 


CHAP,  VI  MISCELLANEOUS   WRITERS  647 


istration  of  the  day.  They  showed  inside  knowledge  of  official  matters. 
They  were,  though  repeatedly  printed,  never  acknowledged  by  any 
one.  They  were  attributed  to  Edmund  Burke,  to  his  brother  Richard, 
to  Lord  Temple,  to  Lord  George  Sackville,  to  Lord  Shelburne,  to 
Barr^,  to  Wilkes,  to  Home  Tooke,  to  Glover,  to  Wedderburn,  to 
Gerard  Hamilton,  but  especially  to  Philip,  afterwards  Sir  Philip, 
Francis,  an  Irishman,  the  son  of  the  translator  of  Horace,  who  was 
born  in  Dublin  in  1740,  entered  the  Civil  Service,  held  a  position  in 
the  War  Office,  was  sent  out  to  India  as  a  Member  of  Council,  became 
a  bitter  opponent  of  Warren  Hastings,  and  fought  a  duel  with  him, 
returned,  sat  in  Parliament  on  the  extremer  Whig  side,  and  died  in 
1818.1  The  evidence  connecting  Francis  with  ''Junius,"  though 
entirely  circumstantial,  and  certainly  not  decisive  even  as  such,  is 
very  strong,  and  at  any  rate  far  outweighs  that  advanced  in  favour  of 
any  other  candidate  for  a  rather  bad  eminence. 

For  the  Letters  of  Junhis,  while  they  display  some  of  the  worst 
qualities  of  the  human  soul  —  arrogance,  spite,  jealousy,  and  hardly 
one  really  good  or  great  quality,  inasmuch  as  their  very  denunciation 
of  abuses  is  evidently  but  personal,  or  at  best  partisan  —  are  far  less 
intellectually  and  artistically  remarkable  than  it  used  to  be,  and  some- 
times still  is,  the  fashion  to  represent  them.  The  immense  impor- 
tance attaching  to  oratory  in  the  eighteenth  century  —  when  a  single 
fortunate  speech  might  bring  a  man  office,  wealth,  hereditary  dignity, 
and  almost  everything  most  coveted  —  together  with  a  rhetorical 
tradition  starting  at  least  from  Bolingbroke,  and  possibly  from  Hali- 
fax, had  made  a  certain  rather  stereotyped  and  very  conventional 
fashion  of  writing  the  subject  of  constant  practice  and  of  not  infre- 
quent attainment.  Burke  is  the  great  example  of  this  practice, 
carried  beyond  convention,  beyond  rhetoric,  beyond  even  eloquence, 
into  great  permanent  literature.  "Junius  "is  the  chief  example  of  it 
in  its  lower  and  quite  undivine  form.  An  affectation  of  exaggerated 
moral  indignation,  claptrap  rhetorical  interro^tions,  the  use.  clever 
enough  if  it  were  not  so  constant,  of  balanced  antitheses,  a  very  good 
ear  for  some,  though  by  no  means  many,  cadences  and  rhythms,  some 
ingenuity  in  trope  and  metaphor,  and  a  cunning  adaptation  of  that 
trick  of  specialising  with  proper  names  with  which  Lord  Macaulay 
has  surfeited  readers  for  the  last  half-century —  these,  though  by  no 
means  all,  are  the  chief  features  of  the  Junian  method.  But  the 
effect  is  not  in  the  least  marmoreal,  as  Burke's  is.  It  has,  on  the 
contrary,  two  qualities  of  the  usual  imitation  of  marble  —  it  is  plaster 

1  Still  other  claimants  of  less  mark,  one  H.  M.Boyd,  one  Rosenliagcn,  one 
Greatrakes,  are  mentioned  by  Wraxall  {Own  Time,  \.  p.  447,  jj?.).  The  "anti- 
Franciscan  "  arguments  have  been  recently  urged  once  more  in  tiie  Athenteum  by 
Mr.  Fraser  Rae. 


648    MIDDLE   AND   LATER    18TH-CENTURY    LITERATURE    bk.  ix 

and  it  is  hollow.  As  a  man  of  letters  the  author  has  done  well  a 
conventional  exercise  not  worth  the  doing.  As  a  man  of  morals  he 
has  put  talents  great,  if  not  consummate,  at  the  service  at  best  of 
party,  at  worst  of  self. 

Far  different  is  the  history  and  far  higher  the  merits  of  a  yet 
more  famous  book,  some  twenty  years  younger,  which  also  belongs 
of  right  to  this  Book  and  chapter.  James  Boswell,  younger  of 
Auchinleck,  was  born  in  Edinburgh  in  October  1740. 
"'  ■  He  was  the  heir  to  an  old  family  and  a  good  estate,  had 
talents  of  various  kinds,  wrote  a  popular  Account  of  Corsica  in  1768, 
and  in  his  later  years  (he  died  in  1795)  made  some  bid  both  for 
political  and  professional  success.  But  he  is  for  posterity  nothing 
but  the  author  of  the  Life  of  Dr.  fohnson,  published  in  1791,  with  its 
earlier  complement,  the  Tour  to  the  Hebrides  (1773).  Boswell  had 
devoted  himself  to  Johnson  as  early  as  1763,  and  for  the  remaining 
twenty-one  years  of  the  sage's  life,  though  not  very  frequently  or  for 
very  long  periods  in  his  company,  was  in  pretty  constant  communica- 
tion with  him,  was  (though  Johnson  could  not  avoid  rough  treatment 
of  his  follies)  on  the  whole  tolerated  by  the  great  man  as  he  tolerated 
no  one  else,  took  infinite  pains  both  before  and  after  his  idol's  death 
to  procure  all  the  information  he  could  about  him,  and  wove  it  into 
one  of  the  most  extraordinary  books  in  literature  —  a  book  which  from 
the  day  of  its  appearance  to  the  present  has  been  quarrelled  over, 
accounted  for  in  a  score  of  different  ways,  given  up  as  a  hopeless 
enigma,  but  always  read  and  rejoiced  in.  Those  who  like  Boswell  at 
first  like  him  ever  better ;  those  who  do  not  like  him  at  first  (such 
cases  have  been  known)  with  rare  exceptions  become  converted  to 
him  afterwards.  Some  of  his  greatest  admirers  think  him  a  whole 
fool ;  nearly  every  one  thinks  him  in  large  part  foolish.  Except 
Pepys,  whom  in  not  a  few  ways  he  resembled,  there  is  perhaps  no 
author  whom  we  regard  with  so  much  affection  mixed  with  so  much 
contempt.  And  he  h*  written  a  biography  of  very  great  size,  which 
is  all  but  universally  allowed  to  be  the  best,  with  but  one  rival,  in 
literature,  and  which  some  hold  to  be  best  with  no  rival  at  all. 

Of  many  other  writers,  we  may  select  Gilbert  White  of  Selborne 
(1720-1793)  and  William  Gilpin  of  Boldre  (1724-1804),  because 
of  the  immense  influence  upon  literature  of  the  tendency  which  the 
Natural  History  of  Selborne  (1789)  and  the  series  of  "Picturesque 
Tours"  (  The  Highlands,  1778;  The  Wye,  1782;  The  Lakes,  1789; 
Forest  Scenery,  1791  ;  The  West  of  England,  1798)  expressed. 
White's  volume  is  a  plain  but  vivid  record  of  observation  of  nature ; 
Gilpin's  books,  a  little  more  florid  in  style,  are  elaborately  illustrated 
in  aquatint.  Both  exemplify  the  craving  to  get  close  to  nature,  the 
determination  to  "  count  the  streaks  of  the  tulip "  and  value  its  hues. 


INTERCHAPTER   IX 

The  actual  contents  of  the  foregoing  Book  require  less  classification 
and  comment  of  the  specific  kind  than  has  been  the  case  with  any  of 
those  preceding  it ;  but  their  general  character,  taken  into  conjunc- 
tion with  that  of  Book  VIII.,  and  the  lessons  of  the  change  to  which 
we  are  now  coming,  require  some  larger  notice.  For  we  are  once 
more  approaching  one  (and  up  to  the  present  day  the  last)  of  the 
great  turning-points  of  English  literature  —  a  turning-point  of  a  defi- 
niteness  and  moment  which  had  been  only  twice  equalled  before, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  Elizabethan  great  time  with  Lyly  and  Spenser, 
and  at  the  Restoration.  The  Augustan  ages,  with  their  continuation 
in  the  mid-  and  later-eighteenth  century,  were  closed  in  fact,  though 
not  in  general  opinion,  by  the  publication  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads  in 
1798.  But  they  had  had  notice  of  closing  before.  What  these 
notices  were  we  must  now  briefly  indicate,  concluding  with  a  short 
summary  and  criticism  of  the  main  aspects  of  literature  from  the  rise 
of  Dryden  to  the  death  of  Burke. 

The  agencies  of  the  change  admit,  of  course,  of  very  different 
appreciation,  but  by  both  in  number  and  order  the  following  summary 
will  probably  be  not  far  from  doing  justice  to  them.  Almost  imme- 
diately after  the  beginning  of  the  century  there  began  also  a  certain 
indefinite  but  very  perceptible  '"harking  back"  to  older  literature  in 
various  forms  —  the  antiquarian  efforts  of  Oldys,  the  editorial  labours 
of  Theobald,  the  collection  of  ballads.  English  and  Scottish,  as 
definite  curiosities.  The  poetical  work  of  Thomson  had  more  effect 
in  the  same  direction  than  its  author  knew,  or  in  any  probability 
intended,  and  its  own  suffusion  with  conventionality  did  little  harm 
and  (by  rendering  it  more  palatal>le  to  the  wits  and  the  town)  some 
good.  A  little  later  still  the  same  mixture  of  conventional  externals 
and  Romantic  spirit  meets  us  in  the  scanty  but  intense  poetical  work 
of  Collins,  in  the  almost  as  scanty  and  less  intense,  but  curiously 
anxious  and  "questing,"  poetical  work  of  Gray,  and  in  the  wide, 
various,^  and  far-reaching,  though  insufficiently  productive,  literary 
studies  of  the  latter.  The  Thomsonian  mixture  is  more  perceptible 
still    in    Shenstone,  because    this    latter,   though  an  undeveloped  and 

649 


650      MIDDLE  AND   LATER   18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE       bk. 

irregular,  is  a  decidedly  germinal  critic,  whereas  in  Thomson  there  is 
little  sign  of  the  critical  spirit.  And  then,  at  or  about  the  year  1760, 
there  meets  us  a  whole  group  of  important  symptoms,  or  stimulants,  or 
both  —  the  Castle  of  Oiraiito,  Percy's  Reliques,  Macpherson's  Ossian  — 
all  expressing,  and  the  two  last  at  any  rate  powerfully  helping  on, 
the  complete  Romantic  revival  itself —  a  revival  further  expressed  in 
curiously  different  ways  a  few  years  later  by  the  rich  work  of 
Chatterton  and  the  poor  work  of  Beattie.^ 

Opinions  may  differ  as  to  the  cause  of  the  still  further  postpone- 
ment of  the  Revival  itself,  and  some  will  probably  still  take  refuge  in 
the  apparently  pusillanimous,  but  certainly  prudent,  and  perhaps  not 
really  unsound,  doctrine  of  "  the  Hour  and  the  Man."  But  it  does 
not  seem  quite  foolish,  or  even  very  fanciful,  to  attribute  to  the 
enormous  literary  influence  of  Johnson  an  effect  in  keeping  back  the 
growth  which  (though  such  was  very  far  from  being  his  wish)  had 
the  beneficent  effect  of  the  "pinching"'  process  so  well  known  to 
gardeners.  That  it  was  beneficent  there  can  be  no  doubt,  and  more 
than  one  of  the  examples  just  referred  to  shows  this  amply.  The 
general  literary  mind  was  as  yet  not  nearly  enough  educated  in  the 
way  in  which  it  wished  to  go.  As  Percy,  as  Macpherson,  as  Chatter- 
ton,  as  Beattie  showed  in  their  different  fashions,  as  was  shown  still 
more  by  the  deplorable  creatures  of  the  last  twenty  years,  the  aims, 
the  ideas,  the  conceptions  of  the  new  school  were  quite  vague  and 
very  ill-informed.  Only  Gray  really  knew  something  of  mediaeval 
English  literature,  and  modern  literature  other  than  English ;  and 
Gray's  knowledge  was  divorced  from  power,  further  enfeebled  (it 
may  be  suspected)  by  a  divided  allegiance,  and  rather  sicklied  o'er 
with  its  own  learning.  The  robuster  labours  of  the  Wartons,  the 
Tyrwhitts,  the  Ritsons,  were  needed  to  supply  the  actual  stuff  of 
knowledge,  as  well  as  the  positive  genius  of  a  new  generation  to 
supply  the  power  of  using  it.     That  powerful  assistance  was  given  by 

1  Of  especial  interest  in  regaid  to  this  matter  are  the  Letters  on  Chivalry  and 
Romance  of  Richard  (not  then  Bishop)  Hurd,  published  in  1762,  before  the 
Reliques,  or  the  Castle  of  Otranto,  or  all  but  the  first-fruits  of  Ossian.  Hurd 
(1720-1808),  successively  Bishop  of  Lichfield  and  Worcester,  was  in  character 
rather  a  pompous /arz/^w//,  and  injured  his  reputation  by  making  himself  a  sort  of 
bandog  to  Warburton.  But  his  writings,  at  least  the  critical  part  of  them,  can  be 
spoken  of  with  contempt  by  no  good  critic  who  has  read  them.  They  are 
gropings  rather  than  discoveries,  marred  by  imperfect  knowledge,  by  supercilious- 
ness, by  mistaken  attempts  to  adjust  Classical  methods  to  Romantic  matter.  But 
the  man  who  in  1762  recognised  that  there  was  a  Romantic  Unity,  distinct  from  the 
Aristotelian,  was  a  critic  if  ever  there  was  one.  His  Dissertations  on  Poetr)'  are 
less  good  than  the  Letters,  and  his  Commentaries  on  Horace  are  "  old  ^yle,"  with 
some  modern  touches.  But  his  Dialogues  probably  gave  Landor  no  slight  hint 
for  the  Imaginary  Conversations ;  and  any  one  who  will  compare  Hurd  with  Blair 
will  soon  see  which  is  on  the  right  side  in  literature. 


IX 


INTERCH AFTER   IX  651 


two  (for  Blake  exercised  none,  and  Crabbe  very  little  till  later)  of  the 
four  chief  poets  c.  1780  there  can  be  no  doubt.  Both  Cowper  and 
Burns  deepened  the  tendency  to  get  out  of  the  hbrary  and  into  the 
fields  and  woods,  to  see  directly  and  not  through  borrowed  glasses, 
to  express  directly  and  not  in  phrase  of  common  form ;  while  to 
some,  at  least,  the  mere  alterative  powers  of  Burns's  dialect  must 
always  hold  a  high  place  in  the  calculation.  The  German  influence 
of  the  very  latest  years  of  the  century  was  also  real,  though  much 
more  alloyed,  and  working  by  no  means  wholly  for  good ;  while  that 
of  the  French  Revolution,  though  it  may  easily  be  exaggerated,  can 
no  more  be  denied  than  can  the  influence  of  the  three  great  changes 
at  the  junction  of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  on  the  literary 
growths  which  followed  them.  It  is  not  for  nothing  that  the  three 
leaders  of  the  new  movement  were  all  deeply  influenced  by  Godwin, 
that  Godwin's  philosophy  shot  into  crystal  at  the  touch  of  the 
Revolution  itself,  and  that  the  essence  of  it  was  anarchy,  in  the  sense 
of  refusing  accepted  conventions,  in  everything.  All  three  were  to 
recoil  from  this  eventually,  but  the  two  greatest  of  them  never  allowed 
the  recoil  to  affect  their  literary  position.  They  struck  —  Wordsworth 
rather  blindly  and  instinctively,  Coleridge  with  reason  —  at  the  whole 
convention  of  the  period  immediately  behind  them,  and  the  literary 
practice  of  a  hundred  years  has  followed  up  their  blows. 

What,  then,  was  this  convention,  and  to  what  does  the  crusade 
against  it  amount  ?  It  is  not  a  mere  idle  play  on  words  to  answer  the 
first  part  of  this  question  that  the  convention  was  Convention  itself. 

Like  most  long-dominant  creeds,  this  was  not  the  work  of  a  single 
man,  or  the  definite  and  conscious  expression  of  the  opinions  of  a 
single  mind.  The  four  greatest  exponents  of  it,  Dryden,  Addison, 
Pope,  and  Johnson,  undoubtedly  brought  it  about,  but  it  may  be 
questioned  whether  any  but  the  last  —  perhaps  whether  even  he  —  was 
a  consciously  convinced  apostle  of  it.  Dryden,  its  founder,  was  an 
explorer,  an  experimenter,  to  his  very  death-day ;  his  theories  were  in 
a  constant  condition  of  readjustment  and  flux,  and  they,  as  well  as 
his  practice,  included  a  great  deal  of  stuff  which  was  not  part  of  the 
classical-conventional  creed  at  all.  and  suited  it  but  oddly.  In 
adopting  and  carrying  out  the  demands  of  his  time  for  a  clearer, 
plainer,  more  business-like  style  in  verse  and  prose,  he  was  induced, 
as  a  makeshift,  to  take  up  with  the  French  '' classical "  theories  to  a 
certain  extent,  but  tliis  was  chiefly  in  consequence  of  his  curious  pref- 
erence for  adaptation  over  creation.  His  immediate  successors,  the 
two  great  lawgivers  of  the  eighteenth  century  in  verse  and  prose 
respectively,  were  men  excellently  suited  for  their  own  purposes,  but 
rather  unfortunately  devised  for  the  general  good  of  literature. 
Addison  was  a  man  of  good  hut  rather  partial  reading,  with  an  intellect 


652    MIDDLE  AND   LATER   18TH-CENTURY   LITERATURE     bk.  ix 

neat  rather  than  powerful,  a  hater  of  exxess,  but  rather  tolerant  of  de- 
fect and  littleness.  Pope  was  one  of  the  very  greatest  artists  that  ever 
existed,  but  an  artist  pure  and  simple,  a  man  of  no  learning,  of  no 
extensive  intellect,  and  greater  in  his  art  than  his  art  among  others. 
Again,  Johnson's  chief  characteristic  was  a  conservatism  just  too 
obstinately  tinged  with  mere  common  sense,  a  determination,  a  little 
too  dogged  and  narrow,  to  adorn  the  Sparta  he  had  got,  and  no  other 
literary  city.  And  so,  the  general  taste  assisting,  a  really  haphazard, 
though  seemingly  orderly,  convention  of  conventions  came  into  exist- 
ence. Men  praised  "  correctness "  without  having  any  more  real 
standard  of  it  than  a  misunderstanding  by  Pope  of  Boileau's  mis- 
understanding of  Horace,  who  had  himself  misunderstood  the  Greeks. 
They  turned,  instinctively  rather  than  in  theory,  away  from  wild 
nature  to  civilised  manners.  They  laughed  at  the  Middle  Ages, 
and  filled  their  poems  with  personifications  as  unreal  as  those  of 
the  Romance  of  the  Rose,  and  infinitely  less  attractive.  They  gen- 
eralised and  abstracted ;  they  refused  "  to  count  the  streaks  of  the 
tulip"  —  till  their  written  imagery  had  the  life  and  the  outhne  and 
the  colour  of  a  mathematical  diagram.  Feeling  —  and  feeling  rightly 
—  that  prose  ought  not  to  be  like  poetry,  they  consecrated  one  par- 
ticular limited  kind  of  poetic  diction  as  the  proper  uniform  of  verse, 
and  (despite  isolated  attempts  at  truer  metrical  theory  as  well  as 
practice)  they  clung  to  the  separated  couplet  as  the  serious  metre 
beyond  which  there  was  no  salvation. 

All  this,  to  borrow  a  famous  phrase  of  Carlyle's,  the  new  age  "  [not 
always]  modestly,  but  peremptorily  and  irrevocably  denied."  It  was 
right  in  the  denial,  not  so  right  in  undervaluing  what,  in  pursuance 
or  in  spite  of  its  theories,  the  period  from  1660  to  1798  had 
given. 

For  mighty  things  had  been  given  and  done.  In  the  opening 
portion  the  work  of  Dryden  is  so  great  that  only  the  greatest  (and 
very  few  of  them)  can  be  put  above  him  in  art,  not  many  even  in 
literary  spirit,  hardly  one  in  craftsmanship.  And  this  high  peak  is 
followed  in  the  chain  by  the  volcanic  magnificence  of  Swift,  the 
graceful  outlines  of  Addison  and  Pope,  the  massive  strength  of  John- 
son and  Gibbon,  the  varied  and  effective  sky-line  of  Burke  —  with  con- 
siderable minor  heights  to  fill  in  the  range.  The  eighteenth  century 
by  itself  had  created  the  novel  and  practically  created  the  literary  his- 
tory ;  it  had  put  the  essay  into  general  circulation  ;  it  had  hit  off  various 
forms,  and  an  abundant  supply,  of  lighter  verse ;  it  had  added  largely 
to  the  literature  of  philosophy.  Above  all,  it  had  shaped  the  form  of 
English  prose-of-all-work,  the  one  thing  that  remained  to  be  done  at 
its  opening.  When  an  age  has  done  so  much,  it  seems  somewhat 
illiberal  to  reproach  it  with  not  doing  more. 


BOOK   X 

THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE 
CHAPTER    I 

THE  POETS  FROM  COLERIDGE  TO  KEATS  ^ 

The  turning-point  —  Coleridge  —  His  criticism  —  Wordsworth  —  His  inequality  — 
His  theories  —  His  genius  and  its  limitations  — Southey  —  Scott  —  His  poetical 
quality —  Byron  —  His  reputation  —  And  contribution  to  English  poetry  — 
Shelley—  His  poems  and  his  poetry—  Keats—  Landor—  Moore—  Campbell 

Some  slight  protest  has  lately  been    made  against  the  fixing  of  the 
year  1798,  and  the  publication  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads  of  Wordsworth 
and  Coleridge,  as  the  definite  turning-point  of  English  literature  for 
its  last  great  stage  as   yet.     It  is  perfectly   true   that   no 
immediate  general  effect  was  produced  by  the  book,  and    ^^^  Tn"'"^ 
that  no  second  book  till  The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel, 
seven  years  later,  showed  that  any  other  great  mind  had  been  affected. 
But  this  is  not  in  reality  a  damaging  argument.     In  almost  all  revolu- 
tions, literary  and  other,  the  first  onset  is  separated  from  the  decisive 
charge  by  a  greater  or  lesser  interval ;  at  all  turns  of  tide  — 

While  the  tired  waves,  vainly  breaking, 

Seem  here  no  painful  inch  to  {:;ain, 
Y^x  back,  through  creeks  and  inlets  making. 

Comes  silent,  flooding  in,  the  main. 

The  painful  inch  might  seem  not  to  be  gained  by  even  The  Ancient 
Mariner,  even  by  Tintern  Abbey;  but  the  main  was  flooding  in  all 
the  same. 

1  In  these  two  last  Books  the  abstinence  from  critical  expatialion  and  the 
omission  of  minor  writers,  which  have  gradually  grown  more  and  more  necessary 
throughout  this  history,  will,  as  a  rule,  lie  more  than  ever  noticeable.  In  the  same 
way,  editions  will  only  be  given  when  there  is  special  reason  for  it. 

653 


654  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

The  most  important  single  agent,  or  at  least  leader,  in  the  trans- 
formation was  undoubtedly  Samuel  Taylor   Coleridge,  who  was  born 
„  ,    .  at   Ottery  St.  Mary,  in  Devonshire,  on  the  21st  October, 

1772.  Although  the  best  poetical  work  of  Coleridge 
in  poetry  is  extremely  small  in  bulk,  while  scarcely  a  single  prose 
book  of  his,  save  perhaps  the  Biographia  Literaria,  can  be  said  to 
be  successful  throughout  in  both  matter  and  form,  yet  his  poetry  at 
its  best  reaches  the  absolute  limits  of  English  verse  as  yet  written, 
his  prose  is  full  of  suggestion  and  germ.^  Moreover,  his  personal 
effect  on  the  greatest  men  of  his  own  generation  was  so  great  as  to 
be  almost  uncanny.  Till  he  knew  Southey,  Southey,  though  always 
fond  of  books,  had  shown  little  or  no  literary  turn ;  till  he  knew 
Wordsworth,  Wordsworth  produced,  or  at  least  published,  hardly 
anything  that  can  be  called  really  poetry.  It  is  impossible  to  estimate 
the  effects  of  their  boyish  and  lifelong  friendship  on  Lamb.  Hazlitt, 
the  most  arrogant  of  men,  confessed  that  Coleridge  was  the  only 
man  who  taught  him  anything.  His  revival  and  readjustment  of 
the  old  trisyllabic  variations  on  the  octosyllable  started  Scott ; 
his  philosophisings,  not  very  systematic,  changed  the  current  of 
English  philosophy.  It  is  scarcely  possible  to  find  a  movement, 
in  verse  creation  or  in  prose  criticism,  between  1798  and  his 
death,  which  does  not  directly  or  indirectly  owe  its  impulse  to 
Coleridge. 

It  is  perhaps  more  wonderful,  when  we  consider  this  extraordinary 
expense  of  spiritual  influence  on  others,  that  Coleridge  produced  as 
much  and  as  good  work  as  he  did,  than  that  he  did  not  produce  more 
and  better.  The  virtue  that  went  out  of  him  was  so  great  that  little 
might  well  have  been  expected  to  remain.  He  seems  indeed  to  have 
had  only  two  periods  of  complete  original  energy,  the  one  about 
1797-98,  when  he  was  stimulated  by  physical  and  mental  comfort 
(for  he  was  then  living  with  his  young  wife,  of  whom  he  had  not  yet 
tired,  at  Nether  Stowey),  and  by  the  mental  excitement  of  the  com- 
panionship of  Wordsworth  and  his  sister  Dorothy ;  the  other  not 
quite  twenty  years  later,  when  he  had  just  settled  with  the  Gillmans 
at  Highgate.  His  work  before  the  earlier  of  these  periods  yields  nothing 
of  the  first  merit ;  that  between  them  and  later  only  scraps.  At  first  his 
style  was  that  of  the  usual  verse-writer  of  the  late  eighteenth  century, 
differentiated  only  by  the  inspiration  of  nature  and  topography  which 
he  had  received  from  the  sonnets  of  Bowles ;  then  (and  just  before 
the  great  time)   he  had  a  fit  of  stiff  Odes  in  the  Gray-and-Collins 

1  It  may  be  questioned  whether  the  last,  and  quite  recently  published,  book  of 
this  prose,  Anima  Poetce  (London,  1895)  vvliich  his  grandson  collected  from 
pocket-books  and  note-books  yet  unprinted,  is  not  as  important  as  any.  In  par- 
ticular, it  contains  more  attempts  in  elaborate  prose  than  any  other. 


CHAP.  I  THE   POETS   FROM   COLERIDGE  TO   KEATS  655 

manner,  varied  by  the  intolerable  platitudes,  expressed  in  more  in- 
tolerable bombast,  of  the  blank  verse  of  Religious  Musittgs.  Of  the 
Odes  themselves,  that  to  the  Departing  Year  has  flashes,  and  that 
to  France  more;  while  after  the  critical  period,  in  1802,  the  really 
beautiful  Dejection  comes  only  below  his  greatest  things.  Of  the 
later  scraps  the  opening  of  Love,  part  of  The  Three  Graves,  the 
exquisite  fragment  of  the  Knight's  Tomb,  and  a  few  other  things 
alone  deserve  the  exception  recorded.  For  the  most  part  he  led  a 
wandering  and  rather  mysterious  life,  habitually  consuming  opium  in 
excessive  quantities,  not  presenting  the  spectacle  of  conduct  in  any  way 
equal  to  his  admirable  ethical  and  religious  principles,  and  always 
coming  short  of  his  own  literary  projects  and  designs.  He  was  educated 
at  Christ's  Hospital,  and  thence  went  to  Jesus  College,  Cambridge, 
which  he  left  to  enlist  in  a  cavalry  regiment.  He  was  readmitted,  but 
he  never  took  a  degree.  In  1795  he  married ''my  pensive  Sara,"  the 
sister  of  Southey's  wife,  Edith,  and,  after  being  for  a  time  a  Unitarian 
preacher,  betook  himself  wholly  —  so  far  as  he  can  be  said  to  have 
betaken  himself  to  any  profession  at  all  —  to  that  of  literature.  He 
could,  when  he  chose,  be  a  very  effective  journalist,  and  as  the  market 
for  journalism  had  now  risen  considerably  from  the  starvation  prices 
of  the  preceding  century,  he  sometimes  earned  a  fair  income,  though 
he  was  not  above  accepting,  and  even  asking  for,  allowances  from 
friends,  and,  at  any  rate  for  some  time,  leaving  his  family  as  a 
burden  on  Southey.  He  sojourned  at  the  Lakes,  in  London,  in 
Malta  (where  he  was  secretary  to  Sir  Alexander  Ball),  in  Wiltshire 
with  some  people  named  Morgan,  and  finally,  as  was  said  above, 
at  the  Gillmans',  between  Highgate  and  Hampstead,  where  the 
younger  generation  gathered  round  him,  and  he  addressed  them, 
in  the  manner  described  for  all  time  by  Carlyle,  till  his  death  in 
1834. 

Although  many  of  Coleridge's  plans  fell  through  altogether,  and 
though  his  publication  of  what  he  did  publish  was  very  irregular,  his 
actual  works,  if  collected,  even  without  his  mere  journalism,  would  fill 
many  volumes.  The  Fall  of  Robespierre,  which  he  and  Southey 
published  in  1794,  before  either  had  found  his  true  vocation,  is  a 
mere  curiosity,  and  not  an  interesting  one.  There  is  some,  though 
still  not  very  much,  interest  in  the  volume  of  Poefns  which  Joseph 
Cottle  published  for  Coleridge  two  years  later,  while  in  these  same 
years  he  lectured  in  prose  on  literature,  the  lectures  apparently  con- 
taining many  of  his  favourite  ideas  and  expressions,  as  well  as  by 
their  intermittence  illustrating  his  fatal  instability.  He  at  different 
times  issued  by  himself,  or  with  only  the  slightest  hel]D,  two  i)eriodicals, 
the  Watchman  (1795)  and  the  Friend  (1809),  which  latter,  as  first 
printed,  is  very  different  from  the  book  known  under  the  same  name. 


656  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

His  sliare  in  the  Lyrical  Ballads  ^  included  some  of  his  best  work,  and 
the  same  time  saw  Kiibla  Khan  and  Christabel  (neither  published 
till  long  after),  the  tragedy  of  Osorio,  etc.  During  a  subsequent 
visit  to  Germany  (in  company  at  first  with  the  Wordsworths),  he 
began  the  translation  of  Wallenstein^  which  to  all  but  Germans,  and 
to  some  of  them,  seems  a  much  greater  thing  than  Schiller's  own  work. 
For  about  ten  years  he  lectured  a  good  deal,  though  very  erratically, 
in  London,  and  at  the  close  of  the  decade,  in  the  years  1816-18,  he 
published  Christabel,  the  Biographia  Literaria,  Zapolya,  and  the  (book) 
Friend.  His  later  published  work  was  not  extensive,  and  as  published 
not  very  original,  though  valuable  collections  of  Table  Talk,  marginal 
notes  on  books  (to  the  making  of  which  he  was  much  addicted),  and 
the  like  were  published  after  his  death. 

Coleridge's  importance  in  English  literature  is  threefold  —  first  as 
an  influence,  in  which  character  such  brief  justice  as  is  here  possible 
has  been  already  done  him ;  as  a  prose-writer,  especially  in  the  de- 
partment of  criticism,  understood  in  its  widest  sense ;  and  as  a  poet. 

As  a  prose-writer  his  importance  is  limited  to  criticism,  and  to 
criticism  rather  of  matter  and  spirit  than  of  form  and  style.  It  has 
long  been  acknowledged  that,  inestimable  as  was  the  benefit  he  con- 
ferred  upon    English  philosophy  in  the  widest  sense  by 

His  criticism.      .    .  .[  i-  •  ,         i       ,  . 

givmg  it  a  new  direction,  he  had  no  systematic  con- 
structive faculty,  and  could  at  best — it  is  true  that  he  could  hardly 
have  done  anything  better — -suggest  an  attitude.  The  attitude  was 
that  of  a  mediasvalism  inspired  by  much  later  learning,  but  still  more 
by  that  intermediate  or  decadent  Greek  philosophy  which  had  so 
much  influence  on  the  Middle  Ages  themselves.  This  is,  in  other 
words,  the  Romantic  attitude,  and  Coleridge  was  the  high  priest  of 
Romanticism,  which,  through  Scott  and  Byron,  he  taught  to  Europe, 
re-preaching  it  even  to  Germany,  from  which  it  had  partly  come.  He 
more  than  any  one  else  revolutionised  the  English  view  of  literature, 
and  though  unjust  to  the  eighteenth  century,  and  not  always  trust- 
worthy in  detailed  remarks  on  earlier  writers,  set  it  on  the  whole  on 
a  new  and  sound  basis.  In  the  literary  form  which  he  gave  to  these 
and  other  exercitations  of  his  he  was  not  pre-eminently  happy ;  both 
Southey  and  Wordsworth  were  better  prose-writers  merely  as  such, 
and  Southey  was  far  better.  But  even  here,  as  far  more  elsewhere, 
Coleridge  was  "noticeable,"  and    his    mission  was  to  show  what  to 

iThis  famous  book  was  professedly  to  illustrate  two  different  methods  of 
poetic  treatment,  Wordsworth  making  the  common  uncommon,  and  Coleridge 
the  uncommon  credible  and  acceptable.  The  latter  object,  though  less  distinct, 
was  much  more  fully  achieved  than  the  former,  for  the  Ancient  Mariner  accepts 
its  conditions  and  performs  its  feat,  while  the  best  things  of  Wordsworth's  part  do 
not  deal  with  every-day  conceptions,  and  are  not  couched  in  familiar  language. 


CHAP.  I  THE   POETS   FROM   COLERIDGE  TO   KEATS  657 

admire  and  think,  and  in  what  temper  to  admire  and  think  it.  not  in 
what  special  form  to  express  the  admiration  or  tlie  thought. 

His  accomplishment  as  a  poet  was  different,  but  was  also  subject  to 
the  strange  limitations  which  not  only  confined  but  marred  his  work 
throughout.  The  bulk  of  his  verse  is  very  far  from  small :  it  extends 
to  500  large  pages  of  double  columns  pretty  closely  printed.^  But 
the  most  lavish  tolerance  of  selection  ^  has  not  succeeded  in  getting 
out  of  this  mass  more  than  half  the  number  of  small  pages  loosely 
and  largely  printed  in  single  column ;  and  not  a  quarter  of  thie 
winnowed  heap  is  really  good  grain.  The  Ancient  Mariner  and 
Christabel  2iX^  Coleridge's  only  great  productions  of  any  bulk.  Knbla 
K/ian  is  very  short,  and  elsewhere  he  has  only  passages.  Yet  the 
quality  of  the  better  part  is  such  that  no  English  poet  can  be  put  far 
above  Coleridge  when  only  quality  and  not  quantity  is  demanded. 
This  quality  is  perhaps  shown  as  well  as  anywhere  in  the  fragment  of 
Knbla  Khati  itself,  where  there  is  no  disturbing  element  of  story  or 
character  to  interfere  with  the  purely  poetical  part  of  the  matter ;  but 
it  is  equally  visible,  and,  of  course,  much  more  satisfactorily  appreci- 
able by  the  general  taste,  in  The  Ancient  Mariner,  where  these  things 
are  present,  and  in  Christabel,  where  they  are  provided  more 
abundantly  still,  though  much  less  artistically  and  finally  adjusted. 
Diction,  metre,  imagery,  letter-music,  suggestion  —  all  the  elements  of 
poetry  are  here  present  in  intense  degree,  and  in  forms,  guises,  and 
combinations  entirely  novel  and  original.  It  is  scarcely  too  much  to 
say  that  in  these  best  poems  of  Coleridge  the  poetry  of  the  nineteenth 
century  is  almost  wholly  suggested,  and  is,  to  a  very  great  extent,  con- 
tained after  the  fashion  of  the  oak  in  the  acorn. 

The  collaborator  of  Coleridge  in  the  Lyrical  Ballads  was,  as  very 
frequently  happens  in  the  more  fortunate  partnerships  of  life  and 
literature,  a  remarkably  different  person  from  his  helpmate.  Born  in 
Cumberland,    but   of   Yorkshire    stock,   at    the    town    of  „,    , 

^.      ,  1        •         «       -1  ,,T.ii-  ITT       1  1  Wordsworth. 

Cockermouth,  m  April  1770,  William  Wordsworth  was 
the  son  of  a  lawyer  and  land-agent ;  but  his  father  died  when  he  was 
thirteen,  and  for  some  years  the  family  luck  was  low.  This  did  not, 
however,  interfere  with  tlie  future  poet's  education  at  Hawkshead 
Crammar  School  and  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  or  with  his 
early  indulgence  in  a  career  of  leisure,  travel,  and  study,  not  commonly 
enjoyed  by  any  but  the  favourites  of  Fortune.  A  sojourn  in  France 
affected  him  greatly,  though  in  very  recent  days  its  effect  has  perhaps 
been  exaggerated  ;  and  lie  underwent,  like  Southey  and  Coleridge,  a 
measles  of  Republicanism  which  very  soon  cured  itself.  His  first 
verse  appeared,  as   became    his  slightly   more    advanced   age,  before 

1  In  the  admirable  edition  of  Mr.  Dykes  Campbell  (London,  1893). 

2  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke's  Golden  Book  of  Coleridge  (London,  1895). 

2U 


658  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  Book  x 

theirs  in  1793;  and  like  theirs  it  has  no  great  merit.  A  legacy  of 
not  quite  a  thousand  pounds  having  fallen  to  him,  he  established  him- 
self in  the  south  of  England  at  different  points  of  Somerset  and  Dorset, 
and  here  he  fell  in  with  Coleridge,  with  whom,  after  issuing  the 
Ballads,  he  set  out  for  Germany.  On  his  return  he  settled  at  the 
Lakes,  recovered  the  inheritance  of  which  the  injustice  of  his  father's 
employer  had  deprived  his  family  for  nearly  twenty  years,  married, 
and  after  a  time  received  the  lucrative  sinecure,  or  practical  sinecure, 
of  Distributor  of  Stamps.  The  entire  history  of  his  life  was  literary 
and  domestic,  and  for  half  a  century  he  abode  first  at  Grasmere,  then 
at  his  well-known  home  of  Rydal  Mount,  composing  at  leisure,  pub- 
lishing at  intervals,  believing  in  his  own  poetry  with  an  intensity  only 
shared  by  Milton  among  true  poets,  and  very  slowly  winning  first 
the  elect,  or  some  of  them,  and  then  the  crowd,  to  his  belief.  It  was 
about  the  end  of  the  fourth  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century  that  the 
general  conversion  was  ratified  —  on  one  side  by  the  degree  of  D.C.L. 
from  Oxford,  on  the  other  by  a  pension  from  the  Crown.  For  the 
last  seven  years  of  his  life  he  was  Poet-Laureate  in  succession  to 
Southey,  and  died  on  23rd  April  1850. 

It  has  been  said  that  Wordsworth  was  very  different  from  Cole- 
ridge ;  there  is,  indeed,  hardly  more  than  one  point  of  resemblance 
between  them.  Both  were  poets  of  the  very  highest  power,  the  interval 
,^.  .         ,.      and  inequality  between   whose   best  and  worst  poetry  is 

His  inequality.  ,  ,         .  .  '^  ■' 

vast  and  very  nearly  mcomprehensible.  It  must  be 
added  that  the  incomprehensibility  is  greater  in  Wordsworth's  case 
than  in  Coleridge's.  The  latter  wrote  badly  or  weakly,  because  he 
very  seldom  gave  his  genius  a  chance,  because  his  habits  were  fatal 
to  continued  mental  activity,  because  he  was  distracted  between  a 
dozen  different  literary  objects,  because  he  was  at  any  rate  very  often 
writing,  when  he  did  write,  for  mere  bread.  In  all  these  respects 
Wordsworth's  lot  and  conduct  were  quite  different.  He  devoted 
himself  utterly  and  entirely  to  poetry,  seldom  thinking,  hardly  ever 
writing  anything  that  was  not  either  poetry  or  about  poetry;  he 
maintained  himself  by  exercise  and  plain  good  living  in  the  utmost 
mental  and  bodily  health ;  and  he  declined  to  be  a  bread-winner  with 
such  a  magnificent  steadfastness  that  Fate  was  from  the  first  cowed, 
and  maintained  him  without  any  effort  of  his  own.  His  poetical  pro- 
duction, accordingly,  was  never  in  the  least  hampered  or  hurried,  and 
large  as  it  is,  the  bulk  is  not  in  the  least  surprising,  considering  that 
it  represents  more  than  half  a  century  of  waking  moments  entirely 
given  up  to  it.  Yet,  even  deducting  the  work  of  the  years  when 
Wordsworth's  powers  were  not  come  to  maturity  and  engaged  in  their 
proper  work,  as  well  as  that  of  the  years  in  which  his  natural  force 
was  abated,  there  is  absolutely  no  certainty  in  his  poetic  touch. 


CHAP.  I  THE   POETS   FROM   COLERIDGE  TO   KEATS  659 

Nor  is  this  inequality  to  be  accounted  for,  in  any  but  a  small 
degree,  by  his  celebrated  heresy  about  poetic  diction.  He  had 
adopted,  perhaps  less  consciously  and  deliberately  than  his 
prose  manifesto  on  the  subject  in  a  preface  to  the  second 
edition  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads  would  have  us  believe,  but  to  some 
extent  both  with  consciousness  and  deliberation,  a  formula  of  reaction 
from  the  practice  of  the  eighteenth  century,  which  laid  it  down  that 
poetry  ought  to  be  written  in  the  simplest  language  of  the  common 
people,  that  even  metre  is  an  accident  of  it,  and  that  the  poetic 
essence  consists  wholly  in  fixing  the  result  of  an  impassioned  spirit- 
ual experience.  His  theory  led  him  to  the  composition  of  some 
silly  things,  and  never  in  the  least  helped  him  to  the  composition  of 
fine  ones ;  but  in  practice  he  constantly  neglected  it.  No  poet  has  a 
more  distinct  poetic  diction  —  a  diction  sometimes  more  really  stiff 
and  non-natural  than  that  of  any  Augustan  of  the  decadence  —  than 
Wordsworth.  But  his  success  and  his  failures  have  very  little  more  to 
do  with  this  diction  than  with  his  childishnesses  and  his  peasantries. 
In  both  moods,  with  both  dialects,  he  will  sometimes  soar  to  em- 
pyrean heights,  and  sometimes  flounder  along  the  moor  of  prose  with 
the  most  exasperating  shamble.  And  it  is  not  by  any  means  certain 
(though  the  contrary  would  seem  almost  incredible)  that  he  was  him- 
self fully  or  at  all  sensible  of  the  difference.  Only  this  of  his  pet 
heresy  survived  in  him  to  the  last  —  the  conviction  that  the  meaning, 
and  the  meaning  only,  was  the  poetry.  And  as  it  was  his  equally 
firm  creed  that  William  Wordsworth  could  not  mean  otherwise  than 
nobly,  so  it  was  matter  of  breviary  with  him  likewise  that  William 
Wordsworth  could  not  write  otherwise  than  well. 

There  is  now  no  difficulty,  except  to  those  who  either  do  not 
possess  critical  power  or  decline  to  use  it,  in  detecting,  so  far  as 
such  things  can  ever  be  detected,  the  secret  of  Wordsworth's  poetical 
inequalitv.       It    is    that    his    poetical    power,    though    of     „• 

' .         -  '  .  .         "'s  genius 

the  intensest  and  noblest,  was  very  narrow  in  its  possi-  and  its 
bilities  of  application,  and  that,  reinforcing  a  native  arro-  ™"*"°"s. 
gance  with  an  acquired  theory,  he  thought  it  capable  of  being  applied 
almost  universally.  It  was  his  mission  to  reverse  the  general  ten- 
dency of  the  eighteenth  century  by  averting  the  attention  from  towns, 
manners,  politics,  systems  of  philosophy,  and  directing  them  upon 
the  country,  nature,  the  inner  moral  life  of  man.  and  religion.  Occa- 
sionally a  sort  of  splash  of  that  limited  Init  magnificent  poetic  genius 
of  his  has  fallen  beyond  the  usual  circle ;  more  often  he  has  en- 
deavoured to  extend  the  circle  at  the  expense  of  the  power.  Per- 
haps twice  only,  in  Tintern  Abbey  and  in  the  Ode  on  Intimations 
of  /nnnortality,  is  the  full.  tl)e  perfect  Wordsworth,  with  his  half- 
pantheistic  worship  of  nature,  informed  and  chastened  by  an   intense 


66o  THE  TRIUMPH    OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

sense  of  human  conduct,  of  reverence  and  almost  of  humbleness,  dis- 
played in  the  utmost  poetic  felicity.  And  these  two  are  accordingly 
among  the  great  poems  of  the  world.  No  unfavourable  criticism  on 
either  —  and  there  has  been  some,  new  and  old,  from  persons  in  whom 
it  is  surprising,  as  well  as  from  persons  in  whom  it  is  natural  —  has 
hurt  them,  though  it  may  have  hurt  the  critics.  They  are,  if  not  in 
every  smallest  detail,  yet  as  wholes,  invulnerable  and  imperishable. 
They  could  not  be  better  done. 

Elsewhere,  in  the  great  range  of  Wordsworth's  work,^  we  are  in 
a  perpetual  series  of  ups  and  downs,  of  alternations  between  small 
things  nearly  as  perfect  as  the  great  ones,  small  things  imperfect  or 
negligible,  and  great  things  in  bulk  which,  except  in  solitary  flashes 
and  spurts  of  suddenly  released  genius,  are  dull  and  dead.  The 
mighty  poem  of  which  The  Prelude  "^  and  The  Excursion  are  only 
fragments  was  fortunately  never  finished  in  its  actual  bulk ;  yet  lines 
like  the  famous  one  of  Newton  — 

Voyaging  through  strange  seas  of  thought  alone, 

with  some  passages  in  both  portions  certainly  not  far  inferior,  scarcely 
tempt  any  genuine  lover  of  poetry  to  repeat  his  first  wanderings 
through  the  estimable  wilderness.  The  progress  through  the  smaller 
poems  is  naturally  less  painful.  The  very  early  Evening  Walk 
(written  1787-89)  has  all  the  author's  veracity  and  nature-knowledge, 
though  his  style  is  still  eighteenth-century.  Poor  Susan  (written 
1797)  has  an  admirable  sentiment,  a  clumsy  metrical  setting,  and 
some  capital  phrase.  A  Night  Piece  (early  1798,  and  suggested 
doubtless  by  Lady  Winchelsea,  but  not  in  any  way  copied)  is  valu- 
able as  giving,  deliberately,  the  process  of  poetic  observation,  which 
had  been  so  long  and  so  sadly  neglected.  The  1807  collection  is 
full  of  great  things,  which  in  the  famous  Ode  to  Duty,  and  not  only 
there,  reach  positive  magnificence.  And  so  we  might  go  through  the 
whole  huge  volume,  everywhere  meeting  with  strange  and  childish 
freaks,  with  instances  still  more  fatal  of  the  poet's  inequality  to  the 
situation  he  has  chosen,  but  now  and  again,  and  not  too  seldom, 
with  that  ineffable  combination  of  thought  and  music  which  reaches  its 


-■&' 


iThe  chief  issues  of  this  work  after  1798  were  the  second  edition  of  the 
Lyrical  Ballads  in  1800,  Poems  in  1807,  the  Excursion  in  1814,  the  White  Doe 
in  1815,  the  Diiddon  Sonnets  in  1819,  the  Ecclesiastical  Sonnets  in  1822,  and  a 
collection  in  1836.  Of  his  best  single  things  not  printed  in  1798,  Hartleap  Well 
appeared  in  1800,  most  others  in  1807. 

2  The  Prelude  (finished  1805,  not  published  till  1850)  has  nowadays  more 
champions,  who  are  not  uncompromising  Wordsworthians,  than  The  Excursion. 
It  possesses  undoubted  nobility,  and  a  strong  autobiographic  interest;  yet  it  may 
seem  to  some  that  much  of  it  had  been  as  well  in  prose. 


CHAP.  I  THE   POETS   FROM   COLERIDGE  TO   KEATS  66i 

highest  accomplishments  in  the  bewildering  and  dazzling  passages  of 
the  two  poems  above  cited. 
When  Wordsworth  writes  — 

The  sounding  cataract 
Haunted  me  like  a  passion; 
or 

Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting, 

even  Shakespeare,  even  Shelley,  have  little  more  of  the  echoing 
detonation,  the  auroral  light,  of  true  poetry.  No  third  poet  in 
English,  and  therefore  none  in  any  language,  has  anything  that 
comes  near  them,  though  Spenser  from  this  point  of  view  must,  and 
Milton  from  that  may,  be  put  above  Wordsworth. 

Not  his  least  poetic  merit,  however,  has  yet  to  be  noticed,  and 
that  is  the  firm  and  decisive  manner  in  which  he  established  the 
sonnet  in  its  place.  The  reappearance  of  this  form  had  been, 
as  was  noted  in  the  last  Book,  one  of  the  signs  of  the  Romantic 
revival,  and  most  of  the  poets  of  that  revival  practised  it  more  or 
less.  But  Wordsworth  was  fonder  of  it  than  any  of  them,  and  his 
work  in  it  was  not,  at  its  best,  approached  by  any,  until  his  years  had 
increased  and  his  strength  diminished.  He  did  not  indeed  take  to 
it  extremely  early :  his  first  evidence  of  a  thorough  command  is  the 
Skiddaw  sonnet  of  1801,  the '•  Westminster  Bridge"  (1802)  following 
rapidly ;  but  from  that  time  onward  not  many  years  passed  without 
at  least  one  masterpiece.  Wordsworth's  sonnets  contain  almost  his 
best  work,  outside  the  two  unapproachable  pieces  already  noted,  with 
perhaps  a  very  few  others.  And  in  the  famous  series  on  the  River 
Duddon  he  has  grappled,  and  more  successfully  than  most  of  his 
followers  except  Dante  Rossetti,  with  the  great  difficulty  of  a  sonnet- 
sequence,  in  its  parts  retaining  the  individual  charm  of  the  form, 
while,  as  a  whole,  giving  something  like  the  effect  of  those  long 
poems  from  which,  except  in  narrative,  modern  taste  has  more  and 
more  turned  away. 

Modern  taste  has  more  and  more  turned  away  from  the  poetical 
work  at  least  of  the  writer  who,  already  mentioned  more  than 
once,  was  in  the  lifetime  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  invariably 
associated  with  them.  It  is  certain  that  the  strictly 
poetical  power  and  value  of  Robert  Southey  were 
considerably  inferior  to  theirs.  Yet  his  verse,^  to  those  who  will 
take  the  trouble  to  read  it,  still  has,  in  large  parts  at  least,  no  small 
attraction,  wliile  it  was  a  very  great  influence  in  its  time,  and 
expresses  the  tendencies  of  tliat  time  as  clearly,  if  not  as  supremely, 

1  Those  who  fear  the  large  one-volume  edition  of  the  whole  will  find  an 
excellent  selection  by  Professor  Dowdcn  in  the  "  Golden  Treasury  "  Series, 


662  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

as  any.  He  was  the  youngest  of  the  trio,  born  at  Bristol  in  August 
1774,  of  a  family  entitled  to  write  themselves  ariiiigero  in  any  bill, 
warrant,  quittance,  or  obligation,  though  his  father  was  in  trade  and 
died  young  and  nearly  insolvent.  Southey,  however,  was,  by  his 
mother's  brother,  educated  at  Westminster  and  at  Balliol.  He  took 
no  degree,  and  entered  no  regular  state  of  life  except  that  of  marriage, 
which  he  undertook  at  an  early  age,  and  with  no  prospect  of 
subsistence.  A  stay,  however,  in  Portugal,  repeated  some  years 
later,  gave  him  a  strong  fancy  for  the  languages  and  literatures  of 
the  Peninsula,  and  after  some  vicissitudes  he  gave  himself  up  to 
literature,  this  being  made  possible  by  the  generosity  of  his  school 
friend  Charles  Wynn,  from  whom  he  received  an  annuity  of  ^160. 
He  lived  for  the  last  forty  years  of  his  life  at  Greta  Hall,  near 
Keswick,  where  he,  on  very  small  means,  collected  a  wonderful 
library,  brought  up  not  only  his  own  family,  but  for  some  considerable 
time  that  of  his  erratic  brother-in-law  Coleridge,  accomplished  an 
astonishing  amount  of  admirable  literary  work,  for  the  most  part 
very  poorly  remunerated,  and  died  in  1843,  having  been  for  some 
years  scarcely  of  sound  mind.  He  had  been  made  Poet-Laureate  in 
1 8 13,  and  from  the  time  of  the  foundation  of  the  Qiiarterly  Review 
had  been  one  of  its  principal  contributors.  Southey's  Poems,  on 
which  he  himself  serenely  based  his  hope  of  immortality,  and  which 
were  very  highly  thought  of  by  most  good  judges  in  his  own  time, 
even  by  some  who  disliked  him  and  his  politics,  were  collected  in  ten 
volumes  in  1837,  and  after  his  death  re-collected  with  additions  in 
one.  Besides  the  already  mentioned  Fall  of  Robespierre,  in  1794, 
with  Coleridge,  he  published  Poems  with  R.  Lovell,  another  future 
brother-in-law;  Joan  of  Arc  (1795);  Poems  in  two  volumes  towards 
the  end  of  the  century  ;  Thalaba  the  Destroyer  (iSoi)  ;  Tales,  and  the 
long  poem  of  Madoc  (1805)  ;  The  Curse  of  Kehama  (1810)  ;  Roderick 
the  Goth  (1814)  ;  and  the  Vision  of  Judgment  (1821)  ;  with  a  Tale  of 
Paraguay,  Oliver  Newman,  etc.,  later.  Much  of  Southey's  work, 
especially  his  largest  poems  oi  Joan  of  Arc,  Madoc,  and  Roderick,  is  in 
a  kind  of  blank  verse,  showing  reaction  from  the  couplets  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  but  somewhat  deficient  in  individuality  and 
variety.  Far  more  important,  as  well  as  far  better,  are  the  irregular 
and  unrhymed  stanzas  of  Thalaba,  and  the  irregular  but  rhymed 
stanzas  of  Kehama.  Although  the  unrhymed  Pindaric  (which  Southey 
took  from  Sayers  of  Norwich)  is  pretty  certainly  a  devout  imagination 
merely,  there  are  extraordinarily  fine  things  in  Thalaba,  and  its 
effect  upon  poets  so  different  and  great  as  Scott  and  Shelley  is  in  no 
way  hard  to  understand.  Kehama  is  better  still,  and  Southey's 
poetical  fame  seems  at  present  likely  to  rest  (though  the  revolutions 
of  the  past  bid  us  have  a  care  in  saying  this)  on  the  best  passages  of 


CHAP.  I  THE   POETS   FROM   COLERIDGE  TO   KEATS  663 

this  very  fine,  though  somewhat  remotely  and  unpopularly  conceived, 
poem,  with  a  certain  number  of  smaller  pieces  —  "The  Holly  Tree,"  the 
exquisite  '•  My  days  among  the  dead  are  past,"  the  popular,  and  not 
meanly  popular,  "  Battle  of  Blenheim,"  *'  Cataract  of  Lodore,"  '•  Well 
of  St.  Keyne,"  "Inchcape  Rock,"  '"Bishop  Hatto,"  and  the  fine 
ballad  of  "  Queen  Orraca." 

But  there  are  many  great  passages  in  the  longer  poems,  even  in 
the  Vision  ofjiidg/nettt,  the  fault  of  which  is  none  of  those  indicated 
by  Byron  in  his  clever  parody,  but  simply  that  it  is  panegyrical  in 
substance  and  hexametrical  in  form.  It  is  diiificult  to  write  a  good 
official  panegyric  in  English,  it  is  nearly  impossible  to  write  good 
hexameters  in  English ;  and  when  a  man  chooses  to  encounter 
two  such  difficulties  at  once,  it  is  no  wonder  if  he  be  worsted. 
Southey  had  poetic  gifts  —  even  great  ones  —  but  his  life  was  unfavour- 
able for  their  development,  and  they  were  probably  not  of  that 
overmastering  kind  which  makes  the  possessor  independent  of  circum- 
stances. He  thus  ranks  higher  as  a  prose-writer  than  as  a  poet,  and 
his  prose  will  be  better  treated  in  another  place. 

It  is  important  to  pay  attention  to  the  dates  of  these  three 
careers.  After  1798  and  the  Lyrical  Ballads,  Coleridge  published 
nothing  of  importance  in  verse  for  nearly  twenty  years  ;  and  Words- 
worth, though  he  published,  was  not  attended  to.  Thalaba  and 
Madoc,  on  the  other  hand,  appeared  soon,  and  had  no  small  popu- 
larity, Thalaba  in  particular  being,  as  was  said  above,  a  most 
important  poetical  fact  of  its  day.  But  for  some  seven  years  the 
public  had  very  little  poetry  put  before  it  (even  Crabbe,  the  only 
veteran  with  a  future,  being  silent),  until  The  Lay  of  the  Last 
Minstrel  appeared . 

Walter  Scott  takes  rank,  so  far  as  age  goes,  between  Wordsworth 
and  Coleridge,  having  been  born  a  year  later  than  the  former  and  a 
year  earlier  than  the  latter,  on  15th  August  1771.  A  younger  child 
of  a  junior  branch  of  the  great  border  clan  of  his  name, 
he  was  born  in  Edinburgh  (his  father  being  a  Writer  to 
the  Signet),  and  was  himself  educated  for  the  same  profession  in  its 
higher  branch.  His  health  was  so  bad  in  early  childhood  that  it 
was  hardly  thought  he  would  survive,  and  the  lameness  which  after 
infancy  disabled  him  for  a  time,  remained,  though  not  to  a  disal)ling 
extent,  in  youth  and  manhood,  to  become  again  a  serious  trouble  in  the 
disorders  of  his  later  years.  Although  always  a  reader,  and  fairly  if 
not  regularly  educated  at  the  High  School  and  University  of  the 
Scottish  capital,  he  was  in  no  sense  early  noted  for  literary  leanings, 
except  that  he  published  a  tiny  volume  of  translations  from  the 
German  at  five-and-twenty,  and  did  some  ballads  a  little  later  — 
ballads  showing  something  of  the  rococo  style  of  the  late  eighteenth 


664  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  X 

century,  but  with  fire  enough  in  them  to  burn  all  this  up.  He  married 
at  the  end  of  1799,  and  though  he  never  attained,  or  showed  much 
sign  of  attaining,  an  extensive  practice,  received  the  easy  and 
comfortable,  though  not  very  lucrative,  SheriiTship  of  Selkirkshire, 
which,  with  his  wife's  means  and  his  own,  gave  him  a  tolerably  good 
income.  In  1802  he  put  forth,  with  some  original  and  some  con- 
tributed matter  in  verse  and  prose,  the  Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish 
Border,  and  this  suggested  The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel.  It  was 
published  in  1805,  and  was  in  some  ways  the  most  important  original 
work  in  poetry,  taking  bulk,  form,  and  merit  together,  that  had 
appeared  for  generations,  though  poetically  it  could  not  vie  with  the 
Lyrical  Ballads.  This  masterly  metrical  romance  achieved  at  a  blow 
the  victory  for  the  new  poetry,  by  bringing  its  charms  home  to  that 
body  of  general  readers  who  might  have  been  disposed  to  think  The 
Ancient  Mariner  a  pleasant  but  extravagant  trifle,  and  to  be  puzzled 
or  contemptuous  over  the  Lines  written  above  Tinterti  Abbey. 

Scott  followed  up  the  Lay  with  a  series  of  long  poems  — 
Marmion  (1808),  The  Lady  of  the  Lake  {\%\6),  Rokeby  (1812),  The 
Lord  of  the  Isles  (1813),  beside  the  minor,  later,  and  anonymous 
Bridal  of  Triermain  and  Harold  the  Dauntless,  not  to  mention  a 
great  number  of  lesser  and  chiefly  lyrical  pieces.  He  was,  though 
no  musician,  one  of  the  best  song-writers  in  English,  and  when  he 
gave  up  poetry  for  novel-writing  (see  next  chap.)  his  magnificent 
faculty  for  improvising  verse  still  found  vent  in  mottoes,  songs,  and 
snatches  included  in  the  novels  themselves.  The  last  literary  com- 
position of  his  that  is  known  is  in  verse,  and  though,  written  as  it 
was  in  all  but  the  final  stage  of  his  fatal  disorder,  it  is  incoherent  in 
parts,  it  contains  the  fine  distich  — 

The  shapes  upon  the  dial  cast, 
Proceed  but  pass  not  back  again; 

and  ends  with  the  pathetic  aposiopesis,  strangely  appropriate  in  sense 
and  form  — 

The  blood  glows  warm,  the  nerves  expand. 

The  stiffened  fingers  take  the  pen, 
And 

His  career,  after  the  establishment  of  his  fame  by  Marmion,  was 
for  nearly  twenty  years  continuously  prosperous.  In  his  profession 
lie  made  no  mark,  but  obtained,  in  addition  to  his  Sheriffship,  a 
comfortably  paid  and  not  hard-worked  appointment  in  the  Court  of 
Session,  which,  with  his  other  resources,  made  him  independent  of 
literature.  And  literature  itself  rewarded  him  in  a  way  previously 
unknown.     His  poems  brought  him  large  sums,  but  these  were  insig- 


CHAP.  1  THE   POETS   FROM   COLERIDGE  TO   KEATS  665 

nificant  in  comparison  witli  the  returns  of  the  Waverley  Novels,  which 
for  a  long  series  of  years  gave  an  income  of  from  fifteen  to  twenty 
thousand  a  year,  and  after  his  death  cleared  off  a  balance  of  debt  of 
about  double  that  amount.  He  constructed  for  himself  an  elabo- 
rately Gothic  country-house  at  Abbotsford  on  the  Tweed,  bought  land 
round  it  at  exorbitant  rates,  received  the  title  of  baronet  in  1820, 
and,  having  married  his  eldest  son  to  an  heiress,  had  every  prospect 
of  "  founding  a  family  "  —  his  admitted,  and  not  ungenerous,  ambition. 
Unfortunately  he  had,  at  an  early  period,  secretly  become  partner 
with  his  friends  and  printers  the  Ballantynes  in  the  printing  concern 
itself,  and  this  connection  — •  persevered  in  for  reasons  imperfectly 
comprehensible,  since  the  profits  of  it  were  small  and  the  trouble  and 
risk  great  —  resulted  in  absolute  ruin  during  the  great  trade  crash  of 
1825.  Scott,  refusing  bankruptcy,  set  himself  to  work  to  pay  off  in 
full  the  enormous  sum  — over  a  hundred  thousand  pourvls  —  for  which 
he  was  legally  liable,  and  practically  achieved  the  task,  but  the  work 
and  the  mental  distress  brought  on  paralysis  and  softening  of  the 
brain,  from  which,  after  a  vain  visit  to  Italy,  he  died  at  Abbotsford 
in  1832. 

Scott's  poetry,  like  that  of  all  the  more  important  poets,  has  to 
be  considered  under  two  aspects,  that  of  its  historical  position  and 
that  of  its  purely  intrinsic  merits,  though  these  can  never,  as  some 
impatient  critics  have  recommended,  be  wholly  separated.  From  the 
historic  point  of  view,  hardly  the  greatest  poets  exceed  Scott  in  im- 
portance. Without  him  it  is  extremely  improbable  that  Byron  would 
have  done  anything  more  than  the  Giffordian  satires,  which  were  most 
congenial  to  him,  and  which,  though  clever  enough,  are  of  no  real 
moment.  And  without  his  influence,  reinforced  as  it  was  a  decade 
later  by  his  own  novels  and  Byron's  poems,  the  complete  conversion 
of  the  public  taste  could  not,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  have  by  any 
possibility  been  effected.  Even  as  it  was,  the  greatest  poets  of  the 
new  school  —  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Keats  —  had  to  wait  a 
considerable  time  for  their  due  acceptance ;  and  if  the  work  had  been 
left  to  them  alone,  it  is  pretty  certain  that  the  result  would  have  been 
slower  still,  if  it  had  ever  been  brought  about  at  all.  It  may  be  said 
that  the  judgment  of  the  multitude  in  regard  to  poetry  may  be 
neglected,  and  this  is  no  doubt,  to  a  certain  extent,  true.  But  it  is 
very  far  from  unimportant  that  the  general  tendency  and  taste  of  the 
time  should  be  turned  in  a  right  direction,  for  then  only  has  poetic 
genius  a  fair  chance.  We  may  therefore  not  merely  pardon,  but 
welcome,  a  certain  touch  of  mere  popularity,  or  of  artistic  imperfec- 
tion, in  triumphant  missionaries  of  tlie  good  cause. 

Further,  the  actually  \ve;ilc  points  of  Scott's  poetry  have  for  very 
many    years    been     much    exaggerated,    and    even  more     misstated. 


666  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

Although  possessed  of  a  poetic  faculty  always  real,  often  great,  and 
sometimes  quite  consummate,  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  was  in  the 

first  place,  and  by  natural  kind,  even  more  of  a  tale-teller 
quahty!^^     than    of    a    poet   in    the    modern   sense,    that   he   was   a 

"  maker  "  first  of  all.  And  for  the  purpose  of  tale-telling 
in  verse,  extreme  and  consummate  felicity  of  poetic  expression  in 
concentrated  form  is  even  less  necessary  than  it  is  for  drama.  Indeed, 
narrative  almost  discourages  such  expression,  except  in  the  dangerous 
form  of  episode  or  aside.  Yet,  again,  Scott's  irregular  education  and 
his  lack  of  the  minuter  critical  habit  (though  he  was  an  excellent,  if 
a  rather  too  merciful,  critic  on  the  large  scale)  made  him  careless  of 
minor  details  of  phrase,  construction,  and  sometimes  rhyme.  And  yet 
again,  though  possessed  of  deep  feeling  and  of  the  utmost  shrewdness 
in  human  philosophy,  he  was  by  temperament  extremely  averse  from 
exhibitions,  either  of  passion  or  of  apparently  philosophical  reflection. 
All  this  gave  him  the  appearance,  rather  than  the  reality,  of  being  a 
superficial  and  facile  bard,  and  criticism,  itself  far  more  really 
superficial,  has  sometimes  classed  him  as  such. 

It  will  readily  appear  from  what  has  been  said  in  the  last  paragraph 
but  one  that  this  is  a  mistake.  If  the  attempts  of  the  four  poets 
above  referred  to  —  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  and  Keats  —  some 
of  them  composed  in  direct  rivalry  with  Scott,  and  in  his  very  measure  — 
be  compared,  it  will  be  found  that  the  superiority  as  poetry  is  by  no 
means  constant,  and  the  inferiority  as  narrative  invariable  and  most 
marked.  Moreover,  in  the  best  passages  even  of  his  narratives  —  the 
finding  of  the  Book  in  the  Lay,  the  last  stand  at  Flodden  and  the 
passing  bell  of  Constance  in  Marmion,  with  not  a  few  others — and 
still  more  in  his  lyrics  and  snatches,  —  among  which,  if  mention  were 
once  begun,  scores  of  things  from  "  Proud  Maisie  "  downwards  would 
have  to  be  included  —  Scott  constantly  reaches  a  very  high  level, 
and  sometimes  comes  not  so  far  off  the  very  best  passages  of 
these  four  poets  themselves.  Above  all,  he  is  one  of  those  poets,  the 
rarest  of  all,  who  serve  as  channels  to  convey  the  enjoyment  of 
what  is  real  poetry  to  those  vast  numbers  of  the  human  race,  the 
majority  by  something  like  ninety-nine  to  one,  who  are  intolerant  of 
poetical  quintessence  in  unadulterated  draughts.  The  benefit  con- 
ferred by  these  can  hardly  be  exaggerated. 

This  "  appeal  to  the  people "  was  taken  up  before  many  years 
had  passed  by  another  poet,  curiously  different  from  Scott  in 
personal  character,  and  indeed  in  most   other  ways,  but  possessing, 

like  him,  the  faculty  of  making  poetry  popular.     George 

Gordon  Byron,  sixth  Lord  Bvron,  was  born  in  London 
on  22nd  January  1788,  the  son  of  John  Byron,  a  captain  in  the 
army    and    a    great    rascal,    and    Catherine    Gordon    of    Gicht,    an 


CHAP.  I         THE   POETS   FROM   COLERIDGE  TO   KEATS  667 

Aberdeenshire  heiress.  The  father  squandered  the  mother's  property, 
and  had  none  of  his  own,  while  his  uncle,  the  fifth  holder  of  the  title, 
disposed  of  or  wasted  the  family  estates,  so  that,  despite  a  long 
minority,  the  poet  (who  succeeded  his  uncle  at  ten  years  old)  came 
into  no  great  fortune.  He  was  educated  at  Harrow  and  Cambridge, 
and  in  1807,  when  not  yet  twenty,  published  (after  first  privately 
printing)  a  book  of  very  valueless  verse  entitled  Hours  of  Idleness, 
which  was  much  ridiculed  in  the  Edinburgh  Review.  Byron,  whose 
satirical  faculty  is  perhaps  that  which  divides  his  critics  the  least,  replied 
(not  very  quickly)  in  a  rough  and  crude  but  vigorous  satire,  following 
Pope  through  Gifford,  and  entitled  English  Bards  and  Scotch 
Reviewers  (1809),  took  his  seat,  and  set  out  on  his  travels  to  the 
Mediterranean.  He  came  back  in  181 1  with  the  first  two  cantos  of 
Childe  Harold,  and  published  them  in  February  1812.  The  book, 
which  came  to  a  public  "ground-baited"  to  full  appetite  by  Scott,  was 
immensely  popular,  and  Byron  became  a  lion  at  once  of  society  and 
literature.  In  less  than^  four  years  he  had  published  his  brilliant 
series  of  verse-tales, —  The  Giaour,  the  Bride  of  Abydos  (1813),  The 
Corsair,  Lara  (18 14),  the  Siege  of  Corintli,  and  Parisina  (181 5),  with 
other  verse,  —  had  run  through  much  of  his  property  and  sold  Newstead 
Abbey,  had  married  a  great  heiress,  Miss  Milbanke,  and  had,  after 
exactly  a  year,  been  left  by  her.  The  circumstances,  though  not  even 
now  positively  known,  were  universally  assumed  to  be  discreditable  to 
him,  and  he  left  England  in  the  spring  of  1816,  never  to  return  alive. 
He  lived,  however,  for  some  seven  or  eight  years  longer,  chiefly  in 
Italy,  and,  engaging  in  the  war  of  Greek  Independence,  died  at 
Missolonghi  on  the  19th  of  April  1824.  During  these  years  he 
produced  the  last  two  cantos  of  Childe  Harold,  far  exceeding  the 
earlier  ones  in  poetic  force,  wrote  many  pieces  in  dramatic  form,  and 
sometimes,  as  in  Manfred  and  Sardanapalus,  of  much  excellence 
as  verse,  but  of  no  acting  quality,  added  to  his  lyrics  and  shorter 
pieces  (including  by  far  the  finest  of  them,  The  Dream  and  Darkness, 
written  just  after  the  separation),  wrote  Mazcppa,  the  last  and  most 
vigorous  of  his  tales  in  the  Scott  style,  and  engaged  in  a  new  kind 
of  satiric  writing,  the  hint  of  which  he  took  from  a  very  clever  writer, 
J.  H.  Frere,  the  companion  of  Canning  in  the  Antifacobin.  This 
vein  at  first  produced  Befipo,  an  unimportant  though  very  amusing 
thing,  and  then  gave  the  far  greater  Don  fiian,  a  medley,  which  was 
not,  and  perhaps  could  never  have  been,  finished,  but  which,  though 
severely  reprobated  in  its  own  day,  and  not  likely  to  be  ever  very 
sincerely  defended  on  the  score  of  morality,  is  perhaps  his  most 
accomplished  work  in  literary  art,  displays  immense  power  of 
observing   and    "  making,"    and    has    not    a    little    real    poetry. 

The  chronicle  of  Byron's  poetical  reputation  is  a  very  important 


668  THE  TRIUMPH   OF    ROMANCE  book  x 

passage  of  literary  history.     As  has  been  said,  his  popularity,  when 

he  first  showed  his  real  strength,  was  immediate  and  immense ;  and 

it  continued  to  increase  during  his  life.     Even  those  who, 

His  reputation.  i-   •      i  i  i         i-  i      t   i-i      i 

on  political  or  moral  grounds,  disapproved,  disliked,  even 
detested  him,  seldom  thought  otherwise  than  very  highly  of  his 
poetical  abilities.  Moreover,  his  influence,  very  great  upon  the 
literature  of  his  own  country,  was  almost  greater  abroad.  The  new 
Romantic  schools  of  France,  Germany,  Italy,  Russia,  and  Spain 
owed  nearly  as  much  to  him  as  to  any  other  single  influence,  perhaps 
more.  Abroad,  too,  this  influence  has  proved  lasting;  and  if  a  general 
vote  were  taken  on  the  Continent  of  Europe  as  to  the  greatest 
English  poet,  it  is  questionable  whether,  even  after  the  great  revolu- 
tion which  has  taken  place  in  foreign  taste  as  to  Shakespeare,  Byron 
would  not  have  the  first  place. 

In  England,  on  the  other  hand,  when  the  first  rush  of  the 
rocket  was  over,  the  fall  began  at  once,  and  has  been,  though  not  as 
rapid,  almost  as  uninterrupted  as  the  familiar  simile  suggests.  It  is 
true  that  Byron  had  never  lacked  admirers,  and  that  several  attempts, 
the  most  elaborate  and  vigorous  of  which  is  now  in  progress,  have 
been  made  to  reinstate,  or  at  any  rate  to  raise,  his  fame.  But  what- 
ever may  be  the  case  in  the  future,  immediate  or  other,  these  attempts 
have  certainly  never  yet  succeeded,  either  with  the  majority  of  com- 
petent critics  or  with  the  majority  of  readers  of  poetry. 

No  one  denies  Byron's  power  of  appeal  and  excitement ;  nor,  now 
that  time  has  disinfected  his  work,  as  usual,  is  there  much  necessity  for 
any  complaint  against  him  on  the  score  of  morality.  It  is  also  not 
Andcontribu-  ^^"^^^  ^'^^^  he  brought  into  English  poetry,  and  indeed 
tion  to  English  into  English  literature,  a  vast  and  valuable  stock  of  new 
^""^"^^  imagery,  new  properties,  new  scenery  and  decoration ; 
that  he  employed  the  verse-tale  scheme  of  Scott,  if  with  no  great 
novelty  of  form,  yet  with  a  novelty  and  intensity  of  at  least  apparent 
passion  which  made  it  quite  a  different  thing.  In  the  same  way,  in 
Manfred  and  other  pieces,  he  caught  from  Goethe,  and  transformed 
into  his  own  likeness,  a  kind  of  handling  of  emotion  and  scenery 
which  was  equally  unfamiliar.  His  lyrics,  though  never  possessing 
the  exquisiteness  of  those  of  Keats  and  Shelley,  have  force  and  fire, 
and  not  uncommonly  great  sweetness  as  well ;  his  handling  of  the 
Spenserian  stanza  in  Childe  Harold,  though  it  never  attains  to  the 
dulcet  dreaminess  which  is  the  true  virtue  of  that  form,  has  energy, 
picturesqueness,  and  a  narrative  motion  very  different  from  that  of 
the  original  indeed,  but  for  tlie  purpose  preferable.  Don  Jitan,  as  has 
been  said,  was  original,  and  is  still  practically  almost  unique,  as  a 
medley  of  observations  on  life,  tinged  with  sarcastic  innuendo,  but  not 
to  an  extent  sufficient  to  interfere  with  the  milder  graces  of  poetry. 


chXp.  I         THE   POETS   FROM   COLERIDGE  TO   KEATS  669 

Many  scattered  passages  in  different  poems,  dramatic  and  non- 
dramatic,  possess  merits  of  very  high  and  by  no  means  single  or 
monotonous  kind ;  while  once,  in  the  great  poem  of  Darkness,  Byron 
has  attained  to  the  true  sublime,  and  in  the  companion  Dream  he 
has  true  pathos,  unmingled  in  either  case  with  the  merely  theatrical. 
And  always  he  has  the  merit  of  changing  the  scenes,  the  characters, 
the  temper  of  English  poetry,  of  at  least  apparently  widening  its 
scope,  of  giving  a  dash  of  the  continental,  the  cosmopolitan,  to  vary 
our  insularity  and  our  particularism. 

If,  notwithstanding  these  allowances,  which  have  been  measured 
with  a  careful,  but  not  grudging,  hand,  it  is  still  difficult  to  assign 
to  Byron  the  highest  rank,  the  cause  must  be  sought  outside  his 
minor  defects  of  form,  though  these  are  undoubtedly  rather  numerous 
and  very  annoying.  Similar  defects  exist  not  merely,  as  has  been 
noted,  in  Scott,  but  in  many  other  writers,  and  they  can  easily  be 
pardoned.  The  fault  in  Byron  can  be  best  brought  out  by  the  familiar, 
not  easily  defined,  but  easily  understood,  contrast  between  rhetoric 
and  poetry.  It  does  not  matter  much  whether  the  Byronic  despair, 
the  Byronic  cynicism,  Byronism  generally,  was  sincere,  as  a  few  boldly 
maintain ;  was  utterly  affected,  as  others  perhaps  not  much  more 
wisely  assert ;  or  was  a  mixture  of  nature  and  affectation.  In  any  case, 
the  mood,  and  Byron's  expression  of  it,  almost  invariably  seem,  to  some 
persons,  rhetorical  in  the  bad  sense;  and  rhetoric  in  the  bad  sense 
is  of  it.self,  and  necessarily,  incompatible  with  the  highest  poetry. 

The  two  youngest  poets  of  the  great  English  romantic  Pldiade 
stand  in  less  close  relation  to  each  other,  and  to  their  immediate 
forerunners,  than  those  who  have  just  been  mentioned ;  and  they  are 
much  more  purely  poets  of  the  nineteenth  century.  In  those  there 
is  still  a  very  strong  eighteenth-century  leaven ;  in  these  it  has  alto- 
gether disappeared.  Their  shadow  goes  wholly  forward,  except  m 
such  very  minor  matters  as  Shelley's  following  of 
Southey's   unrhymed    metres,  Keats's    adoption    and    im-  ^  *^' 

provement  of  Leigh  Hunt's  "enjambed"  couplet  (see  below),  and 
a  few  other  things.  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley  was  born  at  Field  Place 
near  Horsham,  in  Sussex,  on  4th  August  1792,  being  heir  to  large 
property  and  a  baronetcy.  He  was  educated  first  privately,  and 
then  at  Eton,  whence  he  passed  to  University  College,  Oxford. 
He  had  already  written  two  worthless  romances  in  the  Monk  style. 
Zastrozzi  and  .S7.  /riiyne,  full  of  crude  anarchical  ideas  borrowed 
from  Godwin  and  the  negative  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
The  novels  were  pul)]ishc'd.  one  before,  one  after  he  matriculated  at 
Oxford  in  1810,  and  his  literary  work  of  this  time  also  includes  T/ie 
Wanden'nf[  Jew,  the  earlier  form  of  Q?/ec>!  Mah,  and  a  puhlislied, 
but    vanished,    volume   of  J'oems   by    I  'iclor   and   Cazire.      Later   he 


670  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  X 

issued  with  T.  J.  Hogg,  who  was  with  him  at  the  University,  —  a  clever 
man,  but  a  treacherous  and  mischievous  friend,  —  yet  another  volume, 
The  Posthinnoiis  Fragtneiits  of  Margaret  Nicholsoni  the  mad  would- 
be  murderess  of  George  HI.  In  less  than  a  year  after  he  entered 
Oxford  he  published  a  pamphlet  on  The  Necessity  of  Atheis7n,  and 
was  expelled.  On  28th  August  of  the  same  year  he  married  Harriet 
Westbrook,  a  pretty  girl,  and  a  school-fellow  of  his  sister's,  very  young, 
and  of  lower  station.  His  later  life  must  be  told  briefly.  He  wan- 
dered about  England  and  Ireland,  tired  of  his  wife,  and  left  her  for 
Mary  Godwin,  the  philosopher's  daughter,  whom,  after  Harriet's 
suicide  in  December  1816,  he  married.  They  had  already  travelled, 
and  after  a  brief  residence  at  Marlow,  they  went  to  Italy,  where  he 
was  drowned  in  a  storm  off  Spezzia  on  19th  July  1822,  having  in  his 
later  years  been  a  good  deal  in  contact  with  Byron. 

His  literary  production  had  been  incessant.  Queen  Mab,  in  1813, 
being  followed  by  Alastor  (181 5),  Laon  and  Cythna,  afterwards  The 
Revolt  of  /slam  (1817),  Prometheus  L/nbound,  and  The  Cenci  (1819), 
Adonats  (1821),  besides  many  other  pieces  concurrently  with  these, 
which  were  not  published  till  after  his  death  —  Prince  Athanase 
(181 7),  Rosalind  and  Helen,  and  fulian  and  Maddalo  (181 8),  The 
Mask  of  Anarchy  (1819),  The  Witch  of  Atlas  (1820),  Epipsychidion 
and  Hellas  (1821),  The  Trimnph  of  Life  (1822).  The  very  numer- 
ous smaller  poems  have,  almost  from  the  first,  been  arranged  under 
the  years  of  their  composition. 

Shelley's  peculiar  poetical  power  is  commonly  said  to  have  shown 
itself  first  in  Alastor;  but  it  is  perfectly  visible,  to  those  who  have 
eyes  to  see,  in  Queen  Mab,  and  it  grows  ever  stronger  and  stronger, 

ever  brighter  and  brighter,  till  his  death.  ^/aj'/^^r,  itself  a 
"hii'p^t^r^."'^  study  of  the  ill  effects  of  solitude,  is  the  best  proportioned, 

and  shows  the  nearest  approach  to  what  Shelley  never 
in  any  long  poem  gave  completely,  a  piece  with  a  definite  scheme 
definitely  carried  out.  Prometheus  Unbound  is  a  dream  cast  in 
dramatic  form,  but  with  hardly  any  action,  and  consisting  really  of  a 
series  of  the  ineffable  lyrics  which  Shelley  alone  could  write.  The 
Witch  of  Atlas  is  a  similar  dream,  thrown  into  a  form  as  narrative 
as  the  writer  could  manage ;  Adonais,  a  following  of  the  Greek 
elegy,  which  is  really  a  shrine  for  separate  passages,  each  of  incom- 
parable beauty  even  for  the  author.  It  is  here  that  we  find  the 
consummate  and  characteristic  image  — 

Life,  like  a  dome  of  many-coloured  glass, 
Stains  the  white  radiance  of  eternity. 

And  so  his  other  long  pieces,  and  his  very  numerous  shorter  lyrics, 
might  be  distinguished  in  different  ways. 


CHAP.  I         THE   POETS   FROM   COLERIDGE    TO   KEATS  671 

All,  however,  are  permeated  by  the  same  quite  indefinable,  but 
easily  perceivable,  spirit  of  poetry.  The  crude  atheism  of  his  earlier, 
and  the  misty  pantheism  of  his  later,  years  have  not  very  much  directly 
to  do  with  this.  His  political  and  social  heresies  were  also  more 
or  less  accidental ;  and  it  is  probable  that,  in  a  time  of  triumphant 
Liberalism,  Shelley  would  have  been  a  high  Tory  and  a  mystical 
devotee.  Except,  indeed,  in  reference  to  the  theory  of  poetry,  of 
which  (for  his  prose  was  in  formal  merit  not  far  below  his  verse)  he 
wrote  an  admirable  Defence,  his  theories  on  no  subject  ever  took 
orderly  and  philosophical  form.  If  we  reserve  the  passion  of  love, 
the  beauty  of  nature,  and,  in  his  early  and  earlier  middle  stages,  all 
revolts  against  titular  and  authoritative  convention,  it  can  hardly  be 
said  that  any  one  subject,  or  kind  of  subject,  attracted  him  more  than 
another,  or  served  better  than  another  as  canvas  for  his  painting  and 
theme  for  his  music.  Except  comedy,  in  which  his  touch  was  very 
uncertain  (for  of  his  two  efforts  of  the  kind,  Peter  Bell  the  Third  and 
Swellfoot  the  Tyrattt,  the  first  is,  in  parts,  as  good  as  the  second  is 
almost  entirely  bad),  there  was  nothing  that  he  could  not  touch  with 
the  effect  of  communicating  to  it  his  own  special  poetical  enchant- 
ment, an  enchantment  which  may  be  most  safely  defined  as  that  of 
indefinite,  but  haunting  suggestion  of  beauty,  in  thought  sometimes, 
in  sound  and  visual  effect  always.  On  no  poet  is  criticism  so  unsatis- 
factory as  on  Shelley,  because  in  none  is  the  poetry  so  pure,  so 
independent  of  subject,  so  mere  a  harmony,  in  the  early  Greek  sense 
of  the  word.  Analysis  of  it  is  nearly  impossible,  and  of  little  value 
when  it  can  be  made.  Eulogy  is  possible,  ad  injinitwn ;  but  for 
eulogy  there  is  here  no  space,  and  the  worst  utterance  of  Shelley 
himself  is  better  worth  reading  than  the  best  panegyric  of  his 
commentators. 

John  Keats,  the  second  of  the  pair  in  age,  but  the  first  to  die, 
almost  as  great  a  poet  as  Shelley,  and  one  far  more  directly  in  the 
line  of  English  poetical  development,  was  born  in  London  in  October 
1795.  He  was  the  son  of  a  livery-stable  keeper,  but 
had  a  fair  education,  was  apprenticed  to  a  surgeon,  and 
by  no  means  neglected  his  profession  for  seven  years.  But  his  real 
interests  were  entirely  literary ;  and,  as  he  had  some  small  means,  he 
determined,  about  the  year  1817,  to  indulge  them.  He  had,  not 
altogether  fortunatclyfor  himself,  made  the  acquaintance  of  Hunt  and 
Hazlitt.  The  first,  indeed,  taught  him  the  rudiments  of  a  new 
reformed  prosody,  while  the  second  may  have  encouraged  his  love  for 
our  older  poetry ;  but  the  influence  of  neither  was  at  all  necessary  for 
so  original  a  poet,  and  while  his  discipleship  to  Hunt  may  have 
been  the  cause  of  a  certain  over-lusciousness  traceable  in  his  earlier 
work,  his  friendship  with  t)oth  exposed  him  (most  unjustly,  for  he  had 


672  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

no  political  creed)  to  virulent  abuse  from  Tory  critics,  as  a  supposed 
member  of  the  school  of  Cockney  Radicals.  His  own  first  book, 
which  does  not  display  anything  like  his  real  powers,  appeared  in 
1817.  Next  year  followed  the  great,  though  still  very  immature 
and  unequal,  poem  of  Endymion,  which  had  been  principally  written 
in  the  Isle  of  Wight.  His  health  now  began  to  fail,  and  consumption 
declared  itself  unmistakably.      He  had   time,  however,  to  publish,  in 

1820,  a  third  volume,  containing  La>nia,  Hyperion^  The  Eve  of  St. 
Agnes,  and  other  things  far  superior  to  his  earlier  work.  Then, 
leaving  his  betrothed  behind  him,  he  set  out  for  Italy,  and  died  at 
Rome  in  the  care  of  his  friend,  the  painter  Severn,  on  13th  February 

1 82 1.  The  character  of  Keats  is  extremely  attractive,  and  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that,  had  health  and  life  been  granted  him,  it 
would  have  constantly  improved.  Perhaps  this  is  not  quite  so  likely 
in  regard  to  his  poetry.  He  could  not  have  improved,  nor  could  any 
one,  on  The  Eve,  The  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn,  and  La  Belle  Dame  sans 
Merci ;  but  he  could  have  given  us  more  of  them. 

His  poetical  characteristics,  though,  like  those  of  all  the  greatest 
poets,  not  ponderable  or  numerable  with  exhaustive  exactness,  are 
easier  to  indicate  than  Shelley's.  In  particular,  there  is  one  formal 
peculiarity  which,  exuberantly  present  in  Endyi/iion,  is  noticeable  in 
all  his  work,  the  return  to  the  highly  "  enjambed "  couplet,  which 
had  for  a  moment  fascinated  poets  like  Browne,  Wither,  and  Cham- 
berlayne  in  the  early  and  middle  seventeenth  century.  Of  more 
importance  still  is  the  wide  exploration  of  subject,  mediaeval,  classical, 
purely  fantastic,  and  miscellaneous,  in  which  Keats,  as  in  other  points, 
was  the  forerunner  of  Tennyson,  his  junior  by  sixteen  years  only, 
and  through  Tennyson  of  all  English  poets  since,  even  of  those  who 
have  seemed  rebel  to  the  influence.  This  special  difference  of 
nineteenth-century  poetry  will  strike  us  if  we  compare  Keats  with 
Chaucer,  Spenser,  Milton,  Dryden,  Gray,  in  the  last  of  whom  the 
new  style  appeared  dimly,  to  be  more  distinctly,  but  still  not  quite 
distinctly,  present  in  the  great  earlier  Romantics  from  Wordsworth 
to  Scott.  The  poet  presents  his  own  poetic  thought  and  style  in  the 
boldest  relief,  but,  in  order  to  do  so,  he  ranges  over  antiquity  and 
literature  in  search  of  subjects  which  serve  him  for  the  stuff,  not  so 
much  of  long  narratives,  though  sometimes  also  of  these,  as  of  shorter 
lyrical,  or  quasi-lyrical,  outbursts,  idylls  (or,  as  Professor  Lushington 
wished  to  call  them,  "epylls"),  ballads,  what  not,  in  which  musical 
and  pictorial  effect  are  conjoined,  and  the  conjunction  further  informed 
by  the  poet's  own  meaning  and  view. 

No  poet  has  ever  excelled  Keats  in  this  particular  style,  and  no 
one  except  Tennyson  has  equalled  him.  His  genius,  at  any  rate  in 
the  still  not  quite  mature   condition  in  which  we  have  it,  does  not 


CHAP.  I         THE   POETS   FROM   COLERIDGE  TO   KEATS  673 

seem  to  have  tended  to  the  shaping  of  epic  or  dramatic  work,  com- 
bining considerable  bulk  with  exact  proportion.  But  for  taking  an 
incident,  a  moment  of  thought,  action,  or  sentiment,  and  presenting 
it  vividly  to  the  reader,  with  the  richest  assistance  of  colour,  the  most 
haunting  accompaniment  of  verbal  music,  and  something  beyond  and 
afar  from  both  these  things,  though  by  no  means  wholly  unconnected 
with  them  —  such  things  as  the  poems  already  mentioned,  and  others 
(like  the  song,  "  In  a  drear-nighted  December")  begin,  and  very  nearly 
fulfil,  the  promise  of  a  new  poetical  era  in  England.  In  particular, 
Keats  showed  that  curious  power  of  entering  into  the  thought  and 
sentiment  of  other  times,  which  has  been  so  characteristic  of  our  now 
closing  age,  and  which  distinguishes  it  from  all  that  came  before. 
He  knew,  it  is  certain,  no  Greek ;  yet  the  Ode  above  referred  to  has 
been  accepted  by  the  severest  scholars  as  probably  the  most  Greek 
thing  in  English  poetry.  He  could  have  known  extremely  little  of 
mediaeval  literature ;  yet  there  is  nothing  anywhere,  even  in  the  far 
more  instructed  Pre-Raphaelite  School,  which  catches  up  the  whole  of 
the  true  mediaeval  romantic  spirit — the  spirit  which  animates  the  best 
parts  of  the  Arthurian  legend,  and  of  the  wild  stories  which  float 
through  mediaeval  tale-telling,  and  make  no  small  figure  in  mediaeval 
theology  —  as  does  the  short  piece  oi  La  Belle  Da»ie  sans  Merci. 

The  new  influences  were  expressed  almost  as  strongly,  though 
with  much  less  immediate  influence,  by  Walter  Savage  Landor,  who 
is,  however,  so  much  more  important  as  a  prose-writer,  that  he  will 
best  receive  his  principal  treatment  in  that  class.  Yet 
Landor,  a  man  twenty  years  older  than  Keats,  began 
with  verse,  the  curious  poem  of  Gebir  (1798),  which  appeared  in  the 
very  year  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads ;  and  he  never  deserted  it,  his  poetical 
work,  in  a  large  variety  of  forms,  being,  in  fact,  one  of  the  most  vo- 
luminous that  any  poet  of  great  merit  can  claim.  His  tragedy  of 
Count  Jidian  has  found  even  fewer  admirers  than  Gebir ;  but  the 
Hellenics,  and  a  great  body  of  what  may  be  called  Imaginary  Con- 
versations in  metre,  display  a  very  noble,  if  slightly  artificial  and 
inanimate,  form  of  blank  verse.  Among  his  innumerable  shorter 
poems  (which  possess  a  curious  similarity  to  Ben  Jonson's)  occur 
perhaps  the  best  examples  (with  the  doubtful  exception  of  Ben's  own 
masterpieces)  of  the  e])igram  in  the  proper  Greek  sense  (that  is,  the 
short  neat  ix)cm  on  a  single  thought,  incident,  person,  action,  scene) 
to  be  found  in  English.  "  Dirce  "  perhaps  deserves  this  description 
l)est,  while  the  other  peak  of  Lander's  verse,  "  Rose  Avlmer,"  though 
less  classical,  is  even  more  perfectly  poetical  in  its  union  of  colour 
and  music,  presenting,  or  comi)ined  with,  an  exquisite  pathos  and 
meaning.  Neither  in  prose  nor  in  verse  had  Landor  any  comic 
power,  and  even  his  pathos  is  not  to  be  calculated  upon  with  any 
2  X 


674  THE  TRIUMPH   OF  ROMANCE  book  x 

security.  But  no  one  has,  as  he  has,  united  romantic  suggestion, 
atmosphere,  perfume,  with  classical  perfection,  elegance,  limitation  of 
means  to  the  admitted  and  permitted.  And  no  one  possesses  quite  as 
he  does  a  certain  form  of  grace,  which  is  rather  elegance  than  grace 
unqualified. 

The  first  seven  poets  mentioned  in  this  chapter  are  wholly,  or 
almost  wholly,  of  the  revolt,  though  Byron  affected  to  play  Abdiel  to 
it.  Landor  has  a  Janus-face  in  poetry.  But  two  others,  who  must  not 
be  relegated  to  the  future  chapter  of  minorities,  Moore  and  Campbell, 
have  an  indefinable,  but  very  sensible,  propulsion  towards  the  older 
stamp,  though  not  untouched  by  the  newer. 

There  can,  in  particular,  be  no  greater  contrast  to  Landor  than 
Thomas  Moore,  who  had  little  scholarship,  and  though  not  "  incorrect," 
carried  facility  sometimes  close  to  the  trivial,  but  who  was  an  admirable 
song-writer  (Landor's  singing  was  never  for  the  lute,  but 
only  for  the  reader's  ear),  a  satirist  in  verse  of  the  very 
first  class,  and  a  tale-teller,  in  the  same  medium,  of  great  excellence. 
He  was  born  in  Dublin  on  28th  May  1779,  and  was  the  son  of  a 
grocer;  but  was  well  educated,  took  his  degree,  after  some  political 
difficulties  during  that  troubled  time  of  "  '98 "  at  Trinity  College, 
Dublin,  and  then  went  to  London  to  study  law  at  the  Middle  Temple. 
Mistranslation  oi  Anacreon  in  1800,  and  the  Poetiis  of  Thomas  Little 
next  year,  made  him  very  popular,  though  not  exactly  with  the  grave 
and  the  precise.  He  was  much  patronised  (though  both  now  and 
afterwards  he  managed  to  retain  his  independence),  and  received  a 
valuable  appointment  in  the  Bermudas  (1803),  which  gave  him  no 
work  and  some  profit,  but,  through  the  misconduct  of  his  deputy, 
involved  him  later  in  serious  pecuniary  liabilities,  which  were 
honourably  discharged.  He  produced  another  volume  of  poems  in 
1806,  fought  a  duel  with  Jeffrey  and  made  friends  with  him,  began 
the  Irish  Melodies  in  1807,  and  published  the  Twopenny  Postbag  (the 
most  brilliant  political  verse  since  Canning,  and  the  most  brilliant 
political  verse  in  English  on  the  Whig  side,  except  The  Rolliad  and 
Peter  Pindar)  in  1812.  In  1817  appeared,  with  immense  success 
even  after  Scott  and  Byron,  the  collection  of  Oriental-sentimental 
tales  entitled  Lalla  Rookh,  and  next  year  a  new  satiric  piece,  The 
Fudge  Family.  His  later  verse  (the  chief  of  it  The  Loves  of  the 
Angels.,  1823)  was,  except  in  small  things,  not  so  good,  and  as  he 
grew  older,  after  the  brilliant  Life  of  Byron  in  1830,  he  did  some 
book-making  (a  History  of  Ireland,  etc.).  But  his  prose  romance 
oi  The  Fpicurean  (1827)  is  not  contemptible.  He  was  pensioned  in 
1835,  but,  like  Scott  and  Southey,  suffered  in  his  later  days  from 
mental  disease.  He  died  at  Sloperton  in  Wiltshire,  which  had  been 
his  headquarters  for  thirty-five  years,  in  1852. 


CHAP.  I         THE   POEl'S   FROM   COLERIDGE  TO   KEATS  675 

Moore  was  somewhat  overvalued  during  his  lifetime,  and  has,  as 
usual,  paid  the  penalty  by  undeserved  depreciation  since.  It  was, 
indeed,  inevitable  that  the  preference  on  the  one  hand  for  ''  thoughtful" 
poetry,  whether  of  the  style  of  Wordsworth  or  of  the  style  of  Browning, 
and  on  the  other  for  poetry  rich  in  far-brought  and  far-reaching  beauty 
of  suggestion,  like  that  of  Shelley,  Keats,  and  Tennyson,  should  in 
not  very  critical  minds  positively,  as  well  as  comparatively,  cause 
distaste  for  Moore's  light  and  easy  songs  (hardly  separable  from  the 
music  with  which  they  are  associated),  for  his  sparkling  jeux  d'esprit 
in  verse,  and  for  the  florid  pageantry  of  Lalla  Rookh  in  verse,  and  The 
Epicurean  in  prose.  But  criticism  might  have  been  expected  to 
redress  the  balance  of  matters,  and  to  remember  that  nothing  can  be 
asked  of  a  man  more  than  to  be  supreme  in  his  own  kind.  Moore 
is  supreme,  or  very  nearly  so,  in  his,  and  that  in  more  kinds  than 
one;  yet  the  fact  has  too  seldom  been  recognised.  Because  —  as  no 
doubt  many,  if  not  most,  of  us  would  now  —  one  would  rather  keep  one 
page  of  Shelley,  and  of  other  poets  down  to  Rossetti,  even  if  the 
preservation  necessitated  the  loss  of  all  Moore,  it  does  not  follow 
that  Moore  is  despicable. 

Three  or  four  things  greater  than  any  of  Moore's,  and  a  general 
aspect  of  higher  seriousness,  have  protected  Thomas  Campbell  against 
anything  like  contempt,  and  will  protect  him ;  but  his  range  is  less, 
and  his  amount  of  good  work  very  much  smaller.  He 
was  born  in  July  1777  at  Glasgow,  and  was  educated  ^'"^  ^ 
there.  For  some  time  his  prospects — his  father  was  a  ruined  mer- 
chant —  were  unpromising ;  but  he  was  lucky  enough  to  publish  The 
Pleasures  of  Hope  in  1799,  when  England  had  little  poetry  of  any 
kind,  and  had  not  yet  recognised  the  Lyrical  Ballads.  Of  no  great 
bulk  (about  1000  lines  of  Goldsmithian  couplet),  nor  at  all  consummate 
in  quality,  it  was  much  better  than  anything  of  the  old  kind  that  any 
poet  then  living  (except  Crabbe,  who  was  for  the  time  silent)  could 
produce,  and  it  made  Campbell's  fortune.  This,  maintained  fairly  by 
literary  work,  and  never  abundant,  was  always  sufficient  till  his  death 
at  Boulogne  in  1844.  Most  of  the  hackwork  which  he  did  is  for- 
gotten ;  but  his  Specimens  of  the  British  Poets  (London,  7  vols.  18 19) 
are  a  most  valuable  point  de  rep&re,  display,  not  merely  critical  acute- 
ness,  but  even  remarkable  critical  catholicity  for  the  time  and  school, 
and  form  the  best  book  of  their  kind  published  up  to  their  date,  and 
for  many  years  after.  A  visit  to  the  Continent  in  1800  gave  him  the 
material  and  inspiration  of  Hohenlindcn,  and  his  best  work  was  done 
in  the  next  few  years.  In  1809  Gertrude  of  //}vw//;/i,'- appeared  ;  in 
1824,  Theodric ;  and  in  1842  The  Pilgrim  of  Glencoe.  He  was  for 
many  years  editor  of  the  AWf  Monthly  Mac^azine. 

Campbell  wrote  some   half  a  dozen  short  things  which  stand   by 


676  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

themselves  —  the  three  great  war-songs  of  Hohenlinden^  The  Battle 
of  the  Baltic,  and  Ye  Mariners  of  England,  "  Lochiel,"  some  lines  on 
"  A  Deserted  Garden,"  which  are  worth  many  long  poems,  and  per- 
haps one  or  two  more.  In  yet  other  pieces  he  showed  the  poetic 
flash ;  but  his  depth  is  altogether  out  of  proportion  to  his  width,  and 
most  of  his  work  has  now  merely  historical  interest.  In  theory,  he 
set  himself  against  the  new  school ;  in  practice,  all  his  best  things 
belong  to  it. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE   NOVEL  —  SCOTT   AND   MISS  AUSTEN 

The  novel,  <r.i8oo-i8i4  —  Scott's  adoption  of  it —  [-Faz/<?r/^  and  its  successors  —  His 
general  achievement  —  Miss  Austen  —  Miss  Edgeworth  —  Miss  Ferrier  —  Gait  — 
Ainsworth  and  James — Lord  Beaconsfield  —  Bulwer-Lytton  —  Others:  Lock- 
hart  —  Peacock  —  Lever  —  Marryat  —  Michael  Scott  —  Hook  and  others 

The  poetical  work  of  Scott  had  a  great  influence  on  his  own  time, 
and  he  was  no  mean  contributor  to  that  critical  and  miscellaneous 
literature  which  has  been  so  prominent  in  the  present  century.  But 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  his  main  importance  in 
•»  literary  history  comes  from  his  position  in  the  history  of  is^o^i^s'ii.*^* 
the  novel,  and  his  accomplishment  in  more  than  one 
kind  of  it.  As  will  have  been  partly  seen  from  the  foregoing  pages, 
the  novel  had  been  making  way  steadily  as  a  popular  form  of  literature 
for  something  like  a  century.  It  had  produced  great  practitioners, 
and,  what  was  even  more  .to  the  purpose,  it  had  gradually  enlisted, 
more  and  more,  the  reading  part  of  the  nation.  Already,  in  the 
middle  eighteenth  century,  we  find  Gray  avowing  his  partiality  for 
French  novels,  and  Lady  Mary  devouring  English  ones  in  her  distant 
Italian  home.  The  circulating  library  came  by  degrees  to  help  its 
diffusion,  and  the  prevalence  of  the  Terror  School  and  the  much- 
abused  "  Minerva  Press,"  though  neither  produced  much  good  litera- 
ture, helped  in  both  cases  to  create  demand  and  furnish  supply. 

But  the  novel,  despite  the  great  names  of  Fielding,  Smollett,  and 
others,  and  the  rewards  which,  as  in  the  case  of  Miss  Burney,  were 
now  evidently  ready  for  any  one  who  could  hit  the  popular  taste  in 
it,  still  ranked  low,  and  not  altogether  undeservedly.  It  was  too  apt 
to  grovel  and  maunder  in  sentiment,  or  to  shriek  and  gibber  in  extrav- 
agances;  no  second  Fielding  had  arisen  to  infuse  universality  into 
it,  and,  at  tiie  same  time,  to  keep  it  close  to  contemporary  life ;  and 
thougli  the  historical  variety  of  it,  after  repeated  attempts  and  failures, 
was  becoming  popular,  no  one  had  in  the  least  succeeded  therein. 
Even  a  man  of  such  power  as  Godwin,  a  professed  historian  after  his 

677 


678  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  X 

kind,  had  not  succeeded  in  communicating  the  least  verisimilitude  to 
SL  Leon,  while  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  in  The  Mysteries  of  L/dolpho,  had 
talked  about  "the  opera"  in  the  Paris  of  the  religious  wars.  The 
attempt  to  defend  such  things  by  the  anachronisms  of  Shakespeare 
is  quite  inept;  for,  in  the  first  place,  Shakespeare  would  not  have 
made  Hector  quote  Aristotle,  or  have  introduced  Bohemia  to  the 
sea,  if  he  had  been  writing  about  1800;  and,  in  the  second  place, 
the  charms  which  make  us  entirely  indifferent  to  these  things  in 
Shakespeare  are  not  present  in  Godwin  and  Anne  Ward. 

Scott's  immediate  inducement  to  turn  from  verse  to  prose  romance 
was   undoubtedly  the   popularity  of  Byron,  with  his  own  consequent 
loss   of  public  favour;    but  it  is  not  to  be  believed  that  the  change 
would    in    any   case    have    been    long    postponed.     The 
adoltfon  ofit.  gi'eat   attraction    of   verse    is    beyond   all    doubt,   though 
it   be   varied   in   a   hundred   ways,   the   attraction   of  the 
unforeseen;  and  it  is  more  astonishing  that  even  Scott's  genius  con- 
trived to  keep  this  up  through  half  a  dozen  long  romances  on  the  same 
pattern,  than   that    it   showed   signs   of  failing  at   last.      The    prose 
romance,  though  not  free  from  this  danger,  is  very  much  less  exposed 
to   it.     The   details   of  form  which   are   most  prominent  in  verse,  in 
prose  have  no  great  obviousness,  and  the  subject  and  treatment  can 
be  varied  to  a  far  greater  extent. 

But  Scott  was  a  famous  raconteur  from  his  youth ;  he  had 
already  made  more  than  one  or  two  attempts  at  the  novel,  and  when 
at  last  he  fished  Waverley  out  of  an  old  desk,  completed  it,  and 
published  it  in  the  year  18 14,  it  must  have  been  at  once 
hlTuwefsorj!  evident  to  alert  and  competent  judges,  and  it  very  soon 
forced  itself  upon  others,  that  a  very  new  and  very  im- 
portant planet  had  swum  into  literary  ken.  The  book,  the  earlier 
part  of  which  was  old  work,  after  a  very  short  time  develops  an 
attack  which  had  never  been  brought  to  bear  before.  Scott,  who 
always  confessed  his  obligations,  and  sometimes  out  of  mere  Quixotry 
invented  them  altogether,  ascribed  some  to  Miss  Edgeworth,  and  the 
excellent  Jane  Porter  1  claimed  others.  But  the  interesting  historical 
passage  of  the  last  Jacobite  insurrection  was  made  alive  as  it  had 
never  been  made  before ;  the  vivid  delineations  of  Scottish  scenery, 
character,  and  manner  hit  the  English  reader  as  full  from  their 
novelty  and  freshness  as  they  hit  the  Scotch  reader  from  their  truth. 
And  the  real  secret  of  the  book's  success  was  different.     It  was  that 

IJane  (1776-1850)  and  Anna  Maria  (1780-1832)  Porter  were  sisters,  who 
wrote  many  novels  in  a  style  partly  Radcliffian,  with  more  sentiment,  more 
history,  and  less  mystery.  The  most  famous,  Thaddeus  of  Warsaw  (1803)  and 
The  Scottish  Chiefs  (1810),  were  Jane's,  and  undoubtedly  preceded  Waverley  in 
time,  but  were  utterly  different  in  quality. 


CHAP.  11  THE   NOVEL— SCOTT  AND    MISS   AUSTEN  679 

here,  almost  for  the  first  time  since  Fielding  (for  even  Smollett 
had  busied  himself  more  with  "humours"  and  eccentricities),  was 
the  true  and  universal  sort  of  life  displayed  in  this  form  of  literature. 
The  places  were  real,  not  the  cardboard  scenery  of  a  toy  theatre ;  the 
persons  were  real,  too,  not  more  or  less  gaudily-coloured  "  charac- 
ters" thrust  on  the  stage  on  wooden  slides.  No  fictitious  places, 
except,  perhaps,  Robinson  Crusoe's  cave  and  castle,  had  presented 
themselves  to  the  English  reader  as  Tullyveolan  did,  and  the  attrac- 
tions of  Tullyveolan  were  somewhat  more  advanced  than  those  of  the 
castle  and  the  cave.  The  Baron,  the  Bailie,  not  to  mention  others, 
were  such  persons  as  only  the  stage  had  given  previously,  and  as  the 
stage  had  hardly  given  for  many  generations  save  at  long  intervals. 
Education,  reading,  wits,  might  make  IVaverley  more  delightful ;  it 
hardly  needed  any  of  them  to  produce  delight. 

Scott  was  not  neglectful  of  the  new  vein  he  had  discovered.  In 
the  ten  or  twelve  years  which  passed  between  the  publication  of 
Waverley  and  the  failure  of  Ballantyne  and  Co.,  he  produced, 
generally  in  very  rapid  succession,  and  as  the  result  of  sometimes 
not  more  than  six  weeks',  and  never  more  than  a  few  months',  work 
on  any  single  novel,  a  series  in  which  nearly  all  the  members  were 
masterpieces.  The  first  of  these  in  order  were  the  two  great  novels, 
more  domestic  in  tone  than  Waverley,  but  in  the  first  instance  at 
least  chequered  by  not  a  little  adventure,  of  Gtiy  Mannering  (181 5) 
and  The  Antiquary  (1816),  and  another  "history,"  Old  Mortality. 
In  these  three  books  a  consensus  of  the  best  judgments  has  agreed  to 
recognise  Scott's  very  best  work,  though  the  charms  of  the  whole  are 
so  great  and  various  that  selection  of  any  one  or  two  as  "  best  "  is 
difficult  and  distasteful.  The  Black  Divarf,  which  appeared  with 
Old  Mortality  \n  December  1816,  was  admittedly  less  happy.  But  in 
Rob  Roy  (18 17)  which  followed  (the  whole  of  these  novels  were 
anonymous,  and  Scott  complicated  his  anonymity  by  changing  the 
general  titles  from  "  Tales  of  my  Landlord  "  back  to  novels  "  by  the 
author  of  iraverley''),  a  return  to  a  height  not  far,  if  at  all,  below  the 
highest  has  been  generally  recognised,  while  here  first,  in  Die  Vernon, 
Scott  achieved  a  thoroughly  attractive  heroine.  So,  too.  The  //eart 
of  Midlothian,  181 8  (the  second  series  of  the  "Tales  of  my  Land- 
lord"), gives  a  wonderful  mixture  of  pathos  in  the  story  of  Effie 
and  Jeanie  Deans ;  while  some  have  seen  a  masterpiece  in  the 
tragically  ambitious  Bride  of  Lammermoor  (1819).  As  to  the  com- 
panion with  which  the  Bride,  like  Old  Mortality,  was  supplied, 
A  Legend  of  Mo7itrose,  the  completeness  and  excellence  of  its  action 
have  generally  been  granted,  and  there  is  no  greater  favourite  than 
Dugald  Dalgetty  with  some  of  Scott's  most  faithfiil  lovers. 

Hitherto  Scott  had  confined  himself  entirely  to  his  native  country. 


68o  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

He  now  (i8ig)  left  it  altogether,  and  took  the  times  of  Coeur  de  Lion 
in  England  for  his  subject  in  IvanJioe.  Some  petty  objections  of  the 
pedantic  kind  have  been  taken  by  historians  to  his  details,  but  of  the 
very  high  .merit  of  the  book  as  a  whole  there  can  be  little  doubt.  It 
was  the  first  book  to  show  the  immense  advantages  of  the  Middle 
Ages  for  prose  fiction,  and  the  happiest.  The  two  novels  which 
followed,  and  which  are  connected  in  subject,  The  Monastery  and 
The  Abbot  (both  1820),  returned  to  Scotland  in  the  times  of  Queen 
Mary ;  but  the  first,  which  attempted  the  supernatural  in  a  rather 
half-hearted  way,  was  and  is  thought  less  of  a  success  than  the 
second,  where  the  escape  from  Loch  Leven,  with  all  the  scenes 
leading  up  to  it,  the  brilliant  picture  of  Edinburgh  under  Murray, 
and  the  figure  of  Catherine  Seyton,  rank  with  Scott's  best  things. 
Then  followed  Kenihvorth  (January  1821),  a  book  of  the  greatest 
brilliancy,  variety,  and  pathos;  The  Pirate  (December  1821),  in 
which  Scott,  with  one  of  his  special  turns  of  genius,  has  fixed  the 
scenery  and  characteristics  of  the  Shetland  Islands  for  ever  in  his 
readers'  minds;  The  Fortunes  of  Nigel  (1822),  with  its  incompar- 
able picture  of  James  I.  and  its  sketch  of  Whitefriars ;  and  Peveril 
of  the  Piak  (1823),  where  the  opportunity  of  the  Popish  Plot  is  not 
quite  so  happily  taken.  But,  in  the  same  year  with  Peveril  and  in  the 
next,  that  astonishing  variety  which  was  Scott's  chief  characteristic 
was  shown  by  three  other  books  of  wonderful  goodness  and  variety  — 
Quentin  Durzuard,  a  novel  of  foreign  historical  adventure  which 
hardly  comes  behind  his  very  best ;  St.  Ro nail's  Well,  a  return  to 
the  domestic  model  of  The  Antiquary^  but  with  more  tragic  touches 
and  a  more  modern  tone,  which,  had  its  end  not  been  spoilt  by 
deference  to  injudicious  advice,  would  have  been  far  more  really 
tragic  than  The  Bride  of  Lammermoor ;  and  Redgauntlet,  which 
would  be  the  equal  of  the  best  of  all  were  it  not  for  a  certain  inco- 
herence of  construction  and  inequality  of  parts,  but  which  is  of  hardly 
excelled  interest  in  many  ways,  being  partly  autobiographical,  and 
enshrining  the  marvellous  "  Wandering  Willie's  Tale."  A  little 
before  the  beginning  of  the  end,  in  July  1825  (the  smash  following 
in  January  1826),  he  published  the  two  "Tales  of  the  Crusaders," 
The  Talistnan,  a  capital,  The  Betrothed,  a  more  questioned,  example 
of  his  skill. 

He  had  no  further  opportunity  to  compose  fiction  with  untroubled 
mind,  and  first  the  labour  of  his  Life  of  Napoleon,  then  illness  ever 
increasing,  and  the  revision  of  the  whole  set  of  novels  for  a  new 
annotated  edition,  left  him  not  much  time  for  it.  Yet  the  best  things 
at  least  of  Woodstock  (1827)  and  The  Fair  Maid  of  Perth  (1828) 
are  very  little  below  his  happiest;  the  minor  "Chronicles  of  the 
Canongate"  have  an  introduction,  couched  in  the  form  of  fiction  and 


CHAP.  11  THE  NOVEL  — SCOTT  AND   MISS   AUSTEN  68i 

of  exquisite  beauty,  and  Anne  of  Geier stein  (1828-29)  is  better  than 
most  critics  allow.  When  Count  Robert  of  Paris,  and  still  more 
when  Castle  Dangerous  was  written,  softening  of  the  brain  had 
certainly  set  in ;  yet  even  here  there  are  things  that  no  one  before 
Scott,  and  few  after  him,  can  match. 

General  comment  on  Scotfs  novel-work  can  only  be  presented 
here  in  a  rigidly  limited  summary.  He  created  the  historical  novel, 
after  some  thousand  years  of  unsuccessful  attempt.  He  first  showed 
how  national  character,  national  dialect,  national  charac- 
teristics generally,  could  be  made,  not  as  the  drama  had  achfevement. 
already  made  them,  implements  in  burlesque  and  interlude, 
but  a  main  "  colour,"  a  substantive  element,  in  the  interest  of  fiction. 
He  added  to  the  gallery  of  imaginary  personages  more  and  greater 
figures  than  had  been  added  by  any  one  except  Shakespeare.  He 
did  what  even  Shakespeare  had  been  prevented  by  his  medium  of 
communication  from  doing  with  equal  fulness  —  he  provided  a  com- 
panion gallery  of  landscape  and  "interior"  such  as  had  never  been 
known  before.  And  partly  by  actual  example,  partly  by  indication 
and  as  harbinger,  he  showed  the  possibility  of  kinds  of  novel  quite 
different  from  those  which  he  most  commonly  practised  himself.  He 
found  the  class  still  half-despised,  very  scantily  explored,  popular,  but 
with  a  sort  of  underground  and  illicit  popularity.  He  left  it  the 
equal  of  any  literary  department  in  repute,  profit,  possibility ;  and 
(which  must  be  said,  though  it  is  travelling  out  of  our  usual  record) 
he  infused  into  it,  as  Fielding  had  begun  to  do  before  him,  a  tradition 
of  moral  and  intellectual  health,  of  manliness,  of  truth  and  honour, 
freedom  and  courtesy,  which  has  distinguished  the  best  days  of  the 
English  novel  as  it  distinguishes  those  of  hardly  any  other  literary 
kind. 

While  Scott  was  thus  indicating  almost  all  the  possible  lines  of 
fiction,  and  following  some  of  them  out  with  astonishing  thoroughness 
and  success,  a  lady,  not  much  his  own  junior  but  destined  to  a  much 
shorter  life  than  his,  was  achieving  hardly  less  real  suc- 
cess in  others,  especially  those  which  he  touched  least. 
Jane  Austen,  daughter  of  the  rector  of  Steventon  in  North  Hamp- 
shire, was  born  there  in  December  1775.  She  was  well  educated, 
but  lived  all  her  life  in  the  country  or  in  country  towns,  especially 
Bath,  Southampton,  and  tlie  village  of  Chawton  near  Winchester. 
She  never  married,  and  she  died  in  Winchester  itself  on  i8th  July 
181 7.  She  had  begun  to  write  quite  early,  well  before  the  end  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  but  she  found  no  publisher,  and  her  actual 
first  book  Nort hanger  Abbey,  though  bought  by  one  in  1797,  did  not 
appear  till  after  her  death.  In  i8ri,  however.  Sense  and  Sensiliility 
was  issued,  and  was  followed  by  Pride  and  Prejudice  in  1813  (both 


682  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  BOOK  x 

had  been  written  nearly  as  early  as  Northanger  Abbey).  Mansfield 
Park  appeared  in  1814,  and  Em  ma,  two  years  later.  Persuasion, 
her  last  completed  work,  was  published  the  year  after  her  death  with 
N'orthanger  Abbey,  the  first  begun.  She  also  left  a  few  fragments, 
but  nothing  of  any  importance ;  nor  are  her  letters,  which  were  pub- 
lished many  years  later  by  Lord  Brabourne,  in  1884,  of  the  first 
interest,  though  they  illustrate  agreeably  enough  some  of  the 
characteristics  and  atmosphere  of  the  novels.  The  squirearchy  and 
the  upper  professional  class,  especially  in  the  country,  supplied  her 
with  the  materials  of  a  set  of  books  which,  though  not  startling  or 
imposing,  have  from  the  very  date  of  their  appearance  impressed  all 
the  best  judges,  of  the  most  diverse  tastes,  as  among  the  very  best 
things  in  prose  fiction. 

The  first  thing  noticeable  in  these  novels  is  that  the  last  vestige 
of  the  usual  romantic  character  has  disappeared.  There  is  an  elope- 
ment, but  no  abduction.  The  first  book,  Noi'thanger  Abbey,  turns  in 
great  part  on  good-natured  raillery  of  the  Terror  School ;  the  scheme, 
characters,  events,  are  strictly  (some  palpitating  souls  seem  indeed  to 
find  them  ruthlessly  and  crushingly)  ordinary.  The  rest  of  the 
interest  of  Northanger  Abbey  itself  turns  on  the  adventures  of  a 
pretty  and  fairly  clever  girl  at  Bath,  and  at  the  house  of  a  tyrannical 
general,  who,  mistaking  her  for  an  heiress,  invites  her,  pays  her  ex- 
travagant court  in  hopes  that  she  will  marry  his  son,  and  practically 
turns  her  out  of  doors  when  he  finds  his  error.  Sense  and  Sensibility 
contrasts  the  fates  of  two  sisters,  one  impulsive,  one  sedate,  who  have 
lost  their  father,  and  are  left  in  narrow  circumstances,  but  with  many 
rich  and  some  not  unkind  relations  and  friends.  Pride  and  Preju- 
dice, the  author's  masterpiece  (which  had,  like  the  Lyrical  Ballads, 
been  written  in  17^7),  is  the  history  of  a  high-spirited  girl  who 
rejects  the  offers  of  a  rich  and  important  personage  because  of  his 
disrespect  to  her  family ;  Mansfield  Park,  that  of  a  penniless  damsel 
brought  up  among  her  rich  cousins ;  Emma,  by  some  exalted  to 
the  first  place,  that  of  an  heiress  a  little  spoilt  by  her  position ; 
Persuasion,  that  of  a  younger  daughter  of  a  good  family  who  allows 
herself  to  be  "put  upon,"  by  her  family  and  friends.  The  average 
eighteenth-century  novel  had  never  dared  to  appear  without  a  good 
or  wicked  lord ;  Miss  Austen  scarcely  mentions  any  one  above  the 
rank  of  a  baronet.  The  eighteenth  century  had  been  faithful  to  its 
Aristotle  as  it  understood  him,  and  to  its  revolutions  and  dis- 
coveries. In  Miss  Austen  there  are  no  discoveries  of  any  but  the 
mildest  importance,  and  hardly  any  but  rose-water  and  rose-leaf 
revolutions. 

Yet,  simple  as  are  the  plots,  they  are  worked  out  with  extraor- 
dinary closeness   and  completeness,  and  the  characters  and  dialogue 


CHAP.  II  THE   NOVEL  — SCOTT   AND    MISS   AUSTEN  683 

are  of  such  astonishing  finesse  and  life  that  it  would  hardly  matter  if 
there  were  no  plot  at  all.  From  first  to  last  this  hold  on  life  never 
fails  Miss  Austen,  nor  does  the  simple,  suggestive,  half-ironic  style 
in  which  she  manages  to  convey  her  meaning.  Not  even  Scott's  or 
Thackeray's  characters  dwell  in  the  mind  more  securely  than  John 
Thorpe,  the  bragging,  babbling  undergraduate  in  Northanger  Abbey, 
and  the  feather-brained,  cold-hearted  flirt,  his  sister  Isabella ;  than 
the  Bennet  family  in  Pride  and  Prejudice,  every  member  of  which  is 
a  masterpiece,  and  Lady  Catherine  de  Bourgh,  the  arrogant  lady 
patroness,  and  Mr.  Collins  her  willing  toady ;  than  Mrs.  Norris,  half 
sycophant,  half  tyrant,  in  Mansfield  Park ;  than  the  notable  chatterer 
Miss  Bates  in  Emma.  Miss  Austen's  portraiture  is  distinctly  satirical, 
it  has  even  been  accused  of  a  touch  of  cruelty ;  but  this  only  gives 
flavour  and  keeping  quality.  The  best  points  of  her  handling,  in- 
deed—  her  Addisonian  humour,  her  almost  Fieldingian  life  —  she  could 
not  communicate.  But  she  showed  once  for  all  the  capabilities  of 
the  very  commonest  and  most  ordinary  life,  if  sufficiently  observed 
and  selected,  and  combined  with  due  art,  to  furnish  forth  prose  fiction 
not  merely  that  would  pass,  but  that  should  be  of  the  absolutely  first 
quality  as  literature.  She  is  the  mother  of  the  English  nineteenth- 
century  novel,  as  Scott  is  the  father  of  it. 

The  example,  however,  of  her  style  was  not  by  any  means  at  once 
followed,  and  though,  about  ten  years  after  the  appearance  of  IVaverley, 
imitations  of  Scott  became  common,  nothing  of  real  excellence  in  the 
kind  was  produced  for  many  years  more.  The  coming  importance, 
however,  of  fiction  in  the  literature  of  the  century  was  shown  by  the 
almost  simultaneous  uprising  of  practitioners  of  many  different  kinds  of 
novel.  We  must  note  at  least  Miss  Edgeworth,  Miss  Ferrier,  Gait, 
Harrison  Ainsworth,  G.  P.  R.  James,  Bulwer  —  to  use  the  name  by 
which  the  first  Lord  Lytton  gained  and  kept  his  popularity  as  a 
novelist  —  Peacock,  and  Lord  Beaconsfield,  adding,  perhaps,  a 
paragraph  of  minorities. 

Of  the  two  ladies  first  mentioned,  who  played,  to  Ireland  and  Scot- 
land respectively,  the  part  played  for  England  by  Miss  Austen,  though 
with   less  intensity  of  genius  and  less   universality.  Miss  Edgeworth 
was  the  elder.     She  was  born  in   1767,    her  father  being 
a  clever  but  vain  and  odd  man  who  married  many  wives,    Edilwo^rth. 
championed  many  crotchets,  wrote  a  good  deal,  and  did 
not  improve  his  daughter's  books  by  meddling  with  them.     Besides 
many  quite  admirable  stories  of  and  for  children,  which  contain  work 
'equal  to  the  best  parts  of  her  regular  novels,  Miss  Edgeworth  produced 
Castle  Rackrent  (1801),  an   Irish  story,  or  rather  study  of  manners; 
Belinda  (1803),  dealing  with  society  in  London;    The  Absentee  and 
Ormond,  the  two  best  of  her  purely  Irish  novels,  and  others  down  to 


684  THE   TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

Helen  in  1834.  She  died  in  1849.  She  enjoys  the  very  high  honour  of 
being  admitted  as  in  part  his  original  by  Scott,  and  it  is  undoubtedly 
tme  that,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  Scotch  touches  in  Smollett, 
national  characteristics  had  seldom  been  introduced  into  imaginative 
work  except  for  purposes  of  burlesque.  Besides  her  knowledge  of 
her  countrymen.  Miss  Edgeworth  had  a  very  fair  grasp  of  humanity 
generally,  much  humour,  and  at  her  best  a  light  and  easy  style.  But, 
partly  under  the  direct  influence  of  her  father,  she  was  apt  to  infuse 
into  her  work  too  much  moralising,  after  the  French  eighteenth- 
century  pattern ;  she  had  no  power  of  managing  plot,  and  even  in 
dialogue  and  character  she  will  lapse  from  good  to  bad,  from 
brilliancy  to  dulness,  with  a  suddenness  irritating  and  almost  incom- 
prehensible.    She  is  thus  better  in  short  stories  than  in  long  ones. 

Susan  Ferrier,  on  the  other  hand,  who  was  born  in  1782,  and  did 

not  die  till  1854,  attempted  nothing  but  long  novels,  and  only  three 

of  these.      She   was    the    daughter  of  an    Edinburgh  Writer  to   the 

,.    ^,     .       Signet,    a   friend    of  Sir   Walter's,  and  was   aunt   to   the 

IVliss  remcr 

philosopher  Professor  Ferrier.  It  seems  to  have  been 
with  a  good  deal  of  misgiving  that  she  put  together  the  series  of 
sketches  (for  it  is  hardly  a  connected  novel)  called  Marriage  (1812)  ; 
but  it  was  warmly  received  and  deserved  the  reception,  though  it  is  a 
very  odd  compound  of  a  sentiment-novel  a  la  Mackenzie  and  a  series 
of  satiric  sketches,  sometimes  as  vigorous  as  Smollett,  and  not  with- 
out touches  of  extreme  severity.  Her  next  and  best  novel.  The 
Inlieritance,  still  preserves  the  compound,  but  tlie  texture  of  the  book 
is  closer,  and  the  humorous  pictures  —  Lord  Rossmore,  Miss 
Pratt  the  busybody.  Uncle  Adam  (an  audacious  taking-off  of  the 
author's  father).  Miss  Bell  Black,  evaporee  and  idiot,  and  others  —  gain 
in  width  of  stroke  and  brilliancy  of  colour.  Destiny,  the  third,  falls 
back  rather  to  the  conditions  of  Marriage,  being  a  long  and  rather 
disjointed  chronicle  with  a  good  deal  of  sentiment  and  only  oc- 
casional strokes  of  humour.  But  Miss  Ferrier's  best  things  have 
high  distinction,  the  general  Scotch  quality  being  original  (for  neither 
Scott  nor  Gait  had  written  when  Marriage  appeared)  and  well 
blended  with  the  author's  own  sarcastic  observation. 

John  Gait  completes  the  trio,  for  though  the  "Ettrick  Shepherd" 
wrote  novels,  they  came  later,  and  are,  with  the  exception  of  the 
strange  and  striking  Confessions  of  a  Justified  Sinner,  of  much  less 
importance.  He  was  born  in  May  1779  at  Irvine,  in 
Ayrshire,  and  died  at  Greenock  in  April  1839.  Gait 
was  a  man  of  business  and  a  public  servant,  who  at  one  time  had  the  • 
prospect  of  a  great  future  as  manager  of  the  Canada  Company. 
But,  not  it  would  seem  by  any  fault  of  his  own,  he  was  unlucky,  and 
died  with    broken,   fortunes.      He  had    both    travelled   and  written   a 


CHAP.  II  THE   NOVEL  — SCOTT   AND   MISS   AUSTEN  685 

great  deal ;  but  of  his  abundant  work  nothing  but  his  novels,  and  not 
the  whole  of  these,  has  survived.  He  is  known  by  The  Ayrshire 
Legatees,  The  Annals  of  the  Parish,  Sir  Andrew  IVylie,  The  EtUail, 
and  The  Provost.  The  first  of  these  is  one  of  the  numerous  imita- 
tions of  Hjanphrey  Clinker,  and  the  third  a  sort  of  fantasy-piece, 
amusing  both  as  he  meant  it  to  be  and  as  he  did  not.  But  llie 
Annals,  The  Entail,  and  The  Provost  exhibit  the  humours  of  Scot- 
tish life  in  the  country  and  in  small  towns  at  the  beginning  of  the 
century  with  very  great  talent,  and  even  some  genius  of  a  limited  and 
peculiar  kind.  Gait's  dialect  is  more  distinctly  local  and  peculiar 
than  Scott's,  and  his  literary  faculty  is  not  to  be  named  in  the  same 
breath.  But  if  less  universal,  he  is  perhaps  even  more  racily 
particular. 

Two    pairs    may    follow  —  Ainsworth    and    James,    Disraeli    and 
Bulwer.      William    Harrison  Ainsworth,  the    son    of   a   Manchester 
lawyer,   was   born   in    1805 ;    George    Payne    Rainsford    James    four 
years    earlier,    the    son     of  a    London    physician.      But 
Ainsworth   long   outlived   James  (who   died  as   consul  at    and  James. 
Venice    in    i860),   and     did    not    himself    die   till     1882, 
having   written   till   a  short    time   before  his  death.     The  flourishing 
time  of  both    was   the   second   quarter   of  the   century,   at   the   very 
beginning    of  which   Ainsworth    started   with    Sir   John    Chiverton 
(1825),    which,    however,    it  is    said,   he    did   not  write  alone;  James 
with  Richelieu  (1829).     Neither  was  a  man  of  strictly  literary  power, 
though   James   was    the   superior   of  Ainsworth  as  a  writer,  and  did 
some  respectable  work  in  other  departments  besides  the  novel.     But 
both   have   been   rather   absurdly  depreciated  of  late.     All  their  best 
works  were  published  before  the  middle  of  the  century. 

The  second  pair  rises  higher.  Benjamin  Disraeli  was  born  in 
London  on  31st  December  1804,  being  the  son  of  the  ingenious 
miscellanist  and  antiquarian  writer,  Isaac  D'Israeli.  He  was  privately 
educated,  and  intended  for  the  law,  but  turned  very 
early  to  literature.  He  was  not  yet  of  age,  nor  the  Beaconsfield. 
author  of  Vivian  Grey,  when  he  negotiated  on  Murray's 
part  with  Lockhart  for  the  setting  up  of  the  Representative  news- 
paper, which  proved  a  costly  failure.  Vivian  Grey  itself,  his  first 
novel,  was  published  next  year  (1826),  and  was  followed,  before  Dis- 
raeli .succeeded  in  getting  into  Parliament  in  1837,  by  other  novels 
or  novelettes,  Captain  Popanilla,  The  Voiutg  Duke,  Contarini 
Fleming,  Alroy,  the  florid  but  really  passionate  and  beautiful  love- 
story  of  Henrietta  Temple,  and  the  interesting  working-up  of  Byron's 
life  called  Venetia.  The  most  characteristic  and  brilliant,  however, 
of  his  novels  came  afterwards,  when  he  was  already  on  the  eve  of 
political  leadership — Coningsby   (1844),   Sybil   (1845),   and    Tattered 


686  THE  TRIUMPH    OF  ROMANCE  book  x 

(1847).  The  later  Lothair  (1870)  and  Endymion  (1880)  are  chiefly 
asides  and  pastimes  written  to  beguile  the  leisure  of  Opposition. 

Just  as  no  one,  either  during  his  life  or  since,  has  ever  quite  known 
what  to  make  of  Lord  Beaconsfield  in  himself,  so  no  one  has  ever  quite 
known  what  to  make  of  his  books.  Their  brilliant  and  astonishing 
cleverness  is  not  denied  by  any  competent  critic ;  few  question  the 
wit  (only  wanting  Heine's  passion  to  be,  like  Heine's,  humour  as  well) 
which  suffuses  them ;  not  many  persons  of  any  imagination  or  even 
fancy  have  failed  to  be  fascinated  by  the  fantastic  play  of  invention, 
the  restless  fertility  of  thought  and  image  and  innuendo,  with  which 
they  abound.  On  the  other  hand,  not  many  sound  critics  woijld  deny 
that  their  sentiment  is  often  questionable ;  that  their  taste  in  other 
ways  invites  the  epithets,  tawdry,  rhetorical,  gaudy ;  that  they  some- 
times sin  by  personality ;  and  that,  except  in  small  things  like  Txion 
and  The  Infernal  Marriage,  or  in  Henrietta  Temple,  they  can  never 
be  said  finally  and  fully  to  reach  success  in  the  kind  to  which  they 
seem  to  wish  to  belong.  But  the  steady  progress  between  Vivian 
Grey  and  Venetia,  and  the  vigour  of  the  great  political  trio  which 
follows,  may  be  thought  to  show  that,  if  their  author  had  not  merged 
his  literary  interests  in  a  more  exciting  game,  he  might  have  done 
even  better.  No  great  literature  has  ever  been  produced  as  a 
parergon  unless  it  was  trifling  in  bulk ;  and  latterly,  if  not  from  the 
first,  Disraeli's  literary  work  was  always  a  parergon. 

The  first  Lord  Lytton,  earlier  known  as  Bulwer  or  Bulwer-Lytton 

(he  was  a  younger  son  of  the  Bulwers  of  Norfolk,  and  representative 

through  his  mother  of  the  Lyttons  of  Hertfordshire),  was  a  slightly 

older  man,  born  in  1803  (?).     He  was  educated  at  Cam- 

Lytton!  bridge,  where  he  obtained  the  Chancellor's  Medal  for 
English  verse,  a  form  for  which  he  always  had  some 
hankering,  while  he  was  also  a  dramatist  of  more  accomplishment 
than  most  of  his  century,  and  a  writer  of  most  kinds  of  prose.  His 
public  life  began  almost  as  early  as  his  literary  career,  for  he  sat  in 
the  unreformed  Parliament.  In  1835  he  was  made  a  Baronet.  He 
began  life  as  a  Whig,  but  gradually  became  more  Conservative  in  his 
opinions,  and  ranked  in  that  party  for  the  greater  part  of  his  life. 
He  was  Colonial  Secretary  in  1858,  and  died  in  1873,  having  been 
raised  to  the  peerage  some  years  before. 

His  first  novel,  Falkland,  was  published  anonymously  in  1827; 
his  second,  Felham,  appeared  with  his  name,  and  though  it  can 
hardly  be  called  a  great  book,  made,  and  has  to  some  extent  kept, 
mark  as  one  of  the  first  of  fashionable  or  dandy  novels.  Carlyle's 
severe  satire  on  it  in  Sartor  Resartiis  is  itself  a  tribute  to  the  effect 
the  book  produced,  if  not  also  to  some  intrinsic  quality  in  it.  It  was 
followed   by   a  long  series  of  novels  in   many   different   styles,   the 


CHAP.  II  THE   NOVEL  — SCOTT   AND   MISS   AUSTEN  687 

versatile  quality  of  Bulwer's  talent  being  sensible  to  the  slightest 
veering  of  popular  taste.  If  hardly  one  of  these  novels  can  be  called 
a  masterpiece,  there  is  also  hardly  one  which  does  not  display  clever- 
ness in  a  very  high  degree,  and  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  books 
like  Ernest  Maliravers,  The  Last  Days  of  Pompeii,  and  Harold  may 
not  have  more  than  one  return  of  the  popularity  which,  indeed,  has 
not  even  yet  been  e.xchanged  for  complete  oblivion.  This  versatility 
was  shown  in  still  more  remarkable  fashion  when,  about  the  middle 
of  the  century,  the  novelist  completely  abandoned  the  terror-novel, 
the  sentimental  novel,  the  historical  novel,  and  all  the  rest,  turned  to 
the  domestic  kind  which  was  then  becoming  fashionable,  and  pro- 
duced in  The  Caxtons,  My  Novel,  and  IVhat  will  he  do  with  it? 
books  which  attained  a  great  reputation,  and  have  been  dethroned 
rather  by  things  different  than  by  better  things.  In  yet  a  third 
period,  from  i860  to  his  death,  Bulwer  displayed  this  almost  unique 
faculty  of  trimming  his  .sails  once  more,  writing  wonder-stories  of  a  new 
kind  in  the  Strange  Story  and  the  consummate  The  Haunted  and 
the  Haunters,  fantastic  romances  of  the  future  in  The  Coming  Race, 
pictures  of  actual  contemporary  life,  as  fresh  as  those  of  his  youth,  in 
Kenelm  Chillingly.  There  never  was  the  slightest  sign  of  exhaustion 
in  him,  and  it  is  scarcely  an  extravagance  to  say  that  however  long 
he  had  lived,  and  whatever  changes  of  taste,  fashion,  thought,  he  had 
seen,  he  would  always  have  been  equal  to  the  task  of  reflecting  them 
in  fiction  as  he  had  already  done  for  nearly  half  a  century.  The 
Nemesis  of  such  literary  prestidigitation  is  almost  invariably  and 
necessarily  a  want  of  depth  and  intensity ;  and  no  doubt  this  is  to  be 
found  in  Bulwer.  It  is  a  minor  matter,  but  one  also  unfortunate  for 
him,  that  he  acquired  at  first,  and  therefore,  even  with  his  gifts  for 
quick  change,  could  never  wholly  lose,  the  insincere  high-flown 
Byronic  style  which,  after  impressing  for  a  decade  or  two,  became 
the  laughing-stock  of  many  decades  more.  The  taste  for  this  may 
not  impossibly  return,  and  if  so,  the  popularity  of  Bulwer  may  return 
with  it ;  but  it  is  improbable  that  this  revival  will  extend  to  more  than 
a  part  of  his  work. 

It  is  hard  to  draw  the  line  between  tho.se   novelists  who  deserve 
independent  mention  and  those  who  must  be  dealt  with  in  batches. 
Not    a    few    of    the    writers    in  this    period,    who   found    their    real 
vocation   elsewhere,    were    novelists   occasionally  —  a   fact 
which  is  always  a  valuable  literary  and   historical   indica-     L^ckhart. 
tion  of  the  growing  popularity  of  a  kind.     James  Hogg, 
the  Ettrick   Shepherd,  it  has  been  .said,  wrote   novels;    Leigh    Hunt 
wrote    novels ;    even    Moore,    in    his   prose    tale    of    The    l-.picurean, 
approached    the    style.      De    Quincey    and    Wilson,    whose    proper 
sphere  was  es.say-writing,  tried  prose  fiction  ;  and  there  was  a  time 


688  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

(1821-25)  when  Wilson's  colleague,  Lockhart,  seemed  to  be  likely  to 
devote  himself  wholly,  or  at  least  mainly,  to  it.  But  Lockhart's  four 
novels,  Reginald  Dalton,  Valerius ^  Adavi  Blair,  and  Matthew  Walci, 
while  showing  the  great  literary  faculty  and  the  unusual  powers  of 
mind  which  their  author  possessed,  showed  also  that  novel-writing 
was  not  his  vocation.  Reginald  Dalton  is  indeed  one  of  the  first 
examples  of  the  University  novel,  and  Valerius  one  of  the  very 
first  attempts  to  apply  to  classical  times  the  processes  which,  in  Scott's 
hands,  had  been  so  effective  in  mediaeval  and  modern.  But  in  both 
cases  Lockhart  "  was  not  the  magician."  He  came  nearer  to  success 
in  the  intense  and  powerful  novelette  of  Adam  Blair,  but  this  is  rather 
a  single  situation  than  a  complete  story ;  and  Matthew  IVald,  a  novel 
of  madness,  is  almost  a  failure. 

But  the  time,  though  not  so  fertile  as  that  of  our  concluding  Book, 
was  fertile  in  men  who  devoted  themselves  with  more  or  less  success 
to  the  kind.  The  greatest  of  these  from  the  literary  side,  though 
perhaps  he  can  hardly  be  called  a  great  novelist,  was 
undoubtedly  Thomas  Love  Peacock,  who  was  born  in 
1785,  became  a  scholar  of  no  mean  order  without  any  regular 
education,  and  a  high  official  in  the  East  India  Company,  without 
either  entering  its  service  early  or  devoting  himself  to  any  profession, 
lived  to  a  great  age,  and  died  in  1866.  One  of  Peacock's  novels, 
Gryll  Grange,  belongs  to  almost  the  latest  period  of  this  history,  to 
the  time  when,  in  retirement,  he  looked  out,  with  no  senile  petulance 
but  with  his  old  sardonic  attitude,  on  a  world  more  changed  from 
that  of  his  youth  than  that  of  his  youth  was  from  the  days  of  Addison 
or  even  Dryden.  But  most  of  his  fiction,  Headlong  Hall,  Melincoiirt, 
Nightmare  Abbey,  Maid  Marian,  The  Misfortunes  of  Elphin,  and 
Crotchet  Castle,  belongs  to  the  time  between  Waterloo  and  the  first 
Reform  Bill.  These  exhibit,  as  does  Gryll  Grange  thirty  years  later, 
a  satirical  mood,  not  exactly  that  of  the  bookworm  but  certainly  that 
of  the  man  of  letters,  towards  all  popular  cants  and  follies  of  the 
political,  social,  and  literary  kind.  Peacock  was  a  friend  of  Shelley, 
and  in  his  earlier  books  he  is  singularly  unjust  to  the  Lake  poets ; 
not,  it  would  seem,  owing  to  political  prejudice,  though  there  was  in 
him  then  something  of  this,  but  from  a  survival  of  eighteenth-century 
and  slightly  Voltairian  impatience  of  some  forms  of  romance.  He 
himself,  however,  was  clearly  enough  a  romantic  writer  with  classical 
varnish,  and  with  a  stronger  clittamen  towards  the  Aristophanic  than 
towards  the  Aeschylean  temper.  He  wrote  good  verse ;  and  good  is 
too  weak  a  word  for  his  songs,  especially  his  convivial  songs,  which 
are  among  the  very  best  in  literature.  But  his  proper  literary  dialect 
was  prose,  especially  (though  he  was  a  master  of  description)  ironic 
dialogue  and  comment  of  a  kind  peculiar  to  himself.     That  it  had 


CHAiMi  THE   NOVEL  — SCOTT   AND   MISS   AUSTEN  689 

much  influence  on  Thackeray  there  can  be  no  doubt  at  all.  But  Peacock 
was  always  nearer  to  wit  than  to  humour,  though  in  some  of  the  out- 
lying kinds  of  the  latter,  notably  in  that  which  animates  The  Mis- 
fortn7ies  of  ElpJiin,  he  was  a  very  great  master. 

In  Charles  Lever,  who  was  born  in  1806,  and  who,  writing 
novels  indefatigably  from  about  his  thirtieth  year,  entered  the 
consular  service,  and  died  consul  at  Trieste  in  1872,  there  was  some 
resemblance  to  Bulwer  —  not  indeed  in  tone  or  temper, 
but  in  knowledge  of  the  world,  and  in  the  facility  with 
which  he  successively  adopted  quite  different  styles  of  writing,  to  suit 
the  public  taste.  Lever,  who  was  an  Irishman  by  birth,  a  member 
of  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  and  by  profession  a  physician,  had 
accumulated  vast  stores  of  anecdote;  and  he  began  to  pour  these 
out,  with  very  little  arrangement,  in  the  '•  rollicking "  books  of  which 
Harry  Lorrequer  and  Charles  CMalley  are  the  chief.  After  a  time 
he  changed  his  scenes  chiefly  to  the  Continent,  and  made  a  great 
advance  in  the  method  of  his  novels ;  while  for  some  years  before 
his  death  he  almost  entirely  abandoned  the  modern-picaresque  style 
which  he  had  so  long  pursued,  and  attempted,  not  without  success,  a 
more  sober  and  careful  study  of  ordinary  life  and  manner.  But  it  is 
probably  by  his  military  and  Irish  extravaganzas  that  he  will  live,  if  he 
does  live. 

Frederick  Marryat  played,  but  much  moj-e  thoroughly,  the  same 
part  towards  the  navy  that  Lever  occupied  towards  the  army.  He  was 
born  in  1792,  saw  much  service  even  after  the  overthrow  of  Napoleon, 
and  having  obtained  post  rank,  distinguished  himself 
especially  in  the  first  Burmese  war.  Then  he  turned  to 
the  press,  not  merely  writing  but  editing  for  many  years,  and  latterly 
attempting  to  farm  his  own  land  in  Norfolk,  not  with  success.  His 
series  of  naval  novels,  from  Frank  Mildmay  onwards,  is  perhaps  the 
most  remarkable  instance  of  a  man  working  his  professional  know- 
ledge with  effect  in  literature.  The  mere  writing  is  frequently 
careless,  and  the  construction,  as  usual  at  this  period,  exceedingly 
haphazard.  But  the  character-studies,  if  rather  external,  are  constantly 
vivid  and  true,  the  adventures  are  often  exciting  and  always  amusing, 
and  some  of  the  books,  especially  Peter  Simple  and  Mr.  Midshipman 
Easy,  are  not  likely  soon  to  grow  obsolete. 

The  only  other  naval  novels  worth   mentioning  here  are  tlie   two 
remarkable   books    of  Michael    Scott,  a   man   of  whom   very  little  is 
known,  but  who  contributed   To>n  Cri;i(^le''s  Loi!^  :\.n<l  The  Cruise  of  the 
Midge   to   Blackwood.      If  Marryat    has   little   plot,  Scott 
has    none   at   all ;    but   he    had,    what    Marryat   had    not,       Icilir' 
a   command    of    elaborate    picturesque    style    which,    like 
tliat    of    his    perhaps    master,  Christopher    North,  sometimes   passes 


690  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

into    the    grandiloquent    and    bombastic,    but    at    its    best    is    very 
impressive. 

We  can  hardly  do  more  than  mention  Charles  Robert  Maturin 
(1782-1824),  whose  powerful  diablerie  of  Melmoth  the  Wanderer 
(1820)  has  never  ceased  to  fascinate  some  readers  in  each  genera- 
tion ;  Theodore  Hook,  the  fun-maker  of  the  third  and 
Others?  fourth  decadcs  of  the  century,  before  Dickens,  and 
long  before  Thackeray  appeared  —  a  man  whose  talents, 
amounting  very  nearly  to  genius,  are  vouched  for  by  strong  testi- 
mony, but  can  hardly  be  said  to  appear  in  his  books  save  in  shreds 
and  patches ;  Mrs.  Gore,  a  very  clever  writer  of  fashionable  and 
other  novels ;  or  the  authors  of  a  considerable  number  of  single 
books,  like  the  Anastasius  of  Thomas  Hope,  the  Hajji  Baba  of 
James  Morier,  and  the  Frankensteiti  of  Mrs.  Shelley,  which  sur- 
vive by  reputation,  and  even  to  a  certain  extent  by  reading.  And 
this  remark  may  serve  even  more  with  regard  to  the  corresponding 
chapter  in  the  next  Book,  where  an  even  larger  number  of  such 
books  and  authors  would  claim  attention  if  it  were  accorded  to  any 
of  their  number.  The  lesser  dramatists  of  the  Renaissance  and  the 
seventeenth  century,  the  lesser  poets  of  the  eighteenth,  the  lesser 
novelists  of  the  nineteenth,  have  to  pay  a  penalty  which  is  as  just  as 
it  is  inevitable.  They  form  part  of  great  regiments,  almost  of 
corporate  bodies,  in  whjch  their  individuality  is  lost.  But  for  the 
greater  men  they  probably  would  never  have  written ;  and  they  must 
be  content  to  be  represented  by  them. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   NEW  ESSAY 

Progress  and  defects  of  the  earlier  essay  —  Magazines  and  Reviews — The  E din- 
burgh:  Jeffrey  —  Its  contributors:  Scott's  criticism  —  Brougham  —  Sydney 
Smith  —  The  Quarterly — The  new  Magazine  —  Blackwood's  :  "Christopher 
North"  —  Lockhart  —  The  London — Lamb — Leigh  Hunt  —  Hazhtt — De 
Quincey —  Landor's  prose  —  Cobbett 

Despite  the  mighty  work  of  Scott  and  the  exquisite  accomplishment 
of  Miss  Austen,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  the  novel  is  the  chief 
special   feature   in   prose   of  the  first   thirty  years  of  the  nineteenth 
centurj'.     That  position  belongs  rather  to  the  new  develop-   p^^  ^.^^^  ^^^ 
ments    of    the    essay,    which    were   fostered,   and    indeed  defects  of  the 
rendered  possible,  by  the  increased  demand  for  periodical   ^^^  '^"^  essay. 
literature.     We  have  seen  how  the  essay,  unknown  by  name  and  not 
much   known    in   fact   before   the   end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  had 
already   tended    to   include   all    subjects   for   prose    treatment    in    its 
province  ;  how  it  absorbed  the  Character,  developed  further  its  own 
special  vein  of  egotistic  meditation,  asserted  in   Dryden's  hands  the 
proper   place   of    literary   criticism,    became    in    those   of  the    Steele- 
Addison  group  the  rival,  and  the  successful  rival,  of  the  drama  and  the 
sermon  as  the  popular  form  of  reading,  and  maintained  that  position 
well  through  the  eighteenth  century. 

In  these  two  centuries  it  had  already  touched  nearly  every 
subject,  and  had  been  written  by  the  most  eminent  hands ;  but  its 
general  organisation  had  been  defective.  In  the  seventeenth  century  it 
had  had  to  appear  as  an  independent  book,  as  a  pamphlet, 

1        ,  /-  .  .1  •  1  T'  ii       M.icazines  and 

or  at  best  as  a  preface  to  something  else.  Even  the  Reviews, 
essay-periodicals  of  the  eighteenth  were  anything  but 
perfect  in  method.  To  give  them.selves  a  countenance  as  well  as 
a  frame  and  platform,  they  had  to  affect  artificial  devices  which 
hampered  more  than  they  helped,  and  soon  palled  on  public  taste. 
They  depended  either  on  individuals  of  genius,  or  on  a  fortuitous  and 
unstable  combination  of  individuals  of  talent,  and  so  could  never  last. 

691 


692  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  X 

It  is  true  that  periodicals  of  something  like  the  modern  scheme  did 
exist  —  the  famous  Gentleman's  Magazine  as  early  as  1731,  the 
scarcely  less  famous  Critical  and  Monthly  Reviews  a  little  later. ^ 
But  they  enjoyed  little  reputation  or  circulation;  they  were  mostly 
written  for  wretched  pay  by  always  needy  and  sometimes  unscrupulous 
hacks.  There  was  a  suspicion  of  discredit  about  periodical  writing 
which  even  the  participation  in  it  of  men  like  Smollett  did  not  remove ; 
nor  does  it  appear  that  these  papers,  at  any  rate  the  two  Reviews, 
would  have  given  any  welcome  to  the  sprouts  of  an  outsider's  brain, 
even  if  he  had  offered  them  for  nothing. 

The  Review,  however,  was  to  be  recognised  sooner  than  the 
Magazine,  and  even  before  the  new  form  of  magazine  was  provided 
by  the  London  and  Blackwood,  the  daily  papers  served  as  hosts  and 
introducers  to  a  good  deal  of  original  and  critical  work 
burgh:  of  the  essay  kind.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  main  credit, 
Jeffrey.  j£  ^^^  ^f  actually  launching,  of  carrying  safe  to  sea,  the 
Edinburgh  Review,  the  first  of  the  new  fleet  of  periodicals,  is  due 
to  Francis  Jeffrey,  who  with  Sydney  Smith  and  others  planned  and 
began  the  Edinburgh  Review  in  1802,  while  after  the  first  number 
he  was  its  sole  editor.  Jeffrey  was  born  in  Edinburgh  on  23rd 
October  1773,  was  educated  at  the  High  School  and  University 
there  as  well  as  at  Glasgow,  and  for  a  short  time  at  Oxford,  and  was 
called  to  the  Scottish  bar.  Despite  his  addiction  to  literature  he 
never  gave  up  his  practice,  and  though  not  at  first  successful, 
gradually  made  himself  a  name.  When  his  party  at  last  came  into 
power  after  the  Reform  Bill,  he  was  made  Lord  Advocate,  became  a 
Judge,  and  died  in  1850,  having  for  nearly  twenty  years  given  up  all 
but  a  consultative  connection  with  the  management  of  the  Review. 
But  for  the  first  thirty  years  of  its  life  he  was,  except  in  cases  of  con- 
tributors like  Sydney  Smith,  who  were  too  valuable  to  be  lost  and 
too  independent  to  be  driven,  all-powerful ;  and  there  is  no  doubt 
that  he  directly  and  indirectly  influenced  a  great  branch  of -literature 
as  few  others  have  done.  His  own  critical  work  has  been  variously, 
and  since  his  death  for  the  most  part  unfavourably,  estimated.  That 
he  was  both  prejudiced  in  extra-literary  matters,  and  somewhat 
uncatholic  in  literary  matters  proper,  cannot  be  denied.  But  he  had 
a  real  knowledge  of  English  literature,  a  creed  too  narrow  indeed, 
but  not  so  narrow  as  is  sometimes  thought,  and  within  the  blinkers  of 
that  creed  a  very  sharp  and  steady  vision. 

Jeffrey's  associates  at  first  included  even  Scott,  for  the  extreme 

iThe  distinction  of  these  titles  was  no  doubt  intentional,  and  though  the 
sharp  division  has  been  lost  it  still  exists  to  some  extent.  The  Review  proper  is 
nothing  if  not  critical ;  the  Magazine  is  more  of  a  miscellany,  and  began  early  to 
serve  as  a  vehicle  for  prose  fiction. 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   NEW   ESSAY  •  693 

Whig  principles  whicli    were   afterwards   to    distinguish   the   Review 
were  not  at  once  asserted,  at  least  exclusively,  nor  was  reviewing  by 
any   means   the   least   of  Sir   Walter's    accomplishments,  itscontribu- 
though  his  critical  and  miscellaneous  writings  are  far  too   tors:  Scott's 
little   read   now.     He   was   not   an   adept    in    the    minor 
branches   of  criticism,   and   he   was   perhaps    rather    too    universally 
good-natured,  though  this   is  '  a   much    better   fault   in   a   critic   than 
universal    ill-nature.      But    his    sense    of    the  general   principles   of 
literature,  and  not  merely  imaginative  literature,  was  extremely  sound, 
his  wide  reading  enabled  him  to  illustrate  his  articles    in   a   manner 
both   useful  and  amusing,  and  his  very  narrative  faculty  came  in  for 
the  purpose  of  making   the  article  a  unity,   instead   of  the   heap   of 
disjointed  observations   which   is  sometimes  put  forward. 

Only  one  other  of  the  individual  contributors  to  the  Review  could 
pretend  to  very  high  literary  qualities.  Professors  Playfair  and 
Leslie  were  respectable  pundits  in  their  different  lines ;  Francis 
Horner,  a  man  who  died  too  young  to  disparage  the  praises  of  his 
friends,  was  a  political  economist  of  some  solidity.  It  is  less  easy  to 
designate  briefly  the  once  eminent  and  still  conspicuous,  if  rather 
enigmatic,  figure  of  Henry  Brougham,  who  raised  himself 
with  little  aid  but  his  own  talents  to  the  Lord  Chancellor- 
ship of  England,  wrote  on  every  subject,  was  at  first  dreaded,  then 
distrusted,  and  finally  disregarded,  by  every  party,  passed  from 
almost  the  highest  position  in  Parliament  as  a  debater  to  the  leader- 
ship of  "  Pantopragmatical "  Social  Science  congresses  and  the 
like,  lived  to  a  great  age,  and  is  now  never  read  save  out  of  curiosity. 
He  was  of  an  old  and  good  Westmoreland  family,  but  was  born  in 
Edinburgh  (1778),  was  wholly  educated  there,  and  was  to  all  intents 
and  purposes  much  more  of  a  Scot  than  of  an  Englishman.  His 
once  brilliant  political  career,  and  its  warnings,  do  not  concern  us ; 
and  his  contributions  to  literature  had  little  solidity,  permanence,  or 
even  temporary  attraction,  beyond  that  of  a  forcible-flashy  style,  well 
enough  adapted  for  the  debate  and  the  newspaper,  but  unsuitable  for 
the  book.  But  he  was  a  valuable,  if  sometimes  a  very  troublesome, 
"  contributor,"  ready  to  write,  and  write  effectively  enough,  on  any 
subject,  in  any  space,  at  any  notice. 

Sydney  Smith,  though  a  professed  jester,  stands  far  aliove 
Brougham,  far  above  all  the  other  contributors  but  Scott,  and  a  good 
deal  above  his  coadjutor  and  successor  in  the  editorship.  He  was 
almost  the  only  Englishman  on  tlie  original  staff  of  the  ^   ,       ^   . , 

_,.,  ,  !•  1  ,  ,,  •■  r  Sydney  Smith. 

/Ltiinourf^/i,  and   it   may   have   been   the   characteristics    01 

that  staff  (lie  never  seems  to  have  known  Scott  much)   which  pointed 

a   certain   famous   remark   of   his    aliout    Scotsmen   and  jokes.       He 

himself  is  almost  the  only  man  on  record  who  has  established  a  high 


694  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  X 

and  secure  reputation  in  literature  by  joking  merely.  For  with  him 
wit  and  humour  were  not,  as  with  Aristophanes,  or  Shakespeare,  or 
Moli^re,  or  Swift,  or  even  with  men  like  Congreve,  means  to  an  end. 
He  had,  indeed,  strong  political,  religious,  and  other  views,  but  they 
never  reached  the  dignity  of  principles.  He  might  just  as  well 
have  been  on  the  other  side,  and,  as  his  later  work  shows,  would 
pretty  certainly  have  been  there  had  he  been  born  a  generation  earlier 
or  later.  The  volleys  of  his  wit  required  some  object,  and  they 
found  it  in  Tory  abuses,  "  Catholic  "  disqualification,  the  Methodists, 
spring-guns,  etc. ;  but  the  battery  would  have  played  just  as  well  on 
democracy  and  universal  suffrage.  Everything  presented  itself  to 
Sydney  as  a  joke  actual  or  possible,  and  yet  (for  this  is  his  highest 
glory)  he  is  never  a  mere  jack-pudding.  And  so  the  very  Liberal  Letters 
of  Peter  Plymley,  early  in  his  literary  life,  and  the  very  Conservative 
Letters  to  Archdeacon  Singletott  at  the  end  of  it,  with  his  Edinburgh 
articles,  his  letters  and  everything  that  he  wrote,  have  obtained,  and 
are  likely  to  keep,  a  high  place  in  literature.  His  ridicule  is  no  test 
of  truth ;  it  is  possible  to  enjoy  it  to  the  very  full,  and  yet  believe 
heartily  in  all  or  most  of  the  things  he  laughed  at.  But  if  it  has 
no  force  to  destroy,  it  has  infinite  force  to  preserve  itself.  Sydney 
Smith  was  born  in  1771,  was  educated  at  Winchester  and  Oxford, 
took  orders,  made  his  way  to  Edinburgh  as  a  tutor,  removed  to  London 
after  his  marriage,  and  for  the  greater  part  of  his  life  was  a  country 
clergyman  at  Foston  in  Yorkshire  and  Combe  Florey  in  Somerset. 
After  the  triumph  of  the  Whigs  he  received  a  canonry  at  St.  Paul's, 
and  died  in  February  1845. 

The  foundation,  seven  years  later,  of  the  Quarterly  Review  rather 
extended  the  field  and  varied  the  politics  of  this  new  kind  of  essay- 
writing  than  added  any  great  new  practitioners  of  it,  with  perhaps  one 

exception.      This   was    Southey,    who,   always   a   working 
Quarterly.     "^'^'^   ^^  letters,    had    from    his    first   literary   beginnings 

worked  (usually  for  wretched,  pay)  in  such  reviews  as 
were  open  to  him,  though  he  had  on  principle  refused  to  contribute 
to  the  Edinburgh.  With  the  Quarterly,  which  was  expressly 
founded  to  defend  Church  and  State,  he  had  no  such  scruples,  and 
for  some  quarter  of  a  century  it  was  at  once  one  of  his  chief  sources 
of  revenue  and  the  principal  outlet  of  his  miscellaneous  writing. 
Scott,  who  had  been  disgusted  with  the  Edinburgh  politics,  and 
seriously  disobliged  (in  the  case  of  Marinion)  by  the  Edinburgh 
criticism,  transferred  his  services  to  the  new  paper,  which  was  edited 
by  Gifford,  and  enjoyed  the  support  of  the  Old  Guard  of  the  Anti- 
Jacobin  {vide  supra,  p.  596)  from  Canning  downwards,  together 
with  all  the  more  promising  recruits,  especially  from  the  English 
universities,  on  the  Tory  side.     These  two   periodicals,    representing 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   NEW   ESSAY  695 

the  two  great  parties  and  amply  furnished  with  literary  ability,  took 
solid  place  at  once,  and  for  many  years  continued  to  be  the  head- 
quarters of  serious  discussion  on  politics,  literature,  religion, 
philosophy,  and  things  in  general.  But  they  observed  with  even 
more  strictness  than  their  less  distinguished  predecessors  the  meaning 
of  the  word  Review.  They  admitted  no  compositions  of  a  fantastic 
or  fictitious  kind ;  they  only  quoted  verse ;  and  though  their  articles 
might  sometimes  use  the  books  noted  as  what  is  called  a  "peg"  to 
hang  the  reviewer's  own  views  upon,  yet  such  a  peg  was,  as  it  is  still, 
a  sine  qua  fion  with  them. 

The    distinction    between    a    Magazine    and    a    Review   was,   as 
observed  above,  an  old  one,  though  the  periodicals  of  the  Spectator 
class   had   to  some  extent  confounded   the  two.     But   the   characters 
were  mixed,  though  the  name  Magazine  was  preferred,  in 
two  publications,  the  London  Mamzine  and  BlackwooiVs     ,T^^  "^"' 

,,  .  ,  .    ,  ,   '^    ,  .  Magazine. 

Mag;azine,  which  at  very  nearly  the  same  moment,  m 
1817,  introduced  a  yet  new  kind  of  periodical,  and  served  as  the  means 
for  introducing  a  very  large  amount  of  new  literary  talent,  and  in  some 
cases  genius,  to  the  world.  For  twenty  years  previous  to  181 7  such 
talent  and  (as  in  the  notable  case  of  Coleridge)  such  genius  had  been 
finding  outlets  in  daily  papers  like  the  Times  and  the  Morning  Post, 
in  weekly  papers  such  as  Leigh  Hunt's  Examiner.,  in  refashioned 
imitations  of  the  Spectator.,  such  as  his  Indicator  and  Reflector.  But 
the  two  remarkable  monthly  magazines  named  above  came  into 
existence  in  apparently  the  most  haphazard  manner  — really,  no 
doubt,  because  they  were  wanted,  and  had  to  be  provided  somehow. 
Blackwood's,  the  longest-lived  by  far,  had  a  most  unfortunate  start, 
and  was  very  near  being  a  failure  altogether,  when  it  was  completely 
revolutionised  by  a  crew  of  brilliant  wits,  and  launched  afresh  with  the 
daring  lampoon  of  the  "Chaldee  Manuscript";  the.  London  was  more 
homogeneous  throughout,  but  its  career  was  very  short,  though 
almost  without  parallel  brilliant. 

The  men  who  came  to  the  aid  of  Mr.  William  Blackwood,  an 
Edinburgh  publisher  who  combined  enterprise  and  judgment  in  a 
most  singular  fashion,  were  first  of  all  John  Wilson,  afterwards  Pro- 
fessor of  Moral  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Edin-  Blackwood's- 
burgh,  and  John  Gibson  Lockhart,  afterwards  editor  of  "  Christopher 
the    (Juarterly  and    .son-in-law    and    biographer  of   Scott.  °"  ' 

Neither  of  them  was  at  any  time  in  tlie  strict  sense  editor,  and  the 
final  decision  always  rested  with  tlie  publisher  himself:  but  at  one 
time  he,  Wilson,  and  Lockhart  held,  as  it  might  be  said,  the  editor- 
ship in  commission,  and  until  Blackwood's  death  and  his  own  failure 
of  health  and  spirits  Wilson  continued  to  hold  something  like  this 
position  after  Lockhart  had   gone  to  London.      Wilson,  the  elder  of 


696  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

the  two  by  nearly  ten  years,  was  born  at  Paisley  in  1785  and 
educated  at  Glasgow  and  Oxford.  He  had  inherited  wealth,  and  for 
some  time  lived  on  his  means  at  Elleray  on  Windermere.  But  the 
loss  of  great  part  of  his  fortune  made  him  betake  himself  to  Edin- 
burgh, where  his  mother  was  living,  and  though  he  made  no  mark  at 
the  Bar,  he  found  his  vocation  almost  at  once  on  Blackwood,  and 
before  long  was  elected  to  the  Chair  above  mentioned.  For  fully 
twenty  years  he  was  the  soul  of  the  magazine  under  the  name  of 
"  Christopher  North,"  and  actually  wrote  a  large  part  of  it  in  one 
form  or  another.  In  later  years  he  took  less  share,  but  he  held  his 
Chair  till  1852,  and  lived  till  1854'. 

Before  "  Maga,"  as  Blackwood's  Magazine  called  itself  by  a 
punning  abbreviation,  came  into  existence,  Wilson  had  made  some 
distinction  for  himself  as  a  poet,  or  at  least  a  verse-writer,  in  his  two 
volumes,  The  Isle  of  Palms  (18 12)  and  The  City  of  the  Plague  (1816). 
The  chief  interest  of  these  is,  however,  that  they  show  the  rapidity 
with  which  the  example  of  the  really  great  poets  of  the  Romantic 
revival  was  caught  up  and  followed.  He  also  wrote  stories,  Lights 
and  Shadows  of  Scottish  Life,  The  Trials  of  Margaret  Lindsay,  etc., 
which  are  of  very  little  merit,  and  are  chiefly  remarkable  as  showing 
the  excessive  sentimentality  which  supphed  the  reaction  to  Wilson's 
boisterous  spirits.  Had  his  work  been  confined  to  these  things  it 
would  now  be  wholly  forgotten.  But  in  magazine-writing  itself  he 
found  or  made  the  style  which  was  his  own  —  a  style  of  fluent,  full- 
voiced,  indeed,  as  has  been  said,  rather  boisterous,  descant  upon 
things  in  general  —  sport,  literature,  scenery,  politics,  gastronomy,  art. 
These  descants  sometimes  took  the  shape  of  dialogue  in  the  famous 
Nodes  AmbrosiancE  —  a  set  of  symposia  the  origination  of  which  is 
variously  attributed  to  Wilson  himself,  Lockhart,  and  Maginn  {%>ide 
infra),  but  which  fell  more  and  more  under  the  sole  management  of 
Wilson  —  sometimes  into  monologues  or  ordinary  reviews,  many  of 
which  were  collected  later  as  The  Recreations  of  Christopher  North. 
A  large  number  of  these  last  are  literary  in  subject,  but  Wilson  also 
contributed  much  literary  criticism  of  a  less  mercurial  kind  in  the 
four  volumes  of  his  Essays,  Critical  and  Imaginative,  especially  in 
the  fourth. 

Wilson  had  great  powers,  and  his  writings  contain  many  admir- 
able things.  In  particular,  he  was  one  of  the  main  pioneers  in  the 
new  adventure  of  ornate  prose  which,  as  on  other  occasions,  suc- 
ceeded the  poetical  outburst  of  the  earlier  years  of  the  century ;  and 
some  of  his  efforts  in  this  kind  are  not  easily  to  be  surpassed.  He 
was  also  one  of  the  first  to  record,  in  less  formal  language  than  Gilpin 
and  his  followers  in  the  Picturesque,  the  effects  of  scenery,  and  quite 
the   first   to   give   literary  form    to  field   sports,  while  his   talent   for 


CHAP.  Ill 


THE  NEW   ESSAY  697 


weaving  miscellanea  of  all  kinds  into  dialogue  owed  little  to  any 
model,  and  displayed  resource  and  dexterity  not  falling  far  short 
of  genius.  But  tliese  merits  were  accompanied,  nay,  inextricabJy 
blended  with,  and  also  to  no  small  extent  marred  by,  great  faults,  of 
which  the  violence,  both  personal  and  poHtical,  common  to  the  time 
was  almost  the  least.  The  most  important  of  these  was,  in  the 
first  place,  an  almost  incredible  and  quite  unparalleled  infirmity  of 
taste,  which  allowed  him  to  slip  into  the  trivial,  the  tedious,  the  idly 
extravagant,  and  now  and  then  the  simply  disgusting.  Even  at  his 
best  he  seldom  knows  that  last  secret,  the  secret  where  to  stop,  and 
his  prolixity  and  inequality  together  make  even  "  beauties  "  from  him 
hard  to  select.  Another  and  still  worse  fault  was  more  moral  than 
literary,  though  strictly  on  the  literary  side  of  morals  —  an  inexplicable 
tendency  to  make  always  rude  and  sometimes  venomous  attacks, 
under  cover  of  anonymity,  on  persons  who  not  merely  deserved 
literary  consideration,  but  were  in  some  cases  his  private  friends  and 
even  benefactors. 

John  Gibson  Lockhart  was  also  deeply  tinged  with  the  aggressive, 
and  sometimes  scurrilous,  personality  of  the  time,  but  his  taste  was 
seldom  to  seek,  and  he  has  no  proven  crimes  of  literary  Ihe-majesti 
or  personal  ingratitude  to  atone  for.  He  was  born  at 
Cambusnethan  in  July  1794,  was  educated  at  Glasgow  "'^  *"' 
and  Oxford,  took  a  very  good  degree,  travelled  in  Germany,  and, 
returning  to  Edinburgh,  practised  at  the  bar.  He  began  his  connec- 
tion with  letters  by  translating  Schlegel's  Lectures  on  History,  joined 
heart  and  soul  in  the  early  sports  and  wars  of  Blackwood  (which  on 
more  than  one  occasion  nearly  ended  in  bloodshed,  and  once  did  so, 
though  he  was  not  personally  engaged),  and  in  1819  published,  with 
some  collaboration  from  Wilson,  the  amusing  Smollett-like  book  on 
Edinburgh  and  its  society  called  Peter's  Letters  to  his  Kinsfolk}  He 
married  Sophia  Scott  in  1820,  and  for  some  years  lived,  when  not  in 
Edintjurgh,  at  Chiefswood,  on  the  Abbotsford  property,  writing  his 
four  novels  and  his  cliarming  Spanish  Ballads,  with  much  miscel- 
laneous work  for  Blackwood.  At  the  end  of  1825  he  was  appointed 
to  the  editorship  of  the  Quarterly,  and,  moving  to  London,  wrote  a 
great  deal  for  the  Review  and  a  little  for  Leaser,  began  his  famous 
Life  of  Scott  in  1837,  was  made  Auditor  of  the  Duchy  of  Lancaster 
in  1843,  and  died  in  1854,  his  health  broken,  partly  by  work,  partly 
also  by  family  troubles,  for  his  wife  and  both  his  sons  died  before 
him. 

No   one  would    deny  that    Lockhart's  most  certain  and  enduring 
title  to  literary  remembrance  lies  in  his  Life  of  Scott,  a  book  which 


1  The  title  was  a  play  on  that  of  Scott's  account  of  his  journey  to  the  Con. 
tinent  after  Waterloo,  Paul's  Letters  to  his  Kinsfolk. 


698  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  X 

indeed  has  an  almost  unmatched  subject,  and  enjoys  the  half-illegiti- 
mate advantage  of  a  great  amount  of  matter  from  that  subject's  own 
hand.  But  unfortunate  experience  shows  us  how  insufficient  even 
such  advantages  are  to  make  a  good  book ;  and  this  is  confessedly- 
one  of  the  best  books  in  the  world.  For  Lockhart  has  not  only 
written  it  admirably ;  he  has  not  only  exhibited,  in  his  admissions 
and  exclusions,  that  good  feeling  which  was,  as  a  rule,  denied  him  by 
his  enemies ;  but  he  has  also  exhibited  taste,  judgment,  sense  of  pro- 
portion, in  a  matter  where  the  exercise  of  such  sense  is  most  difficult, 
to  an  extent  hardly  paralleled  in  any  other  biograjDhy.^  He  is  by  no 
means  a  born  novelist,  though  there  are  good,  and  almost  great,  things 
in  his  novels ;  and,  though  he  had  an  exquisite  touch  both  of 
humour  and  pathos  in  verse,  he  hardly  pretended  to  be  a  poet.  By 
far  the  greatest  expense  of  his  literary  power  was  upon  criticism  and 
miscellaneous  essay-and-article-writing,  of  the  kind  generally  classed 
as  journalism.  No  collection  of  these  writings  of  his  has  ever  been 
made ;  and  he  was  universally  believed  in  his  lifetime  —  nor  has  he 
been  quite  cleared  of  the  charge  since  —  to  have  strained  the  privi- 
leges of  an  anonymous  critic  tOj  and  sometimes  beyond,  their  limit. 
It  is  certain,  however,  that  even  in  those  writings  of  his  which  his 
admirers  most  wish  that  he  had  not  written,  or  hope  that  he  did  not 
write,  an  intellectual  power  and  a  faculty  of  sarcastic  attack  only 
surpassed  by  Swift  appear.  In  less  disputable  matter  Lockhart  was 
always  a  competent,  though  sometimes  a  severe  and  rather  prejudiced, 
critic.  He  accepted  the  earlier  Romantic  movement,  but  could 
never  quite  reconcile  himself  to  its  most  luxuriant  exuberance  in 
Shelley,  Keats,  and  Tennyson,  while  his  taste  in  prose  also  set  dis- 
tinctly against  the  floridity  reintroduced  in  different  ways  by  De 
Quincey,  Wilson,  and  Landor. 

The  other  main  early  contributors  to  Blackwood  were  lesser  men. 
William  Maginn  (i 793-1 842),  an  Irishman  of  extraordinary  versatility, 
much  wit,  and  some  scholarship,  but  tinged  with  too  many  of  the 
weaknesses  and  vices  of  Bohemianism,  had  much  to  do  with  Alaga, 
and  more  later  with  Eraser's  Magazine,  to  which  latter  he  bore  much 
the  same  relation  as  Wilson  did  to  Blackwood  itself.  Maginn,  who 
served  as  a  model  for  Thackeray's  Captain  Shandon,  undoubtedly 
possessed  powers  which,  if  concentrated  and  chastened,  would  have 
enabled  him  to  produce  work  of  very  high  quality,  and  as  it  is,  some 
of  his  stories  and  verses  (^  Story  without  a  Tail,  Bob  Burke^s  Duel, 
The  Pewter  Qjiart,  Maxims  of  Morgan  CDoherty,  etc.)  come  little  short 
of  genius.     He  gathered  round  him  in  Fraser  a  set  of  contributors 

1  Lockhart  exhibited  the  same  qualities,  on  a  smaller  but  not  less  difficult  scale, 
in  a  long  article,  published  later  as  a  small  book,  on  Theodore  Hook,  after  the 
death  of  that  ingenious  Bohemian. 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   NEW   ESSAY  699 

almost  more   brilliant   than   those   of  Blackwood  or   of    the   London 
itself,  ranging  from  Coleridge  to  Thackeray,  and  including  Carlyle. 

James  Hogg  was  also  one  of  Maginn's  men,  but  was  of  much 
more  importance  as  supplying  the  figure  of  "  the  Shepherd "  in  the 
Notes,  a  personage  with  most  of  Hogg's  faults,  but  with  much 
more  than  his  merits.^ 

The  London  set,  rather  absurdly  described  by  their  Edinburgh 
rivals  as  "  Cockney,"  was  almost  entirely  independent,  though  De 
Quincey  formed  a  kind  of  link  between  the  two  periodicals.  The 
first  editor  of  the  London,  John  Scott,  has  only  made  ^  ,  ,  , 
mark  by  his  lamentable  death,  an  imbroglio  between 
himself  and  Lockhart  ending  in  an  actual  duel  between  Scott  and 
Lockhart's  friend  Christie,  in  which  the  former,  by  the  mismanage- 
ment or  bloodthirstiness  of  his  second,  fell.  But  the  London  had 
Thomas  Hood  for  its  sub-editor  at  one  time,  it  actually  introduced 
Lamb  and  De  Quincey  to  essay-writing,  and  it  served  for  years  as 
the  chief  organ,  though  Leigh  Hunt  had  his  own,  of  the  writers  — 
sometimes,  but  not  by  any  means  always,  anti-Tory  in  politics,  and 
almost  always  Romantic  in  literature  —  who  had  their  headquarters  in 
London  itself.  Others  of  these,  besides  Hunt,  made  their  chief 
appearances  elsewhere,  but  they  may  be  most  satisfactorily  treated 
here  and  together. 

Charles  Lamb,  who  is  perhaps  more  nearly  unique  than  any 
other  English  writer  outside  the  great  poets,  was  a  Londoner  born, 
bred,  and,  by  predilection  as  well  as  fate,  resident.  His  birthday 
was  i8th  February  1775,  his  father  was  a  lawyer's 
clerk,  he  was  sent  to  Christ's  Hospital,  where  he  first 
fell  into  the  society  of  Coleridge,  and  he  was  early  provided  for  by 
a  clerkship  in  the  East  Indian  House.  But  his  circumstances  were 
most  unfavourably  affected  by  hereditary  madness,  which  indeed 
never  in  his  own  case  (except  for  a  very  short  time)  went  beyond 
eccentricity,  but  which  afflicted  his  beloved  elder  sister  Mary  so 
sorely  that  she  murdered  her  mother  in  one  fit  of  insanity,  and  was 
subject  to  others,  with  increasing  frequency  as  she  grew  older,  for  the 
rest  of  her  life.  Lamb  devoted  himself  (there  was  another  brother 
more  prosperous,  but  more  selfish)  entirely  to  her,  and  never  married. 
It  would  api^ear  that,  even  independently  of  the  influence  of  Coleridge 
(which,  however,  like  all  that  wonderful  person's  associates,  he  felt 
deeply),  he  had  been  attracted  to  the  study  of  the  Elizabethan,  and 
in  an  even  greater  degree  to  that  of  the  Jacobean  and  Caroline, 
writers.      He   wrote   some   early   poems    of  little    merit ;    essayed   an 

1  The  sfory  of  Blackwood  and  its  contributors,  long  partially  and  incorrectly 
known,  has  now  been  fully  told  in  Mrs.  Oliphant's  House  of  Blackwood  (vols.  i. 
and  ii.  EcJinI  urgh,  1897). 


700  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

Elizabethan  tragedy,  John  Woodvil,  which  has  more ;  composed, 
with  his  sister,  some  Tales  from  Shakespearej  followed  up  in  the  same 
kind  afterwards  by  the  Adventures  of  Ulysses,  which  are  admirable 
in  a  most  dangerous  kind ;  and  executed,  with  very  brief  critical 
notes  which  are  jewels,  two  volumes  of  selections  from  the  Elizabethan 
drama  displaying  wonderful  sympathy  and  insight. 

It  is,  however,  improbable  that  he  would  have  been  much  more 
than  a  curiosity  of  literature  —  one  of  those  not  so  very  rare  figures 
who  make  us  say,  ''What  a  pity  this  man  never  found  his  way!  "  —  or 
that  at  best  his  real  worth  would  have  been  known  only  from  his 
letters,  which  are  numerous  and  charming,  if  the  establishment  of 
the  London  Magazine  followed  as  it  was  by  his  retirement  from  his 
clerkship  on  a  pension,  had  not  elicited  from  him  the  famous  Essays 
of  Elia.  It  is  impossible  to  describe  these ;  in  point  of  subject  they 
are  literally  de  omnibus  rebus  et  quibusdam  aliis,  the  quaint  fancy  of 
the  writer  evolving,  as  he  handles  each  of  his  more  tangible  matters 
of  thought,  fancies  that  never  were  anywhere,  that  never  were  to  be 
anywhere,  but  in  his  own  writings.  Nor  is  his  style  more  capable 
of  exact  definition.  That  a  certain  amount  of  his  material  is  derived 
from  actual  loans  supplied  by  the  quainter  writers  of  the  mid-seven- 
teenth century,  especially  Burton,  Fuller,  and  Browne,  is  perfectly 
true,  as  also  that  the  essayist's  debt  to  these  for  manner  and  method 
is  even  greater  than  his  borrowings  of  actual  matter  or  word.  But 
a  great  deal  remains  which  is  simply  Lamb  himself  and  nobody 
else.  Not  only  is  he  thus  unique  among  English  writers,  but  he  is 
equally  unique  among  the  smaller  and  specially  national  body  of 
English  humourists.  Nobody  has  ever  succeeded  in  imitating  him, 
even  in  his  most  obvious  quaintnesses,  while  the  blending  of  these 
quaintnesses  with  a  pathos  which  is  never  mere  sentiment  is  a 
secret  not  merely  undiscovered  yet  by  imitators,  but  escaping  even 
any  complete  analysis  —  a  Proteus  never  to  be  bound  by  the  most 
enduring  Ulysses,  but  fortunately  amiable  enough  to  bestow  his 
wisdom  and  his  graces  without  any  such  process. 

Henry  James  Leigh  Hunt,  who  was  born  in  1784,  and  like  Lamb 
was  a  Blue-coat  boy,  had  the  same  introduction  to  official  life  (in  his 
case  in  the  War  Office),  but  gave  it  up  under  the  double  seductions 
of  laziness  and  literature.  He  had  a  brother  who  was  a 
better  man  of  business  than  himself,  and  the  two  set 
up  a  newspaper  —  the  Examiner — which  took  strong  Liberal  and 
Opposition  views.  Hunt  himself  was  imprisoned  —  a  mere  restric- 
tion of  movement  —  for  a  libel  on  the  Prince  Regent  in  1812. 
He  survived  this  for  nearly  fifty  years  (he  died  in  1859),  during 
which  his  abode  was,  except  for  one  visit  to  Italy,  wholly  London 
and  its  neighbourhood,  and  his  occupation  unceasing  literary  labour. 


I 


CHAP.  Ill  THE  NEW   ESSAY  701 

Neither  in  verse,  in  which  he  wrote  a  good  deal  {vide  infra),  nor 
in  prose,  in  which  he  wrote  mucli  more,  was  Leigh  Hunt  exactly 
supreme.  Want  of  time  (for  he  always  wrote  for  bread)  prevented 
him  as  it  was ;  while  want  of  taste  would  jDrobably  have  prevented 
him  in  any  case.  But  he  was  of  the  great  miscelianists  of  English 
literature  —  a  critic  who,  as  far  as  the  merely  appreciative  part  of  his 
business  is  concerned,  has  had  few  superiors ;  and  a  writer  of  the 
purely  general  essay,  the  "  article,"  which  was  more  and  more  hitting 
popular  taste,  and  which  has  never  lost  it  since,  after  a  fashion  which 
owed  little  to  any  forerunners,  and  has  taught  much  to  scores,  almost 
to  hundreds,  of  followers.  Hunt  tried  longer  work  in  novel  and 
otherwise,  but  was  quite  unfit  for  it :  he  was  a  journalist  and  essayist 
born.  But  he  inclined  towards  the  older  rather  than  the  younger 
types  of  these  in  being  prone  to  write  wholly  of  mainly  by  himself. 
He  was  the  sole  or  the  principal  contributor  to  the  Reflector  (1810), 
the  Indicator  (1819-21),  the  Companion  (1828),  the  New  Tatler 
(1830-32),  and  the  Londoti  Journal  (1834-35).  His  work  in  these 
and  other  things  was  at  diiTerent  times  rearranged  and  diversified 
with  fresh  matter  or  presented  for  the  first  time  in  different  forms  — 
Men,  Women,  atid  Books,  A  Jar  of  Honey  from  Mount  Hybla,  Wit 
and  Humour,  Imaginatioti  and  Fancy,  etc.  He  wrote  a  pleasing 
Autobiography,  and  an  admirable  book  on  London,  The  Town.  But 
always,  and  first  of  all,  he  is  a  miscellanist  and  a  writer  of  essays. 

Lamb  was  an  exquisite,  and  Leigh  Hunt  a  very  agreeable,  critic, 
the  former  in  regard  to  a  limited  and  rather  haphazard  group  of 
personal  predilections  of  his  own,  the  latter  in  a  sphere  very  credit- 
ably wide,  though  determined  rather  by  instinct  than  by  reason. 
The  third  great  member  of  the  '*  Cockney  "  school,  though  even  his 
criticism  was  too  much  vitiated  by  extra-literary  prejudice,  was  far 
greater  as  a  critic  than  either  —  was  indeed  one  of  the  very  greatest 
critics  who  have  ever  lived.  He  was  also  —  unlike  his  companions  — 
a  critic,  or  at  least  an  essayist,  merely,  though  he  wrote  a  philosophical 
book  of  no  great  merit  at  the  beginning  of  his  career,  and  a  historical 
one  of  less  at  the  end  of  it.     William  Hazlitt,  who  was       ,,    ,. 

r  ,   .    ,  .  1  A»-i  •  oTT  Hazlitt. 

of  Irish  extraction,  was  born  at  Maidstone  in  1778.  He 
was  rather  early  thrown  into  contact  with  Coleridge,  bestowed  when 
young  much  attention  on  art,  but  finally  settled  down  to  literary  work 
in  London,  afterwards  at  Winterslow  on  Salisbury  Plain,  where  his 
first  wife  had  some  property,  and  then  in  181 2  in  London  again. 
Nor  did  he  move  liis  headcjuartcrs  till  liis  death  in  1830.  He 
seems  to  have  enjoyed  his  life,  hut  it  was  not  what  would  generally 
be  called  a  fortunate  one.  Both  his  marriages  were  ufilucky,  the 
first  ending  in  a  regular  divorce,  the  second  in  his  wife's  leaving  him 
after   a   short    time.      His   temper,   even    by   personal    and    political 


702  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  X 

friends,  was  found  to  be  almost  intolerable ;  and  though  he  only 
shared  with  some  very  amiable  persons  the  abuse  of  violent 
partisans  on  the  side  opposed  to  Liberalism,  he  provoked,  rivalled, 
and  more  than  requited  their  acrimony,  indulging  in  the  most 
ferocious  abuse  not  merely  of  personal  literary  foes,  but  of  men  like 
Scott  and  Wellington,  who  were  entirely  out  of  his  sphere,  and  had 
certainly  never  provoked  him  in  any  way. 

This  waspishness  (to  use  an  unfair  word,  for  the  wasp  never 
stings  unless  meddled  with)  invalidates  a  small  part  even  of  his 
criticism,  as,  for  instance,  in  reference  not  merely  to  Burke  and 
other  Conservative  writers,  not  merely  to  contemporaries  of  Liberal 
principles,  like  Shelley,  who  were  gentlemen,  and  therefore  obnoxious 
to  his  democratic  envy,  but  to  inoffensive  antiquities  like  the 
monarchical  poets  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  He 
was  also  rather  insufficiently  equipped  with  knowledge  of  other  lan- 
guages and  literatures.  But,  despite  these  drawbacks,  his  collected 
critical  lectures  and  essays  on  English  literature,  as  well  as  a  good 
many  independent  essays,  contain  perhaps  the  very  finest  work  of 
their  kind  —  free  from  the  tentative  and  experimental  character  of 
Dryden,  from  the  limits  and  blinkers  of  the  eighteenth  century,  from 
the  scrappiness  and  vagueness  of  Coleridge,  from  the  crotchet  of 
Lamb,  from  the  lack  of  intellectual  quality  in  Hunt,  and  from  the 
sometimes  arbitrary  eclecticism  of  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold. 

Besides  this  great  accomplishment,  Hazlitt  was  a  very  good  critic 
of  art,  though  in  a  less  technical  kind  than  that  which  has  since 
become  fashionable,  and  such  a  master  of  the  miscellaneous  essay 
that  his  faculty  for  this  has  by  some  been  put  even  above  his  purely 
critical  power.  In  his  own  time  Hazlitt,  though  disliked  and  abused, 
was  a  writer  of  weight ;  in  the  generation  succeeding  his  death  he 
was,  save  by  a  few  of  the  best  judges,  such  as  Thackeray,  rather 
undervalued  and  neglected ;  and  it  is  only  of  late  years  that  he  has 
been  restored,  and  perhaps  even  yet  not  fully  restored,  to  his  proper 
place. 

Thomas   De   Quincey,  the  one  link  of  great  importance  between 

the  hostile  camps,  was  born  in  the  suburbs  of  Manchester  in  the  year 

1785.     His  father  died  when  he  was  quite  young,  but  left  consider- 

^  ^  .  able  property,  his  share  of  which  De  Quincey  afterwards 

De  Quincey.  .  .  x,  , 

got  rid  of  in  ways  not  discreditable  so  much  as  eccentric 
—  by  exercises  of  literary  generosity  (he  gave  Coleridge  a  large  sum), 
by  the  most  reckless  anticipations,  by  neglecting  to  adopt  any 
profession,  and  by  such  merely  wilful  oddities  as  disqualifying  him- 
self for  the  valuable  Hulme  Exhibition  from  Manchester  Grammar 
School  to  Brasenose  College  by  running  away  from  the  former  place 
of  learning,  and  then  going  to  Oxford  after  all  at  his  own  expense. 


CHAP.  Ill  THE  NEW  ESSAY  703 

The  college  he  chose  was  Worcester,  where  he  resided  for  a  long 
time,  but  where  he  took  no  degree.  He  settled  after  some  years  in 
the  Lakes,  married,  and  lived  quietly  for  twenty  years,  after  which  he 
moved  to  Edinburgh,  living  there  or  at  Lasswade  till  1859,  when 
he  died,  the  last  of  his  generation  except  Landor.  The  singular 
adventures  of  his  errant  youth,  and  the  results  of  his  habit  of  opium- 
eating,  have  been  told  by  himself  in  various  forms  and  places, 
specially  in  his  Autobiography  and  in  the  earlier  and  more  famous 
Confessions  of  an  English  Opium-Eater,  which  first  appeared  in  the 
London  Magazine  during  the  course  of  the  year  1821.  He  had 
published  nothing  of  any  importance  .before,  though  he  had  been  a 
very  deep  and  wide  student,  and  had  helped  Wordsworth  to  prepare 
his  "  Note  on  the  Convention  of  Cintra"  for  press. 

Having  thus  made  discovery  of  his  ability  for  literary  composition, 
and  being,  moreover,  urged  by  the  insufficiency  of  his  income,  De 
Quincey,  for  nearly  the  last  forty  years  of  his  life,  devoted  himself  to 
writing  with  an  untiring  energy,  the  due  rewards  of  which  were  to  a 
great  extent  lost  to  him  by  his  incurably  unpractical  ways  in  almost 
all  respects.  But  towards  the  end  of  his  life  he  made  a  very  large 
collection  of  reprinted  articles,  which  (further  enlarged  since  his  death) 
is  perhaps  the  most  important  in  bulk  and  the  most  varied  in  subject 
of  any  collection  of  Miscellanea  in  English.  De  Quincey's  merits, 
indeed,  were  so  numerous  and  so  great  that  only  the  presence,  side 
by  side  with  them,  of  very  serious  defects  of  a  peculiarly  annoying 
character  has  kept  him  out  of  one  of  the  very  highest  positions  in 
literature  —  to  which  position,  indeed,  he  has  been  actually  admitted 
by  some.  He  had  a  singular  combination  of  exact  scholarship  with 
wide  desultory  reading;  an  entirely  original  faculty  of  narrative;  a 
rare  gift  for  exposition,  either  in  summary  of  fact  or  concentration  of 
argument ;  an  intensely  individual,  though  fitful,  humour ;  and  a 
hardly  matched  —  a  certainly  unsurpassed  —  command  of  gorgeous 
rhetorical  style.  Of  this  last,  indeed,  he  was  very  well  aware,  and 
was  misled  by  il  into  the  critical  error  of  regarding  all  plain  prose 
style  as  inferior,  instead  of,  as  it  really  is,  in  perfection  the  equal  of 
the  most  ornate. 

On  the  other  hand,  De  Quincey  was  liable  to  accesses  of  tedious 
digression  and  "'rigmarole,"  which  make  it  sometimes  impossible 
to  read  him  through ;  his  ])urely  critical  faculty  was  singularly 
untrustworthy,  and  almost  as  likely  to  lead  him  wrong  as  to  lead  him 
right;  his  humour,  when  it  cea.sed  to  be  grim  or  dreamy,  had  a 
distressing  habit  of  falling  into  clumsy  jocularity  and  horseplay. 
Although,  therefore,  his  works,  voluminous  as  they  are,  have  been 
very  widely  read,  there  have  always  been  dissidents  in  the  apprecia- 
tion of  them,  and  this  dissidence  has  rather  gained  strength  recently. 


704  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

It  is  not,  however,  of  much  importance ;  for  though  sound  criticism 
will  never  fail  to  take  note  of  his  weaknesses,  such  things  as  the 
Confessions  and  their  appendices  (especially  the  splendid  •'  Ladies  of 
Sorrow"),  the  Autobiography,  and  the  essays  on  TJie  English  Mail 
Coach,  Murder  as  One  of  the  Fine  Arts,foanofArc,  The  Spanish  Nun, 
The  CcEsars,  and  a  good  many  others,  are  quite  sure  of  their 
place.  De  Quincey's  historical  position,  however,  depends  less  upon 
details  than  upon  the  fact  that  he  was  one  of  the  very  first  to  attempt, 
and  one  of  the  most  successful  in  achieving,  one  of  the  great  turns 
in  the  long  race  of  English  prose  style  — ■  the  nineteenth-century 
reaction  from  plain  to  ornate  prose-writing.  And  it  is  significant  and 
interesting  that,  as  was  also  the  case  with  another  reformer,  Landor, 
he  found  his  easiest  and  most  successful  exercising  ground  in  dreams. 
For  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  the  effort  of  prose,  even  in  the  mouths 
and  pens  of  men  like  Gibbon  and  Johnson,  had  been  to  be  first  of 
all  practical  —  its  aim  was  now  to  be  first  of  all  imaginative.  No 
doubt  part  of  the  attempt  was  due  to  the  Wordsworthian  heresy, 
which  De  Quincey  strongly  shared,  of  the  non-necessity  of  metre  in 
poetry ;  but  this  did  not  matter.  The  reformers  may  sometimes 
have  intended  to  write  prose-poetry,  which  is  a  bastard  and  tainted 
in  blood ;  but  they  really  produced  a  true  new  cross  in  imaginative 
prose. 

Landor  himself,  technically  no  essayist,  but,  like  some  writers  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  illustrating  the  essay-w/j//^  in  a  slightly  altered 
form,  belongs  to  this  chapter  not  merely  on  that  ground.  For  with 
Wilson  and  De  Quincey  he  is  the  earliest,  and  in  some  ways 
'  he  is  almost  by  himself  the  greatest,  of  the  reformers,  or, 
as  some  would  say,  revolutionisers,  of  prose  style.  His  prose  work  was 
not  early,  and  it  took  a  form  not  very  convenient,  but  maintained  with 
characteristic  obstinacy  by  the  artist  —  that  of  Imaginary  Conversations, 
reaching  in  their  total  a  very  great  bulk.  The  first  collection  of  these 
appeared  in  1831,  when  their  author  was  fifty-six,  and  this  was 
succeeded  by  others,  sometimes  under  the  general  title,  sometimes 
specialised  as  Examination  of  Shakespeare  (1836),  Pericles  and 
Aspasia,  The  Pentameroti.  The  formal  and  the  material  value  of  these 
things  are  very  far  apart,  and  they  cannot  be  praised  without  qualifica- 
tion even  in  respect  of  form.  For  such  conversations  a  dramatic 
command  of  character  would  seem  to  be  necessary,  and  Landor  had 
none  ;  humour  likewise  —  and  Landor's  humour  was  "  a  terrible  minus 
quantity";  detachment  —  and  Landor  was  a  bundle  of  prejudices,  at 
times  furiously  voiceful  and  never  quite  silent.  But  his  astonishing 
gift  of  style  and,  despite  his  crotchets  and  his  too  frequent  silliness, 
his  attachment  to  the  great  standard  models  of  conduct  in  action  and 
proportion   in   expression    convey  to    them    an   extraordinary    charm. 


CHAP.  Ill  THE  NEW   ESSAY  705 

Standing  as  he  does  at  the  turning  of  the  way  in  prose,  and  indeed 
in  literature  generally,  he  manages  to  combine  classical  grace,  dignity, 
adjustment,  and  even  not  infrequently  measure,  with  Romantic  colour, 
suggestion,  variety,  to  an  extent  wonderful  and  sometimes  consum- 
mate. He  never  quite  succeeds  in  being  easy,  and  he  never  has  the 
very  least  imaginative  wizardry.  He  is  stilted  beside  Addison,  prosaic 
beside  Browne ;  but  as  much  of  either  as  would  mix  is  in  him,  and  the 
blend  is  not  a  little  delightful. 

William  Cobbett,  older  than  most  of  these  men,  and  a  strong 
contrast,  in  his  bringing-up  and  circumstance,  to  their  mostly  academic 
education  and  their  usual  position  in  society,  gives  a  yet  more  special 
contrast  with  Landor,  in  his  style,  the  perfection  of  the      ^  , , 

,  ,        ,.  11  •  Cobbett. 

vernacular  made  literary  —  the  last  great  representative 
of  the  line  of  Latimer  and  Bunyan.  Cobbett  was  born  in  1762,  and 
died  a  member  of  the  Reformed  Parliament  in  1835.  He  was  the 
son  of  a  farmer-labourer,  served  for  some  time  in  the  army,  where  he 
became  sergeant,  but  resided  in  America  for  the  later  years  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  beginning  his  newspaper  experiences  there  with 
Peter  Porcupine''s  Journal,  and  writing  fully  up  to  his  title.  Soon 
after  his  return  to  England  in  1800,  appeared  his  Weekly  Register, 
in  which,  under  difficulties  (including  one  imprisonment  and  another 
exile  to  the  United  States),  as  well  as  in  a  crowd  of  books  little  and 
big,  he  continued,  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  to  vent  political  ideas,  some- 
times generous,  often  mischievous,  nearly  always  unpractical,  in  ad- 
mirable English.  Besides  direct  politics,  grammar,  Church  history, 
the  currency,  potatoes  (their  badness),  maize  (its  goodness),  and  a 
thousand  other  things,  occupied  Cobbett's  pen  ;  while  his  Rural  Rides 
give  some  of  the  most  vivid,  if  not  the  most  ornate,  description  in 
the  language. 

The  great  names  of  Macaulay  and  Carlyle,  hardly  junior  to  most 
here,  will  be  treated  under  another  head,  though  both  were  essayists, 
and  perhaps  essayists  first  of  all.  Those  of  some  others  (of  whom 
Hartley  Coleridge  (i  796-1 849),  son  of  the  poet,  inheritor  of  his 
weaknesses,  but  not  so  very  far  removed  from  his  ability  both  as 
poet  and  as  critic,  is  the  most  important)  belong  to  a  fuller  story 
than   this. 

2Z 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE   LAST   GEORGIAN   PROSE 

Southey's  prose  —  Historical  writing :  Mitford,  Roscoe,  and  others  —  Hallam  — 
Milman  —  Arnold,  Grote,  and  Thirlwall  —  Mackintosh  and  Bentham  — 
Macaulay 

It  has  seemed  desirable  to  separate  from  the  essayists,  though  in 
some  cases  they  were  the  same  persons,  those  prose-writers  who  in 
the  older  forms  of  elaborate  composition  —  history,  philosophical  and 
scientific  discussion,  theological  writing,  and  so  forth  —  composed 
books  of  substantive  importance  during  the  first  thirty  years  or  so  of 
the  century.  The  newer  styles,  ornate,  abrupt,  and  what  not,  were 
slower  in  making  irruption  into  these  dignified  regions ;  perhaps  it 
may  be  said  that  a  stouter  resistance  was  opposed  there  by  the 
publisher-guardians  of  the  gates.  Sartor  Resarius  could  find  no 
home  except  in  a  magazine,  and  was  welcomed  dubiously  even  there ; 
the  Confessions  of  an  Opium-Eater  would  certainly  have  appeared  at 
its  author's  own  expense  or  not  at  all,  had  it  been  compelled  to 
appear  as  a  book  first.  If  we  take  Macaulay  as  the  last  popular 
author  of  an  older  type  in  style,  though  he  lived  far  into  the  Victorian 
era,  Carlyle  as  the  first  of  the  new.  though  he  was  born  before  Macau- 
lay and  not  much  less  than  half  a  century  before  Queen  Victoria 
came  to  the  throne,  we  shall  find  the  division  useful  as  affecting  this 
Book  and  the  next.  For  Carlyle  first  broke,  as  Macaulay,  among  men 
of  commanding  literary  position,  almost  last  sustained,  the  exclusive 
prestige  of  the  older  academic  style  in  matter  of  book -writing. 

Many  of  the  essayists  and  journalists  mentioned  in  the  last 
chapter,  notably  Lockhart,  were  themselves  indisposed  to  the  more 
anarchic  fashions  of  style.     But  the  greatest  practitioner  of  a  style, 

not  indeed   old-fashioned,   but  of  the  older  fashion,  was 
prosed  ^     undoubtedly  Southey.     It  has   sometimes   been   supposed 

that  those  who  make  much  of  style  imagine  the  existence 
of  some  single  individual  form  of  prose-writing,  to  be  kept,  like  the 
standard  weights  and  measures,  in  a  literary  Tower  of  London,  and 

706 


CHAP.  IV  THE   LAST   GEORGIAN   PROSE  707 

not  deviated  from  except  under  peril  of  tlie  law.  This,  of  course, 
would  be  an  entire  mistake.  Almost  every  subject  has  a  style  of  its 
own,  and  almost  every  writer  has  a  style  of  his  own  ;  though  it  is  pos- 
sible to  range  them  all  in  the  two  great  divisions  of  plain  and  ornate, 
and  perhaps  in  some  minor  ones.  But  few  will  dispute  that,  if  there 
could  be  such  a  form  of  style,  if  it  were  possible,  by  segregating 
individuality,  to  arrive  at  the  general  idea,  then  Southey  has  come 
as  near  as  any  Englishman  to  the  ideal  of  prose-writing  on  the  less 
flamboyant  side. 

Not  that  his  own  writing  is  by  any  means  monotonous,  or  even 
extremely  uniform,  in  character.  He  had  to  play  many  parts  with 
his  pen  —  his  Histories  of  Brazil  (1810-19)  and  of  The  Peninsular 
War  (1822-32),  his  historical  biographies  of  Nelson  (1813  —  his 
masterpiece),  Cowper,  Wesley  (1820),  and  others,  the  vast  mass  of 
his  articles  and  reviews,  the  enormous  bulk  of  his  private  letters,  of 
which  the  ten  published  volumes  probably  represent  only  the  smaller 
part,  the  curious  miscellany  of  The  Doctor,  and  such  different  work 
as  \\i?>  Book  of  the  Church  (1824),  his  Colloquies  (1829),  his  Oniniana, 
his  Letters  from  Spain  and  Portugal,  with  the  later  Espriella  (181 2), 
required,  and  duly  received,  different  treatment.  In  the  private  letters 
and  The  Doctor  (1834),  a  dtWher^iQ  fatrasie,  as  the  French  called  it 
in  the  sixteenth  century,  of  reading,  humour,  and  what  not,  he  coins 
words  liberally,  and  admits  foreign  languages  with  almost  macaronic 
license.  In  his  full-dress  work  he  is  almost  Ccesarian  in  his  refusal 
of  the  unusual  word,  and  his  adherence  to  the  best  (not  the  most 
colourless  and  invertebrate)  tradition  of  eighteenth-century  style. 
But  always  he  has  the  much  talked  of,  the  indefinable,  but  the  at 
once  perceptible,  quality  of  ''purity."  He  adjusts  the  scholarly 
and  the  vernacular,  the  business-like  and  tlie  ornamental,  with  an 
unerring  calculation.  He  is,  in  short,  the  Addison,  and  far  more  than 
the  Addison,  of  the  early  nineteenth  century ;  and  it  is  a  distinct 
misfortune  that  more  of  its  writers  have  not  given  their  days  and 
nights  to  the  reading  of  him. 

Sir  Humphry  Davy  in  science.  Dr.  Chalmers  in  theology,  and 
others  in  other  ]:)mnches  would  claim  notice  in  a  larger  space  or  in  a 
more  confined  range  than  the  present  book  allows ;  but  for  our  pres- 
ent purpose  the  important    subject   of  history,  which  has      ,,.      .    , 

,  '       '  ,        ,       '  .,.',.  ^         -         .  ,         Historical 

I)een  as  much  the  prevailing  subject  of  the  nmetcentn  writinc:  Mit- 
century,  in  prose  on  the  great  scale,  as  theology  was  of  ^"^^^  others^' 
the  seventeenth  and  philosophical  speculation  of  certain 
kinds  in  tlie  eighteenth,  will  probably  suffice.  It  was  not  merely  the 
example  and  the  fame  of  (iibbon  which  tempted  writers  to  this  par- 
ticular branch  —  the  exciting  and  important  events  of  the  French 
Revolution  invited  treatment  of  contemporary  themes,  and  the  new- 


7o8  THE  TRIUMPH   OF  ROMANCE  book  X 

born  passion  for  investigating  the  long-neglected  archives  of  different 
nations  necessitated  the  correction  of  the  older  current  histories  and 
facihtated  the  production  of  new.  In  the  last  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century  were  born  more  distinguished  historians  than  had  been  con- 
tributed by  the  whole  course  of  English  literary  history.  And  there 
was  a  curious  progression  of  excellence  in  the  order  of  time.  William 
Mitford  ( 1 744-1 827)  was  a  man  of  fortune  and  of  rather  unusual 
cultivation,  who  left  the  first  really  noteworthy  book  upon  the  theory 
of  English  metre. ^  His  principal  work  was  a  History  of  Greece, 
written  between  1784  and  18 14,  and  very  well  written,  though  injured 
somewhat  by  a  very  strong  political  prejudice  and  by  some  mistakes 
of  fact. 

William  Roscoe,  who  was  born  in  1753,  and  saw  the  reign  of 
William  IV.,  devoted  himself  to  modern,  not  to  ancient,  history,  and 
produced,  in  the  Life  of  Loretizo  de  Medici  (1796)  and  Leo  X.  (1805), 
handbooks  of  the  Italian  Renaissance  which  have  not  yet  grown 
obsolete.  Sharon  Turner  (1768-1847),  John  Lingard  (1772-1851), 
and  Francis  Cohen,  who  took  the  name  of  Palgrave  (1788-1861), 
and  was  knighted,  turned  their  attention,  as  it  was  high  time  some 
one  should,  to  English  history  from  a  somewhat  less  superficial  point 
of  view  than  Hume's.  Lingard  produced  a  general  history  of  Eng- 
land far  in  advance  of  anything  yet  written  in  point  of  scholarly 
accuracy.  Turner  and  Palgrave  attacked  the  origins,  which  had 
hardly  received  any  new  light  since  the  investigations  of  Elizabethan 
and  seventeenth-century  authorities.  Turner  taking  chiefly  Anglo- 
Saxon,  Palgrave  chiefly  Anglo-Norman,  times  as  his  province.  Sir 
James  Mackintosh  (i  765-1 832)  bestowed  a  good  deal  of  his  some- 
what inadequately  represented  ability  and  learning  upon  history ;  and 
Sir  William  Napier  (1785-1860),  with  some  passion  and  prejudice, 
but  with  the  most  intimate  knowledge  of  his  subject,  and  showing  a 
command  of  vivid  literary  representation  excessively  rare,  if  not 
almost  unknown,  in  a  professional  historian,  gave,  in  1828-40,  his 
famous  History  of  the  Peninsular  War. 

All  these  men  produced  historical  work  which  deser\'es  esteem, 
some  of  them  work  deserving  of  something  much  beyond  it ;  and  the 
general  appetite  for  history  in  readers,  and  readiness  to  gratify  that 
appetite  in  writers,  may  be  judged  from  the  fact  that  the  poets  Scott, 
Moore,  and  Campbell,  the  critic  Hazlitt,  and  other  men  whose  voca- 
tion did  not  directly  place  them  under  the  invocation  of  Clio,  com- 
posed extensive  books  of  the  kind.  But  the  art  and  science  of  the 
historian  had  not  been  so  well  represented  in  any  man  since  Gibbon  as 
they  were  represented  in  Henry  Hallam  (1777  or  1 778-1 859).     He  was 

1  An  Enquiry  into  the  Principles  of  the  Harmony  of  Language,  and  ed.  180^ 
Tl»e  first,  in  cruder  form,  had  been  published  some  thirty  years  before, 


CHAP.  IV  THE   LAST   GEORGIAN  PROSE  709 

a  son  of  the  Dean  of  Bristol,  passed  through  Eton,  Christ  Church,  and 
the  Middle  Temple,  and  became  a  bencher  of  his  Inn;  but  he  made 
no  figure  in  practice,  having  private  means,  and  becoming 
a  Government  servant  pretty  early.     He  had  written  for  ^'"' 

the  Edinburgh  Review,  being  a  decided,  though  not  violent,  Whig, 
for  many  years  before  he  made  his  appearance  as  a  historian  with 
his  View  0/  the  State  of  Europe  during  the  Middle  Ages  (1818).  In 
1827  he  published  his  principal  work,  The  Constitutional  History  of 
England  from  the  Accession  of  Henry  Vlf.  to  the  Death  of  George  II., 
and  in  1839  ^^i^  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe  during  the 
Fifteenth,  Sixteettth,  and  Seventeenth  Centuries.  Besides  his  own 
work,  and  his  wide  literary  friendships,  Hallam  had  an  additional 
and  strong,  though  indirect,  connection  with  literature  through  the 
fact  that  his  son,  Arthur  Henry  Hallam,  who  died  in  1833,  was  the 
intimate  friend  of  Tennyson,  and  by  his  death  gave  birth  to  In 
Metnoriatn. 

Hallam  was  a  good  deal  over-praised  during  his  life  as  a  critic, 
for  he  was  the  oracle  of  one  triumphant  and  self-satisfied  party,  and 
was  less  than  usually  obnoxious  to  the  other.  The  strange  slowness, 
moreover,  with  which  English  criticism  mastered  the  comparative 
method,  obtained  for  his  literary  judgments,  both  in  his  own  and 
other  literatures,  not  merely  during  his  life  but  for  many  years  after 
his  death,  an  authority  considerably  greater  than  that  which  really 
belonged  to  them.  For  Hallam  came  a  little  too  early  to  avail  him- 
self of  that  rediscovery  of  its  earlier  treasures  which  every  nation  in 
Europe  made  as  a  consequence  of  the  Romantic  movement ;  he  was 
very  partially  in  sympathy  with  that  movement ;  and  though  he 
could  understand  he  could  not  love  —  a  nearly  fatal  disqualification 
for  a  literary  critic  or  even  a  literary  historian.  But  this  disqualifi- 
cation does  not  attach  to  the  historian  proper,  whatever  it  may  do  to 
the  historical  biographer;  and  in  his  history  proper  Hallam's  work 
was  of  extreme  value.  Even  his  Whig  prepossessions  did  not 
interfere  with  this :  because  he  was  never  unfair,  and  his  prejudice 
merely  gave  him  a  solid  and  honestly  confessed  basis  on  which  to 
take  his  stand,  and  from  which  to  take  his  view.  He  never,  like  his 
great  pupil  Macaulay,  succumbed  to  suppression  or  suggestion,  and 
a  simple  allowance  for  the  idola  of  the  Wliig  tradition  will  almost 
always  extract  from  his  work  a  trustworthy  and  reasonable  statement 
of  historic  fact.  He  occupies  among  English  historians  a  station 
much  higher  than  that  of  Guizot,  and  not  much  below  tliat  of  Ranke, 
among  foreign,  and  his  capacity  for  mere  writing,  though  it  did  not 
give  him  l^rilliancy  or  cliarm,  permitted  him  always  a  scholarly 
adequacy  and  competence. 

Very   like    Hallam,   but    something    of    a    poet,    and    as    a    poet 


7IO  THE  TRIUMPH   OF  ROMANCE  book  x 

possessing  the  touch  of  passion  which  Hallam  rather   fatally  lacked, 

was    Henry    Hart   Milman    (1791-1868).      Like    Hallam    he   was    an 

Eton    and    Oxford    man,    his    college    being    Brasenose, 

Milman.  ,     .       .  .       -^    .  ..i.  ,       r, 

and  in  his  University  he  became  not  merely  Bampton 
Lecturer  but  Professor  of  Poetry.  Not  much  general  memory  of  his 
poems  survives,  but  his  tragedy  of  Fazio  was  perhaps  the  very  best 
of  the  somewhat  artificial  school  succeeding  the  alternate  rant  and 
drivel  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  some  of  his  hymns  are  among 
the  best  in  English.  His  literary  exercises  included  contributions 
to  the  Quarterly  Review;  but  it  was  not  till  he  was  nearly  forty 
(for  he  had  had  parochial  work  in  addition  to  his  other  occupa- 
tions) that,  in  1829,  he  published  his  first  historical  book.  The 
History  of  the  Jeius.  He  improved  upon  this  in  The  History  of 
Christianity  to  the  Abolition  of  Paganism  (1840)  ;  but  both  books 
were  quite  put  in  the  shade  by  his  History  of  Latin  Christianity, 
which  appeared  in  1856,  the  year  of  his  grand  climacteric.  In  his 
earlier  work  he  had  relied  too  much  on  that  uncritical  adoption  of 
German  criticism  which  has  been  the  origin,  and  the  destruction,  of 
the  reputation  of  so  many  Englishmen.  In  the  History  of  Latin 
Christianity  he  relied  on  solid  reading,  not  of  commentaries,  but  of 
text,  on  the  inherent  powers  of  a  great  subject,  and  on  a  style 
which,  though  it  has  no  very  salient  mannerism,  combines  ease 
with  dignity,  and  neither  wearies  nor  irritates  the  reader. 

During  the  same  decade  were   born  three  historians  who  busied 

themselves    with    classical    history  —  Dr.    Arnold    (1795-1842),   who 

devoted  himself  to  the  Roman  annals;   Mr.   Grote   (1794-1871)  and 

A     Id  G    te  I^ishop    Thirlwall    (1797-1875),   who    busied    themselves 

and       '  with   Greek.     The  first  was  born   in   the    Isle   of  Wight, 

Thirlwall.      ^^^   ^^^^   ^^   Winchester  and    to   Corpus,   Oxford.      He 

became  Fellow  of  Oriel  at  a  very  early  age,  took  private  pupils  for 
some  years,  and  was  then  made  headmaster  of  Rugby,  and  later 
Professor  of  Modern  History  at  Oxford.  The  last  appointment  was 
made  too  late  for  him  to  do  much  in  it ;  the  earlier  entirely  revolu- 
tionised Rugby  itself,  and  had  a  great  indirect  effect  on  all  English 
schools.  Historically  he  fell  into  the  same  pitfall  which  had  ensnared 
Milman  (while  he  did  not,  hke  Milman,  live  to  get  out  of  it)  by 
paying  too  much  attention  to  Niebuhr.  He  was,  however,  a  man  of 
vigorous  though  prejudiced  intellect,  with  a  cramping  theory  that 
"  everything  was  an  open  question " ;  and  in  style  he  was  not 
unworthy  to  be  the  father  of  the  author  of  Essays  in  Criticism. 
Indeed,  as  far  as  style  went,  he  stood  ahead  of  both  the  Hellenists, 
and  very  far  ahead  of  Grote.  This  latter,  a  London  banker,  a 
member  of  Parliament,  and  an  extreme  though  rather  theoretical 
Radical,  was  in  the  latter  capacity  chagrined  by  Mitford's   unfavour- 


CHAP.  IV  THE   LAST   GEORGIAN   PROSE  711 

able  sketch  of  Greek  democracy,  and  set  himself  to  draw  a  counter 
picture.  He  had  good  knowledge,  and  was  one  of  the  earliest 
historians  to  ''  realise "  events  in  the  modern  manner,  treating,  for 
instance,  the  case  of  Cleon  very  much  as  if  he  had  been  backing 
that  worthy  for  a  seat  in  an  English  constituency.  But  the  form  of 
his  work  is  ext.-emely  defective,  its  scale  is  enormous  and  tiresome, 
and  its  perpetual  advocacy  makes  the  reader  long  for  the  time  when 
the  "  hoarse  Bar  "  will  be  silent  and  the  Bench  will  speak. 

With  a  little  more  good  luck  the  desideratum  might  have  been  sup- 
plied by  Connop  Thirlwall,  whose  History  appeared  before  Grote's, 
and  was  in  the  popular  estimate  superseded  by  it,  but  who  has 
all  the  qualities  of  the  historian  (except  that  of  vivid  realisation)  in 
a  far  superior  degree.  Thirlwall,  an  extraordinarily  clever  child,  a 
ripe  scholar  later,  and  to  the  end  of  his  life  a  man  of  the  first  intel- 
lectual and  moral  excellence,  was  born  in  Stepney,  was  educated  at 
Charterhouse  and  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  passed  from  the  law 
to  the  Church,  held  a  country  living  for  some  years,  and  in  1840  was 
promoted  to  the  see  of  St.  David's,  which  he  held  for  half  a  life- 
time. That  Thirlwall  was  not  much  less  strong  a  Liberal  than 
Grote,  and,  like  Grote,  that  he  imported  some  purpose,  though  less, 
into  his  history,  did  not  do  much  harm,  for  his  mind  was  almost  as 
little  partisan  as  Hallam's,  and  the  same  moderate  correction  for  the 
longitude  will  set  it  right.  But  though  his  style  is  infinitely  more 
correct  than  Grote's,  and  possesses  dignity  and  even  some  grace,  it 
is  not  in  any  sense  inspiring,  and  no  history  that  is  to  be  more  than 
document  can  afford  to  dispense  with  charm  or  vigour  of  style.  And 
partly  through  this  want,  partly  owing  to  the  character  of  its  writer, 
the  book  is  far  too  destitute  of  the  picturesqueness  which,  easily  as  it 
may  be  overdone,  is  a  sine  qua  non  of  a  great  history. 

Three  somewhat  older  men  may  be  mentioned  before  we  come  to 
the   final    name   of  the   chapter —  Mackintosh,    Bentham,   and  James 
Mill.     Mill    (1773-1836),  the    chief  propagator  of  Bentham's  philoso- 
phy,   the  historian    (with  great  and,  perhaps,    deliberate    Mackintosh 
inaccuracy)  of  British  India,  and    the  possessor  of  a  style         and 
as  crabbed  as  his  master's  and  as  unamiable  as  his   own        *^"    ^'"' 
character,  deserves   slight  mention.     Sir  James  Mackintosh  was  born 
in  Inverness-shire  in   1765,  and  was   educated  at  the  Universities  of 
Aberdeen    and    Edinl)urgh.     He  took    his   degree   in    medicine,    but 
went  to  the   London    bar,   and    wrote    politics    for  some   time  before 
his     Vindicice  Gallica — a   Jacobin   apology   in  his    twenty-sixth  year 
produced   as   an   answer   to    Burke  —  attracted   the   attention   of  the 
extremer  Whigs.     He   lectured   at    Lincoln's    Inn   in    1799,  defended 
Peltipr,  Bonaparte's  enemy,  in   1803,  became  Recorder  of  Bombay  in 
1804,  returned,  after   spending  eight  years  in   India,  to  sit  in  Parlia- 


712  THE  TRIUMPH   OF  ROMANCE  book  x 

ment  and  profess  Law  and  History  at  Haileybury,  and  died  in  1832, 
just  too  early  to  reap  the  fruits  of  the  Liberal  triumph.  He  wrote  on 
philosophy,  on  politics,  on  law,  on  history ;  and  the  worst  things  to 
be  said  about  him  are  that  he  wrote  on  each  too  much  like  a  pro- 
fessor or  one  or  more  of  the  others,  and  that  his  style,  though  with 
considerable  mannered  grace  of  its  own,  is  too  florid,  and  smacks  too 
much  of  eighteenth-century  thinness  draped  with  Johnsonian  phrase. 
He  never  concentrated  himself  either  in  subject  or  form,  and  has  left 
nothing  that  does  his  reputation  thorough  justice.  Yet  the  defence  of 
Peltier  is  one  of  the  very  best  and  most  literary  of  forensic  pleadings  in 
English,  and  the  Dissertation  on  Ei/tics  is  a  masterpiece  of  exoteric 
philosophical  exposition. 

Jeremy  Bentham,  who  died  in  the  same  year  with  Mackintosh, 
but  was  born  much  earlier,  in  1748,  was  a  Londoner,  was  educated  at 
Westminster  and  Queen's  College,  Oxford,  and  entered  an  Inn  of 
Court.  His  instincts  and  interests  were  indeed  almost  wholly  legal, 
but  he  was  dispensed  by  private  means  from  the  necessity  of  prac- 
tising, and,  unlike  most  lawyers,  perhaps  because  he  did  not  practise, 
he  advocated  legal  and  other  reforms  of  a  mostly  destructive  char- 
acter. Opinion,  very  unfavourable  to  him  at  first,  came  round  to  a 
large  extent,  though  the  wheel  is  now  turning  again,  and  even  his 
demonstration  against  the  Usury  Laws,  long  pronounced  unanswer- 
able, is  doubted  now.  But  literature  looks  to  the  way  in  which  he 
enforced  his  views,  not  to  their  nature  or  purport,  their  triumph  or 
decay.  Here  he  may  be  credited  with  vigour  and  clearness  of 
thought,  which  very  seldom  finds  a  corresponding  vigour  or  clearness 
of  expression.  Even  in  his  most  purely  critical  work,  as  where  he 
deals  with  popular  fallacies,  the  form  is  always  below  the  occasion, 
and  where  he  is  expounding  instead  of  pulling  to  pieces,  the  want  of 
clearness  and  of  style  is  still  more  painfully  apparent. 

The  last  author  of  first-rate  importance  in  the  older  prose,  though 
he  gave  it  a  colour  and  form  which  made  him  more  popular  than  any 
innovator,  was  Thomas  Babington  Macaulay,  who  played  more  than 
one  part  both  in  life  and  in  literature,  but  was,  on  the 
whole  and  in  his  heart,  more  of  a  historian  than  of  any- 
thing else.  He  was  born  at  Rothley  Temple,  in  Leicestershire,  on 
25th  October  1800;  his  father,  Zachary,  was  a  very  strong  partisan 
of  negro  emancipation.  Macaulay  went  to  no  public  school,  but  was 
sent  to  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  made  many  friends, 
took  the  Chancellor's  Prize  for  English  verse  twice,  and  (though  not 
without  some  obstacle,  from  his  dislike  to  mathematics)  a  high 
degree  and  a  Fellowship.  He  had  been  born  to  affluence,  but  his 
father  was  unlucky,  and  Macaulay  had  at  first  to  look  mainly  to  his 
Fellowship  for  actual,  and  to  the  Bar  for  future,   support.     He  had, 


CHAP.  IV  THE   LAST   GEORGIAN   PROSE  713 

however,  begun  literature  early,  contributing,  with  Praed  and  others, 
to  Knight's  Quarterly  Magazine.  At  about  the  age  of  five-and- 
twenty  he  caught  the  attention  of  Jeffrey  by  his  famous  "  Milton " 
Essay  and  according  to  the  tradition  then  still  prevailing  was 
eagerly  welcomed  by  the  Whigs,  not  merely  as  a  useful  literary  hand, 
but  as  a  political  candidate  of  promise.  He  was  put  into  the  pocket 
borough  of  Calne,  championed  the  Reform  Bill,  and  might  probably 
have  had  office  at  home ;  but  being  both  poor  and  prudent,  he  pre- 
ferred to  lay  a  more  solid  foundation  for  his  career  by  accepting 
the  post  of  legal  member  of  the  Indian  Council,  which  gave  him  a 
chance  of  large  savings.  He  remained  abroad  about  five  years, 
and  during  that  time  made  himself  independent.  On  his  return 
he  became  member  for  Edinburgh,  and  shortly  after  Secretary  for 
War,  while  later  he  was  Paymaster-General.  He  lost  his  seat  for 
a  time,  but  recovered  it  in  1852,  became  Lord  Macaulay  of  Roth- 
well  in  1857,  and  died  of  heart  disease  at  the  end  of  1859,  on  28th 
December. 

His  verse,  which  is  very  noteworthy,  if  not  absolutely  of  the  first 
class,  will  be  noticed  in  the  next  chapter;  his  essays,  speeches, 
and  History  of  England  concern  us  here.  All  this  prose  work  is 
permeated  by  a  not  very  complex,  but  extremely  interesting,  im- 
portant, and  distinct  idiosyncrasy  of  character  in  spirit  and  in  form. 
Macaulay "s  thought  and  his  style  were  even  more  intimately  con- 
nected than  is  usual.  The  former  only  concerns  us  indirectly,  and 
in  so  far  as  it  helps  to  explain  the  latter.  Macaulay  was  the  very 
incarnation  of  the  prevailing  character  of  Englishmen  between 
Waterloo  and  the  Indian  Mutiny  —  a  hater  of  abstract  principles, 
transcendentalism,  the  vaguer  forms  of  poetry,  ceremonial  and  tradi- 
tional religion ;  a  Whig-Liberal,  less  on  any  coherent  theory  than 
from  a  belief  that  the  Whig-Liberal  predominance  during  the 
eighteenth  century  had  made  England  great,  and  kept  her  at  once 
from  the  excesses  of  absolutism  and  of  republics ;  clear  and  trenchant 
but  extremely  narrow  in  thought ;  contemptuous  of  all  things  and 
periods,  such  as  the  Middle  Ages  and  even  the  Renaissance,  which 
he  had  not  taken  the  trouble  to  understand ;  sure  that  all  things 
worth  understanding  could  be  understood  easily;  incapable  of  admit- 
ting anything  but  downright  estimates  of  character;  an  uncom- 
promising jjartisan,  and  strongly  tainted  by  that  vice  of  the  practical 
politican  which  makes  him  a  little  unscrupulous  as  to  the  means  by 
which  his  party  wins  ;  not  primarily  interested  in  literature  as  litera- 
ture, but  cultivated  enougli  to  be  enthusiastic  about  such  things  as 
appealed  to  him  ;  compensating  his  liberalism  in  politics  by  a  rather 
obstinate  conservatism  in  style,  and  even  to  some  extent  in  i)hilos- 
ophy ;  a  little  exposed     to  the   charge    of    shallowness,  and   sharply 


714  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

limited  in  almost  every  direction ;  healthy  but  imperfectly  developed  ; 
acute  but  incapable  of  comprehending  the  intangible. 

In  his  essays,  literary  and  political,  and  in  the  enormously  pro- 
portioned history  ^  which,  intended  to  cover  the  period  from  the 
Exclusion  Bill  to  a  point  not  clearly  signified,  but  apparently  as  late 
as  the  French  Revolution,  did  not  actually  reach  in  its  four  large 
volumes  the  close  of  William's  reign,  this  spirit  finds  its  expression 
with  a  rare  fidelity.  He  is  not  a  consummate  literary  critic,  for,  though 
he  liked  almost  all  the  best  things  from  Shakespeare  to  Shelley,  it  was 
never  for  their  actually  literary  characteristics  that  he  liked  them. 
But  he  has  a  wonderful  power  of  representing  historical  events  of  the 
most  complex  kind ;  and,  subject  to  his  own  limitations,  he  can  grasp 
and  present  a  man  nearly  as  well  as  a  scene.  No  one  before  him 
had  so  well  applied  to  history  the  combined  forensic  and  debating 
gifts  of  putting  a  case  intelligibly  to  the  hearer  in  the  way  in  which 
you  wish  him  to  decide  it ;  and  it  is  fair  to  say  that  no  one  had 
given  more  untiring  labour,  or  used  his  labour  more  felicitously,  in 
mastering  all  details  of  place,  time,  and  circumstance.  And  the 
mere  style,  learnt  partly  from  Hazlitt,  partly  from  Hallam,  and  with 
a  little  of  Gibbon  in  it,  in  which  Macaulay  conveyed  his  meaning, 
was  again  absolutely  faithful  to  his  mode  of  thought.  It  was  arranged 
with  but  few  appliances  except  the  consecrated  antithetic  balance,  was 
"  classical "  in  diction,  and  only  ornamented  as  far  as  the  vocabulary 
goes  by  a  very  liberal  use  of  proper  names,  slightly  fatiguing  by  its 
"  snip-snap,"  as  Brougham's  sharp-sighted  jealousy  called  it,  but 
perfectly  clear.  On  Coleridge's  certainly  inadequate  principle  that  the 
whole  virtue  of  style  is  to  convey  the  author's  meaning,  no  style  can 
rank  much  higher.  Suggestion  it  has  none :  it  cannot,  in  the  subtle 
way  which  the  greater  styles  use,  supply  keys  to  unlock  and  power  to 
set  working,  in  the  reader's  mind,  chambers  of  machinery  supplemental 
to  the  author's  own.  But  what  Macaulay  meant  the  reader  under- 
stands at  once  and  to  the  very  full ;  he  feels  with  him  or  revolts  against 
him  with  an  instant  response ;  there  is  not  a  foot-pound  of  effort  lost, 
not  a  stroke  thrown  away.  And  the  general  public,  which  was 
mainly  in  tune  with  him,  answered  by  buying  Macaulay  as  no  his- 
torian had  been  bought  before  or  has  been  bought  since,  and  by 
making  him,  as  essayist  and  historian  together,  the  most  popular  and 
widely  read  prose  author  of  England  who  has  written  other  things 
than  prose  fiction. 

iThe  Essays,  all  contributed  to  the  Edinburgh,  were  collectively  published  in 
1843 ;  vols.  i.  and  ii.  of  the  History  appeared  in  1848,  vols.  iii.  and  iv.  in  1855. 
Some  speeches,  biographies  from  the  Encyclop(Bdia  Britannica,  etc.,  have  to  be 
added. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  MINOR   POETS   OF    1800-183O 

Rogers  —  Leigh  Hunt  and  Hogg  —  A  group  of  minors  —  Elliott,  Mrs.  Hemans,  and 
"  L.  E.  L."  —  Hood  —  Praed  —  Macaulay — Hawker  and  Barnes  —  Hartley 
Coleridge  —  Sir  H.  Taylor  —  Home  —  Darley  —  Beddoes 

It  has  seemed  worth  -while  to  deal  separately  with  the  minor  poets  of 
the  Romantic  movement,  both  in  consequence  of  the  great  length  of  the 
first  chapter  of  this  Book,  and  because  some  of  them  at  least  form  a 
well-separated  group  of  transition  between  the  great  school  of  the  first 
quarter  of  the  century  and  the  Victorians  proper.  Of  these  were  a 
few  who  almost  deserve  to  have  been  mentioned  earlier,  and  at  their 
head  may  perhaps  be  placed  the  long  overrated  name  of 
Samuel  Rogers  ( 1765-185 5).  Had  Rogers  been  a  poor 
man  of  letters,  his  poetical  claims  would  have  received  only  the 
slightest  attention.  His  first  verse  appeared  in  1786,  and  showed 
absolutely  nothing  of  the  "  false  dawn  "  of  that  period  ;  his  Pleasures 
of  Memory,  still  quite  antique,  in  1792;  and  he  followed  these  up 
at  long  and  easy  intervals  with  others,  the  chief  of  which  is  Italy 
(1822).  Rogers  was  a  rich  man,  he  was  hospitably  given,  and  a 
great  ''lioniser,"  and  whether  he  was  or  was  not  as  unamiable  as 
he  has  been  so^ietinies  represented,  he  could  and  did  use  his  tongue 
most  formidably.  In  his  later  years,  too,  he  became  an  interesting 
link,  or  rather  bridge,  covering  one  whole  literary  generation,  and  con- 
necting its  forerunner  and  follower.  Moreover,  he  had  just  enough 
of  romantic  interest  to  vary  and  freshen  his  subjects.  But  there  was 
none  of  the  new  music  in  him,  little  of  the  new  pictorial  power,  and 
absolutely  nothing  of  the  new  spirit. 

Classification  among    minor  poets  would    perhaps  have  been   not 
much  less  disagreeable  to  the  apparent   nonchalance  of  Leigh   Hunt 
(1784-1859)   than  to   the   uneasy   vanity  of  James  Hogg 
(1770-1835).  and  probably  the  admirers  of  both  will  resent      '^Hogg.'^" 
it  for  them.     Yet  on  general    and  comparative   grounds, 
it  is  inevitable,  and   there  are  even  major  poets  than  either  in  this 

715 


7i6  THE  TRIUMPH   OF  ROMANCE  book  X 

very  chapter.  Both  have  been  mentioned  before,  more  particu- 
larly Hunt.  His  only  poem  of  any  size  is  the  Story  of  Rimini, 
written  during  his  prison  sojourn  in  1812  and  published  after  his 
liberation  in  18 16.  His  pervading  faults  are  obvious  in  it,  and 
served  as  a  main,  if  not  an  entire,  justification  for  the  violent  attacks 
of  the  Tory  critics  on  his  taste  and  morals.  But  he  had,  from  his 
study  of  seventeenth-century  poets  of  the  school  that  began  with 
Browne  and  ended  with  Chamberlayne,  revived  enjambetnent,  and  with 
it  a  good  deal  of  their  florid  ornament  and  narrative  ease,  so  that 
he  set  on  a  promising  path  poets  so  much  greater  than  himself  as 
Keats  and  Shelley.  And  in  some  of  his  smaller  pieces,  scattered 
over  different  books  and  long  ranges  of  time,  he  has  enriched  the 
anthologies  with  pleasant  and  occasionally  excellent  things  in  sonnet 
and  snatch,  in  rondeau  and  romance.  But  though  he  is  credited  with 
some  half-score  volumes  of  verse,  from  the  early  (and  worthless) 
Juvenilia  to  the  Sto?'ies  in  Verse  published  in  1855,  but  four  years 
before  his  death,  the  total  does  not  make  a  large  volume,  and  the 
really  valuable  things  go  in  an  extremely  small  one. 

Hogg  (whose  nom  de guerre  of  "the  Ettrick  Shepherd  "  was  justi- 
fied, for  he  was  first  a  shepherd  and  then  a  sheep  farmer  during  the 
whole  of  his  life)  was,  in  so  far  as  his  shorter  life  allowed,  equally 
persistent  and  much  more  voluminous.  Besides  the  extensive  pro.se 
work  already  referred  to,  he  published  scattered  verse  early.  The 
Mountain  Bard  in  1803,  The  Forest  Minstrel  in  18 10,  The  Queen'' s 
Wake  in  1813,  and  later  Mador  of  the  Moor,  The  Pilgrims  of  the 
Suti,  The  Border  Garland,  besides  some  of  his  best  things  foisted  as 
Jacobite  ballads,  songs  in  Blackwood,  etc.  His  very  best  pieces  — 
"Kilmeny,"  "The  Boy's  Song,"  "Donald  MacGillavry,"  and  a  few 
more  —  would,  if  they  were  preserved  alone,  almost  justify  his  own  idea 
of  himself  as  "King  of  the  Mountain  and  Fairy  School  of  poetry," 
though  not  his  other  idea,  that  he  was  master  of  poetry  on  the  great 
narrative  scale.  Take  these  comparatively  few  things  out,  and  the 
large  remainder  of  his  work  is  often  scarcely  third-rate,  and  some- 
times quite  beneath  criticism. 

But  we  must  become  briefer.  The  Montgomeries,  James  (1771- 
1854)  and  Robert  (1807-1855),  belong  to  this  group.  James  was 
the  better  poet ;  but  it  is  questionable  whether  Macaulay's  famous 
martyrdom  of  Robert  will  not  give  him  the  longer  life 
ofmbors.  ^s  ^  name.  Bernard  Barton  (i 784-1 849)  was  an  amia- 
ble and  fairly  long-lived  Quaker  versifier,  Henry  Kirke 
White  ( 1 785-1 806)  an  amiable  and  very  short-lived  Anglican  poet- 
aster. Tannahill  (1774-1810),  Cunningham  (1785-1842),  Motherwell 
(1797-1835),  Tennant  (1784-1848),  Thom  (1798-1848),  D.  M.  Moir, 
the  "Delta"  of  Blackwood  (1788-1851),  were  Scotch  poets  of  varying 


CHAP.  V  THE   MINOR   POETS  OF   1800-1830  717 

excellence ;  the  songs  of  Cunningham  and  of  Motherwell  put  them 
a  good  deal  above  the  others,  though  "  Delta "  has  fervent  admirers 
both  in  prose  and  verse.  Two  farmer  poets,  Robert  Bloomfield 
(1766- 1 823)  and  John  Clare  (1793- 1864),  rank  as  such  in  English 
literary  history.  Clare,  like  Christopher  Smart,  never  acquired  his 
full  poetic  power  till  madness  seized  him  —  as  it  had  also  seized 
Bloomfield,  though  with  no  such  compensation.  The  Farvier's 
Boy  of  the  latter  is  nothing  but  a  not  unpleasing  versification  of 
not  uninteresting  matter.  Some  pieces  of  Clare's  (the  best  of 
which  will  be  found  in  the  second  series  of  Mr.  Palgrave's  Golden 
Treasury)  are  poems.  Barry  Cornwall  (i 790-1 874),  whose  real 
name  was  Bryan  Waller  Procter,  was  the  friend  of  many  good 
men  but  not  a  very  good  poet ;  no  better,  perhaps,  than  the  much 
laughed  at  Thomas  Haynes  Bayly  (1797-1839).  But  the  critical 
ability  which  can  distinguish  between  "The  sea,  the  sea,"  and 
"  Oh  no,  we  never  mention  her "  is  difficult  to  attain,  and  perhaps 
debilitating  when  acquired.  Henry  Cary  (1772-1844),  the  translator 
of  Dante;  Reginald  Heber  (1783-1826),  Bishop  of  Calcutta,  and 
author  of  one  of  the  very  best  of  university  prize  poems  and  more 
than  one  of  the  best  modern  hymns;  Sir  Aubrey  De  Vere  (1788- 
1846),  a  poet  and  the  father  of  poets  —  are  names  which  must  not 
even  here  be  entirely  passed  over ;  but  Ebenezer  Elliott  and  Felicia 
Hemans  must  delay  us  a  very  little  longer. 

Elliott  (1781-1849)  was  a  Yorkshireman,  and  by  no  means  an 
unprosperous  one ;  but  he  early  espoused  the  extreme  views  of  social, 
economical,  and  political  matters  which  infected  the  working  classes 
between  Waterloo  and  the  middle  of  the  century.  As  Elliott, 
might  be  expected,  he  is  not  happy  in  the  poems  with  a  '^^J?;.^^"?^"^,', 
purpose,  some  of  which  gained  him  the  name  of  the 
"Anti-Corn-Law  Rhymer,"  though  sometimes  even  here,  especially 
In  the  "  Battle  Song,"  his  native  vigour  gets  the  better  of  his  acquired 
unreason.  He  began  to  write  before  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  lived  to  see  the  triumph  of  Free  Trade.  Elliott's  real 
strength,  except  in  a  very  few  things  like  the  piece  just  named,  where 
his  poetry  succeeds  in  aI)sorbing  and  transforming  his  crotchet,  is  as  a 
poet  of  nature,  in  which  character  he  has  done  some  things  not  much 
less  than  excellent.  Mrs.  Hemans  (1793-1835)  was  named,  before 
her  apparently  unhappy  married  life,  Felicia  Dorothea  Browne,  arid 
was  a  native  of  Liverpool.  She  was  scarcely  past  forty  when  she 
died,  and  had  then  written  a  great  quantity  of  fluent  and  not 
unmelodious  ver.se  of  a  .strongly  sentimental  kind.  It  is  fair  ta 
say  that  the  latest  m  date  is  the  best.  Slic  was  a  little  outlived  by 
her  junior  *•  L.  E.  L." — Letitia  Elizabctli  LandDU  (1802-1H38),  who 
to    a    prctl}     tur;i    tor    wise    atldcd    great    personal    charm    and     the 


7i8  THE  TRIUMPH  OF  ROMANCE  book  x 

mystery  of  an  unhappy  end,  for  she  died,  poisoned  by  mistake  or 
otherwise,  at  Cape  Coast  Castle,  where  the  husband  whom  she  had  just 
married  was  Governor. 

Thomas  Hood  was  bo^n  in  the  heart  of  the  city  of  London  about 
1798-99,  the  son  of  a  bookseller.  His  schooling  was  irregular, 
and  his  early  employments  varied,  owing  to  his  father's  ill  success 
in  business,  while  his  health  was  very  weak.  The  con- 
temporary development  of  the  press,  however,  was  in 
time  to  provide  him  with  his  proper  work,  though  not  to  give  him 
the  ample  rewards  for  it  which  he  would  have  received  later.  He 
became  sub-editor  of  the  London  Magazine,  and  later  edited  others. 
But  he  was  very  unlucky  in  money  matters,  and  the  fault  of  others 
drove  him  to  take  refuge  abroad,  though  he  honourably  met  his 
creditors  as  soon  and  as  fully  as  he  could.  Consumption  carried  him 
off  in  1845,  his  ill-health  and  his  ill-luck  having  been  borne  with  an 
admirable  gaiety  which  never  degenerated  into  bravado.  He  was 
pensioned,  but  only  just  before  his  death. 

A  good  deal  of  Hood's  work  is  mere  hack  labour- — jokes  pumped 
up  for  a  livelihood  —  and  of  his  longer  attempts,  though  C/p  the  Rhine 
is  charming,  Tilney  Hall  is  not  worth  much.  His  fame  rests  upon 
about  two  volumesful  of  verse  divided  in  a  sharp,  and  to  some  it 
would  seem  disturbing,  manner  between  the  serious  and  the  comical. 
From  the  very  first  the  merit  of  the  serious  division  has  been 
recognised  by  the  best  judges,  though  ignored  to  too  great  an  extent 
by  the  public ;  and  it  seems  that  the  efforts  of  the  former  have  at 
last  some  chance  of  success.  Hood  had  real  disadvantages  of 
education,  and  still  worse  ones  of  circumstance ;  but  to  balance  them, 
if  not  entirely  to  overcome  them,  he  had  two  great  gifts.  One  was 
that  of  genuine  song-writing,  whereby  he  produced  too  few  but 
exquisite  things,  the  poetry  of  the  style  in  which  Procter  and  Bayly 
were  poetasters  —  ''Fair  Ines,"  "It  was  the  time  of  Roses,"  "Fare- 
well life,  my  senses  swim,"  and  others.  The  other  was  of  a  meditative 
and  slightly  "  eerie  "  strain,  best  exemplified  in  The  Plea  of  the 
Midsumtner  Fairies  and  The  Haufited  House,  but  manifested  in 
many  other  pieces.  This  latter  gift,  if  fed  by  scholarship  and  fostered 
by  leisure,  might  have  done  great  things ;  as  it  was  it  had  hardly  a 
chance.  Nor  ought  it  to  be  forgotten  that  Hood  did  do  great  things 
in  a  vein  between  pathos  and  humour,  and  that  he  succeeded  in 
reaching  popularity  without  forfeiting  critical  approval  in  the  famous 
Song  of  the  Shirt  and  Bridge  of  Sighs,  both  written  so  late  in  his  career 
that  he  was  evidently  not  in  the  least  "written  out." 

Winthrop  Mackworth  Praed  was  a  much  more  fortunate  man  than 
Hood,  with  gifts  similar  in  many  ways,  perhaps  a  little  thinner,  but 
touched  by  fortune  and  art  to  even  finer  uses  here  and  there.     He 


CHAP.  V  THE   MINOR   POETS   OF    1800-1830  719 

was  born  in  1802,  the  son  of  Serjeant  Mackworth,  who  took  the 
name  of  Praed,  was  sent  to  Eton  and  thence  to  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, entered  Parliament  rather  early  and  continued  in 
it  for  the  best  part  of  a  decade,  till  his  death  in  1839. 
He  had  already  his  foot  on  the  lower  steps  of  office,  and  was  thought 
likely,  if  not  certain,  to  attain  the  higher  had  he  lived.  Praed's 
published  work,  like  Hood's,  contains  a  great  deal  of  inferior  matter, 
which  he  himself  certainly  would  never  have  collected.  The  more 
valuable  part  consists  of  several  verse-tales  of  an  ironic-romantic 
character,  very  original  and  attractive,  if  not  quite  consummate ;  of 
one  or  two  serious  pieces,  such  as  ^"  Arminius "  and  "  My  Pretty 
Josephine."  from  which  possibilities  may  be  augured ;  of  a  splendid 
thing  in  the  grim-grotesque  style,  "  The  Red  Fisherman,"  better  than 
any  similar  piece  of  Hood's  ;  and  above  all,  of  a  handful  of  examples 
of  the  kind  called  ''verse  of  society,"  which  are  far  the  most  charm- 
ing of  their  kind  in  English,  or  rather  are  unique.  These  things, 
"The  Season,"  "The  Letter  of  Advice,"  "The  Vicar,"  "A  Letter 
from  Teignmouth,"  and  others,  have  an  indescribable  grace  and 
charm. 

The  verse  of  Praed's  college  friend  and  rival  Macaulay  has  been 
the  occasion  of  curious  dissent,  not  merely  between  critics  and 
readers,  but  between  one  school  of  critics  and  another.  It  is  not 
large  in  bulk,  consisting  of  a  few  early  pieces,  and  others 
written  at  different  times,  and  of  the  well-known  Lays  of 
Ancient  Rome,  published  in  1842.  At  first,  and  for  years  afterwards, 
these  latter  were  favourably  received  both  by  critics  and  others.  But 
it  pleased  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  to  whom  Macaulay  was  the  embodi- 
ment of  his  enemy  the  Philistine,  and  who  did  not  like  the  ballad 
metre  for  ancient  themes,  to  speak  with  the  utmost  contempt  of  them, 
and  generation  after  generation  of  critics  has  echoed  this  contempt. 
Now,  the  poetry  of  Macaulay  is  not  great:  it  is  not  the  poetry 
of  Tennyson  or  of  Browning  at  its  date ;  it  has  neither  exquisiteness 
of  artistic  suggestion  nor  volume  and  range  of  poetical  thouglit.  But 
it  is  poetry  —  poetry  for  the  million  perhaps,  except  in  a  very  few 
pieces,  but  not  the  less  poetry ;  and  those  who  do  not  recognise  the 
poetic  quality  in  it  show  that  their  poetical  thermometer  is  deficient  in 
delicacy  and  range. 

Barnes    and    Hawker,    two    West-country   clergymen,    have    had 
strong   partisans,  in  each    case  not    numerous,  but   respectable.     The 
claims  of  Robert  Stephen  Hawker  (1803-1875),  a  man  of  somewhat 
eccentric  character,  who  retired  early  to  the  remote  cure 
of  Morwenstow,  on  the   Devonshire    border  of  Cornwall,   and  Barnes, 
held  it   for  nearly  half  a  century,  and  in  articiilo  mortis 
was  received   into  the  Roman  Church,  arre  the  safer  of  the  two  on 


720  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

general  literary  grounds.  His  longest  and  most  ambitious  poem, 
The  Quest  of  the  Sangreal,  perhaps  just  misses  complete  success,  and 
is  distinguished  by  that  stately  but  somewhat  lifeless  character  which  is 
noticeable  in  more  than  one  or  two  poets  of  this  group.  He  is  most 
widely  known  by  an  early  and  very  clever  pastiche  in  ballad,  "The 
Song  of  the  Western  Men,"  which  was  taken  even  by  good  judges  as 
an  original.  His  best  things,  however,  are  short,  and  partly  local, 
partly  ecclesiastical,  in  inspiration  —  '•  Queen  Gwennyvar's  Round," 
"The  Bells  of  Bottreaux,"  "Morwenna  Statio,"  and  not  a  few  others. 
Hawker  had  undoubtedly  much  and  true  poetry  in  him,  but  the  hour 
had  not  come  at  his  birth. 

Of  William  Barnes  (i  800-1 886)  one  must  speak  more  diffidently, 
for  on  the  one  hand  it  is  impossible  to  take  poets  on  trust,  and  on 
the  other  unsafe  to  provoke  his  not  very  numerous  but  enthusiastic 
admirers.  He  wrote  wholly  in  Dorset  dialect,  and  chiefly  on  gentle, 
domestic,  and  pastoral  themes,  two  features  which  attract  many, 
revolt  some,  and  perhaps  count  little  one  way  or  other  with  the  critic. 
We  must  not  rule  a  man  out  because  he  writes  "  smilen  feace "  for 
"  smiling  face " ;  but  in  those  who  are  jaded  with  "  smiling  face " 
there  is  perhaps  a  dangerous  readiness  to  take  "  smilen  feace "  as 
necessarily  poetry. 

The  foiled  and  marred  genius  of  Hartley  Coleridge    (1796- 1849) 

tried  verse  as  well  as  prose,  and   has  left  its  best  memorials  in  the 

sonnet.     Few   better   things    have   been  written   than   the   sonnet   to 

Shakespeare,  ''  The  soul  of  man  is  larger  than  the  sky " 

Coleridge      (which  preceded,  and  perhaps  inspired,  the  better  known 

one   of  Matthew  Arnold),  and   that   on   his   own  wasted 

life —  "  When  I  survey  the  course  that  I  have  run  "  —  where  the  peculiar 

clangorous  rise  of  strain  (which   is  found  in  Shakespeare's  own  and 

the    other   best   Elizabethan  examples,  and    which   seems   to   belong 

specially  to  the  Shakespearian  as  opposed   to  the  Petrarchian  form) 

is  very  noticeable. 

Sir  Henry  Taylor  was  a  very  popular  poet  with  thoughtful  lovers 
of  poetry  in  the  second  quarter  of  the  century,  and  Philip  Van  Arte- 
velde  (published  in  1834)  at  least  keeps  a  high  place  by  virtue  of 
-.  ^,  ^    .      traditional  esteem,  if  not  exactly  of  familiar  acquaintance. 

air  H.Taylor.   ,  ,  ,  ,.i       ,,  i  •  rv  i  i.        i 

Its  author  was  born,  like  Macaulay,  in  1800,  but  lived 
till  1888,  being  for  the  greater  part  of  his  life  a  Government  servant. 
He  began,  with  Isaac  Comneniis,  before  Tennyson  had  published  any- 
thing except  Poems  by  Two  Brothers,  and  continued  with  other  things 
till  the  St.  Clemenfs  Eve  of  1862;  but  by  tha,t  time  his  fashion  of 
poetry  was  hesterna  rosa.  Taylor's  blank  verse,  besides  serving 
frequently  as  the  vehicle  of  an  excellent  seriousness,  is  dignified  in 
itself  and  sufficiently  varied  for  his  purpose,  but  it  was  not  very  well 


CHAP.v  THE  MINOR   POETS   OF   1800-1830  721 

suited  for  any   kind   of   poetry   except   the   dramatic  ^   and   didactic. 
His  lyric  work,  not  abundant  nor  very  varied,  is  good. 

Taylor,  though  hardly  a  dramatist,  was  mainly  a  dramatic  poet, 
and  the  dramatic  bent  is  curiously  illustrated  in  most  of  the  poets  of 
this  transition,  especially  in  Richard  Hengist  Home,  George  Darley, 
and  Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes.  Home,  who  was  born 
three  years  later  than  Sir  Henry  Taylor,  and  died  two 
years  earlier,  was  a  copious  and  miscellaneous  writer,  and  his  most 
famous  and  best  thing,  Orion,  a  poem  of  most  stately  versification, 
and  very  original  in  thought,  but  deficient  in  action,  is  an  epic  —  a 
"  farthing  epic,"  for  its  eccentric  author  published  it  at  that  price  — 
not  a  tragedy.  But  Cosmo  de  Medici  and  the  Death  of  Marlowe  take 
the  dramatic  form,  though,  like  almost  all  the  plays  of  this  period, 
they  are  literature  without  acting  qualities. 

George  Darley,  born  in  the  same  year  with  Keats,  was  Irish,  and 
of  Dublin  University,  wrote  on  the  London,  and  in  later  life  was 
chiefly  a  critic.  He  was  a  good  song-writer,  in  the  same  class  with 
Hood,  and  his  "•  I've  been  roaming"  was  once  exceed- 
ingly popular ;  but  his  principal  work  is  to  be  found  in  "^  ^' 
Sylvia  (1827),  and  Nepenthe  (1839).  The  former  of  these  is  a  fairy 
play,  unequal,  full  of  superfluities  and  inequalities,  and  marred  by 
awkwardly  handled  comic  passages,  but  very  charming  in  parts. 
It  is  spun  of  delightful  lyrics,  of  octosyllabic  couplets  no  less  delight- 
ful, of  other  kinds  of  verse  less  uniformly  charming,  and  of  prose 
written  too  much  in  falsetto.  It  has,  after  many  years,  found  a 
reprinter  ^  and   modern  imitators,  who,  however,  have   not   equalled 

iThe  strange  divorce  between  literature  and  drama  which  has  marked  the 
nineteenth  century  seems  to  make  it  useless  to  devote  separate  notice  to  this 
branch.  The  dramatic  work  of  the  greater  men  is  best  noticed  with  their  poems. 
A  characteristic  example  of  the  lesser  is  Sir  Thomas  Noon  Taifourd  (1795-1854, 
a  judge,  a  friend  of  Lamb,  and  author  of  agreeable  Memorials  of  him),  whose 
half-famous  Ion  (1835)  possesses  a  sort  of  icy  beauty,  or  at  least  handsome- 
ness. The  chief  dramatists  of  George  IV.'s  and  William  IV. 's  reigns  were  James 
Sheridan  Knowles  (1784-1862)  and  the  first  Lord  Lytton.  Knowles  had  a  good 
practical  knowledge  of  the  stage,  and  Bulwer  was  wise  enough  to  accept  advice 
from  those  who  possessed  it,  so  that  in  acting  qualities  the  plays  of  both  excel 
those  of  most  English  play-writers  of  any  literary  pretensions  since  Sheridan.  But 
Knowles,  whose  best-remembered  things  are  Tke  Hunchback  ■axitX  The  Love  Chase, 
had  no  literary  genius,  and  not  a  very  strong  literary  talent,  so  that  his  works, 
useful  on  the  boards,  are  lumber  on  the  shelves.  Nor  does  the  undoubted  talent, 
the  at  least  not  peremptorily  to  be  denied  genius  of  Bulwer,  show  at  its  best  in 
his  plays.  The  Lady  of  Lyons,  Richelieu,  Money,  while  the  theatre  naturally  provoked 
an  exhibition  of  his  worst  faults,  floridness  of  expression  and  sentimentality. 

■■'London,  1892.  Nepenthe  has  also  been  republished,  but  not  uniformly 
(London,  1897),  and  a  privately  printed  edition  of  Poems  was  arranged  in  1890 
by  Canon  Livingstone.  The  Labours  of  Idleness  and  the  plays  musi  be  read  in 
the  originals. 

3* 


>jii  THE  TRIUMPH  OP^  ROMANCE  Book  x 

the  curious  attraction  of  its  tangled  brake  of  poetry.  Nepenthe,  a 
much  shorter  piece  and  not  dramatic,  is  in  two  cantos,  the  first  deal- 
ing with  Joy,  the  second  with  Melancholy,  and  was  intended  to  be 
completed  by  a  third  on  Contentment.  It  is  partly  in  octosyllables, 
partly  in  lyric  measures,  and  though  far  more  abstract  and  incoherent 
than  Sylvia,  has  the  same  lovely  snatches  of  poetry,  contrasted  with 
much  bombast  and  stutter.  The  apostrophe,  ''  Oh  blest  unfabled 
incense-tree ! "  and  some  other  things  are  worthy  of  anybody. 
Earlier,  Darley  had  published  in  1822  a  poem  called  The  Errors  of 
Ecstasie,  and  a  very  curious  prose-and-verse  medley.  The  Labours 
of  Idleness,  by  "Guy  Penseval"  (1826),  which  contains  in  its  last 
piece  the  germ  of  Sylvia.  Later,  he  published  two  plays,  Thotnas  a 
Becket  (1840)  and  Et  heist  an  (1841),  which  have  all  his  faults  and 
hardly  any  of  his  merits.  He  is,  on  the  whole,  strangely  premoni- 
tory of  many  of  the  poets  of  the  century,  both  the  "  Spasmodics  "  of 
its  middle  period  and  others  much  later;  but  few  of  those  who 
belong  to  his  class  have  equalled  his  best  things. 

The  same  attraction,  but  in  higher  degree  and  rarer  kind,  is  to 
be  found  in  Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes,  who  was  born  at  Clifton  in 
1803,  and  died  by  his  own  hand  in  1849  ^-t  Basle.  Beddoes,  who 
was  the  son  of  a  doctor  of  great  repute,  and  of  Maria 
Edgeworth's  sister  Anna,  went  to  Charterhouse  and  Pem- 
broke College,  Oxford,  but  spent  nearly  the  whole  of  his  manhood 
on  the  Continent,  where  he  had  gone  to  study  medicine.  He  was 
undoubtedly  mad  in  the  later  part  of  his  life,  and  perhaps  not  entirely 
sane  at  any  part  of  it ;  nor  did  his  mental  disturbance  take,  as  has 
often  been  the  case  with  men  of  letters,  an  agreeable  form.  But 
among  the  small  and  interesting  group  of  English  poets  whose  great 
wits  have  suffered  more  than  an  alliance  with  madness,  he  is  one  of 
the  most  remarkable.  Before  going  abroad  he  had  published  two  very 
small  volumes  of  verse,  The  Itnprovisatore  and  The  Bride''s  Tragedy, 
and  he  had  shown  a  great  interest  in  poetry,  clubbing  with  Procter 
and  others  to  publish  (or  guarantee  the  expenses  of  publishing) 
Shelley's  posthumous  work.  But  the  best  of  his  own  verse  was  post- 
humous (185 1),  and  it  has  been  reinforced  since  with  some  fragments 
and  with  Letters.'  His  chief  performance,  kept  in  hand  for  years 
and  never  fully  completed,  is  a  drama  called  Death''s  Jest  Book,  or 
The  FooVs  Tragedy,  in  which  he  takes  the  wildest  examples  of  the 
Elizabethan  period,  the  plays  of  Tourneur,  for  model  in  more  than  the 
title.  Composition  Beddoes  has  none :  his  larger  works  are  mere 
dreams,  and  mostly  bad  dreams,  with  but  the  thinnest  thread  of  even 
romantic   and   subjective  coherence,  with  a  total  disregard  of  prob- 

'^ Poems  (2  vols.  London,  1890),  Letters  (i  vol.  London,  1894),  both  edited  by 
Mr.  Gosse. 


CHAP.  V  THE   MINOR   POETS   OF    1800-1830  723 

ability  in  incident,  and  with  the  characters  looming  half-finished 
through  darkness  and  blood-tinged  mist.  But  they  contain  passages, 
especially  lyrical  passages,  of  the  most  exquisite  poetical  beauty,  and 
these  lyrics  are  joined  by  others  independently  composed.  "  Dream- 
Pedlary,"  "  The  Dirge  for  Wolfram,"  the  '•  Song  from  Torrismond," 
the  "  Song  on  the  Water,"  "  Love  in  Idleness,"  and  not  one  or  two 
but  many  others,  are  among  the  most  consummate  things  in  English. 
The  only  charge,  valid  as  a  charge,  brought  against  them  is  that 
they  are  not  original,  and  this  is  false  as  a  fact.  Beddoes  did  not 
copy  the  Elizabethan  dramatists,  he  continued  them  in  their  own 
spirit ;  and  it  may  be  questioned  whether,  though  we  have  since  had 
far  greater  poets  than  he  is,  we  have  ever  had  greater  poetry  than  his. 


INTERCHAPTER  X 

Those  who  have  followed  the  narrative  to  this  point  will  have  small 
difficulty  in  anticipating  the  summary  of  the  Book  just  concluded. 
Yet  it  is  of  the  first  importance  to  appreciate  exactly  what  happened 
at  the  beginning  of  the  period  which  it  covers,  for  this  is  the  last 
definite  turn  —  the  last  of  the  innumerable  revolutions  and  eddies  which 
constitute  the  history  of  English  literature.  Only  minor  changes 
have  taken  place  since.  Between  Johnson,  who  died  in  1784,  and 
Coleridge,  who  was  then  ten  years  old,  there  are  differences  of  species, 
almost  of  genus ;  between  Coleridge  and  Mr.  Swinburne,  who  was 
not  born  when  Coleridge  died,  there  are  only  the  differences  of  the 
individual,  and  those  of  a  certain  accumulated  experience  and  experi- 
ment in  the  same  paths.  From  time  to  time  bright  spirits,  intolerant 
of  the  traditional,  try  to  alter  the  bournes  of  time  and  space  in  these 
respects,  and  to 'make  out  that  the  Classical,  whatever  the  failings 
on  its  part,  was  always  in  its  heart  rather  Romantic,  and  that  the 
Romantic  has  always,  at  its  best,  been  just  a  little  Classical.  There 
is,  of  course,  a  certain  amount  of  truth  in  this :  everything  in  the 
universe  has  its  share  (sometimes  rather  a  small  one)  of  universal 
quality,  or  it  could  not  exist.  But  such  observations  are  only  of  use 
as  guards  against  a  too  wooden  and  matter-of-fact  classification ; 
the  great  general  differences  of  the  periods  remain,  and  can  never  be 
removed  in  imagination  without  loss  and  confusion. 

What  then  is  this  difference  between  "  Classical  "  and  "Romantic"  ? 
What  was  it  that  for  the  time  succumbed,  and  what  was  it  that  for  the 
time  prevailed,  in  the  battle,  of  which  the  first  artillery  salvo  was  the 
Lyrical  Ballads?  The  question  is  one  still  unsettled,  one  never  likely 
to  be  settled  completely.  Yet,  amid  endless  individual  differences, 
there  is  perhaps  much  more  general  agreement  than  might  be  sup- 
posed. In  the  wide  sense  the  debate  between  Classical  and  Romantic 
concerns  the  opposite  sides  taken  on  certain  theses,  of  which  the  more 
important  are  —  that  poetry  depends  upon  the  subject;  that  every 
kind  of  poetry  has  a  prescribed  or  prescribable  form,  outside  which 
even  beauties,  as  La  Harpe  said  of  the  beauties  of  Dante  and  Milton, 

724 


BOOKX  INTERCHAPTER   X  725 

are  "  monstrous "  ;  that  convention,  generalisation,  abstention  as 
much  as  possible  from  the  fantastic,  the  individual,  the  abnormal  are 
the  best  principles  of  literature ;  that  definiteness,  proportion,  exact 
solution  of  the  problem  proposed,  are  preferable  to  the  suggestive, 
the  vague,  the  incomplete,  or  the  irregularly  beautiful. 

And  the  English  eighteenth  century,  with  the  later  part  of  the 
seventeenth,  had,  besides  taking  very  definite  position  on  the  Classical 
side  in  regard  to  these  questions,  added  certain  purely  arbitrary  and 
more  or  less  accidental  restrictions  of  its  own.  It  had  decided  that, 
while  human  nature  was  to  be  attended  to,  in  at  least  a  good  many  of 
its  aspects,  with  the  most  sedulous  care,  external  nature  was  to  be  a 
little  neglected.  It  had  by  practice  always,  and  sometimes  by 
precept,  made  curious  and  still  more  arbitrary  limitations  in  such 
admittedly  unessential  points  as  metre,  st3'le,  literary  forms  and 
kinds.  It  had,  again  without  any  necessary  or  logical  connection, 
decided  that  very  nearly  all  non-dramatic  English  literature  before 
the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  might  be  neglected,  and  that 
the  dramatic  authors  of  this  neglected  time  were  a  set  of  inspired 
but  too  often  ill-behaved  babies.  Without  formally  pronouncing  any 
decree  on  the  subject,  it  had  shut  its  eyes  to  almost  all  foreign  modern 
literature  except  French  and  a  little  Italian,  and  had  studied  the  very 
classics  themselves  with  a  curious  eclecticism,  postponing  Greek  to 
Latin,  and  arranging  Latin  authors  themselves  according  to  its  own 
good  pleasure. 

The  operation  of  the  causes  detailed  piecemeal  in  Book  IX., 
beginning,  as  usual,  almost  as  early  as  the  Convention  itself,  gradually 
broke  it  up;  and  though  it  would  be  extremely  difficult  to  prove  that 
even  one  of  the  great  writers  of  1 798-1 830  deliberately  planned  the 
change  all  round  —  though  Wordsworth,  who  certainly  did  plan  a 
change,  went  wrong  in  some  imjiortant  particulars  of  revolt,  and  even 
retained  some  of  the  most  dui)ious  points  of  the  old  creed  —  yet  the 
results  (which,  rather  than  the  efforts,  are  the  things  to  look  at) 
followed  the  lines  indicated  above.  The  immen.se  performance  of 
these  thirty  years  in  poetry  was  only  in  the  smallest  degree  deliberate, 
and  when  it  was  deliberate,  as  in  the  case  of  Wordsworth's  "silly 
.sooth,"  it  was  very  often  at  its  worst.  The  new  wine  shaped  the 
bottles,  when  it  did  not  burst  them,  by  its  own  fermentation.  Except 
in  .some  metrical  points  — the  chief  of  which  were  the  Christabel 
experiment  and  the  gradual,  though  by  no  means  universal,  disuse  of 
the  sharply  divided  couplet  —  very  little  of  the  poetic  change  began 
at  the  formal  end.  Tiie  accumulation  of  new  subjects — Media>val, 
Eastern,  and  what  not ;  the  crowd  of  new  models  —  German,  Old 
English,  Celtic,  true  or  spurious,  and  what  not  again  ;  above  all.  the 
diversity  of  new  talents,  broke  ground  in  every  possible  way  in  verse. 


726  THE  TRIUMPH   OF   ROMANCE  book  x 

As  far  as  "  orders  of  the  day  "  went,  the  only  order  of  importance, 
taken  for  granted  if  not  formally  pronounced,  was  that  you  might 
write  as  you  liked ;  that  it  was  not  necessary  to  imitate  anybody  in 
creation ;  that  in  criticism  what  pleased  yourself,  and  not  what 
Aristotle,  Horace,  Pope,  Johnson  had  laid  down,  was  to  be  the  rule. 
In  so  far  as  any  one  saying  of  any  one  person  is  the  motto  of  1798- 
1830,  it  is  the  saying  of  Blake,  poet  and  painter,  that  in  painting, 
and  no  doubt  in  poetry  too,  "every  man  is  a  connoisseur  who  has 
not  been  connoisseured  out  of  his  senses." 

In  point  of  genius  the  period  is  a  period  of  poetry ;  in  point  of 
mere  form  the  remarkable  change  in  it  concerns  not  poetry  but  prose. 
It  is  possible  that  since  the  death  of  Milton  there  had  never  been 
alive  in  England  a  poet  of  the  absolutely  first  rank ;  but  there  had 
been  many  writers  who  might  in  prose  have  attained  such  rank  if  it 
had  not  been  for  the  traditions  of  prose-writing.  Prose  even  more 
than  verse  had  expiated  the  short  excesses  of  15 80- 1660  by  a  period, 
nearly  twice  as  long,  of  sober  correctness,  and  it  was  now  to  have  its 
fling,  its  series  of  flings,  for  nearly  a  hundred  years  from  Landor  and 
Wilson  to  Stevenson  and  Pater. 

But  the  rush  of  new  or  altered  kinds  is  almost  as  noticeable  as 
the  plethora  of  genius  and  the  changes  of  literary  etiquette.  In 
poetry  the  land,  from  possessing  a  few  sober  rills,  becomes  a  land  of 
springs  and  waters ;  the  novel,  late  found,  develops  enormously ;  the 
essay  almost  outstrips  it  in  development ;  history  fills  whatever  gap 
may  be  caused  by  the  dwindling  of  philosophy  and  theology  as 
contributors  to  literature ;  fresh  varieties  arise  every  decade,  almost 
every  year.  Undoubtedly  there  is  something  of  Babel  in  all  this ; 
the  time,  at  any  rate  to  living  eyes,  admits  of  no  clear  description;  its 
characteristics,  if  they  exist  distinctly,  have  not  yet  emerged  like  those 
of  earlier  ages.  But  we  know  that  it  was  an  age  of  very  great 
literature,  and  that  it  was  not  destined  to  be  ill  succeeded. 


BOOK    XI 


VICTORIAN   LITERATURE 
CHAPTER   I 

TENNYSON   AND   BROWNING 

Tennyson:  his  early  work  and  its  character — The  volumes  of  1842  —  His  later 
life  and  works —  The  Princess  —  hi  Metnoriam  —  Maud  —  The  Idylls  of  the 
King,  etc.  —  Robert  Browning —  Periods  of  his  work  —  His  favourite  method  — 
His  real  poetical  appeal  —  Edward  FitzGerald  —  Elizabeth   Barrett  Browning 

There  is  no  contrast  of  contemporaries  in  English  Literature,  not 
even  the  half-imaginary  one  between  Shakespeare  and  Ben  Jonson, 
so  curious  as  that  which  for  some  two-thirds  of  the  nineteenth 
century  is  provided  by  the  poetry  of  Alfred  Tennyson  and  that  of 
Robert  Browning.  As  in  the  former  case,  the  men  were  friends ;  as  in 
that,  their  methods  were  at  once  curiously  unlike  and  curiously  com- 
plementary. 

Tennyson,  the  third  son  of  a  large  family,  the  father  of  which,  Dr. 
George  Tennyson,  was,  though  disinherited,  the  real  head  of  an  old 
house,  was  horn  at  his  father's  living  of  Somersby  on  the  Lincolnshire 
Wolds  in  180Q.     His  elder  brothers,  Frederick  and  Charles,^  „  , . 

^  lennyson:   his 

were    also    poetically   given,   and    all    three    collaborated  early  work  and 
in  the  so-called  Poems  by  Two  Brothers  w  hich  appeared    "^  "^  aracter. 
in  1826.     Alfred  was  educated  at  tlie  Grammar  School  of  Louth,  and 
then   went   to   Trinity    College,    Cambridge,    where    he    obtained    the 

1  Frederick,  the  eldest,  who  was  born  in  1807  and  lived  till  1898,  published 
a  volume  of  verse  much  above  the  averaije,  Days  and  Hours,  in  1854,  and  two 
or  three  more  in  the  last  decade  of  his  long  life.  Charles,  who  was  born  in  1808, 
took  the  name  of  Turner,  and  died  in  1879,  was  all  but  a  very  great  master  of 
the  sonnet,  and  a  large  collection  of  his  work  in  this  kind  appeared  posthumously 
in  1880. 

727 


728  VICTORIAN    LITERATURE  book  xi 

Chancellor's  Prize  for  a  poem  which  was  altered  in  subject  from  the 
Battle  of  Armageddon  to  Timbuctoo.  In  1830  he  published  a 
volume  of  Poems,  of  which  all  that  he  chose  to  save  appear,  with 
others,  in  the  later  editions  as  Juvenilia.  These  pieces,  which  were 
rigorously  revised  later,  may  perhaps  include  —  with  the  capital 
exceptions  of  the  "Ode  to  Memory,"  where  the  intensely  accurate 
and  yet  thoroughly  translated  observation  of  the  poet  appears ;  "  The 
Dying  Swan,"  which  is  a  good  early  example  of  his  command  of 
concerted  metre ;  and  "  Mariana  in  the  Moated  Grange,"  which  com- 
bines both  —  none  of  his  best  and  most  characteristic  work,  unless 
the  ''Recollections  of  the  Arabian  Nights"  be  also  allowed  a  place. 
But  "  Claribel,"  the  opening  piece,  is  characteristic  and  original, 
if  not  best,  and  the  other  ideal  girl-pieces  ('"Oriana"  stands  apart, 
and  is  better  than  any),  the  "  Sea-Fairies,"  and  still  others,  also 
appeal  from  this  judgment.  Astonishing  power  of  visual  presentation, 
and  a  still  more  astonishing  skill  of  musical  accompaniment,  marked 
the  poet  already.  But  his  touch  was  extremely  uncertain ;  he  would 
constantly  mar  it  with  the  mawkishness  and  gush  which  Keats  had 
learnt  from  Leigh  Hunt  and  handed  on ;  the  jewelled  and  polished 
perfection  of  his  work  as  we  now  know  it  simply  did.  not  exist.  At 
the  end  of  1832,  but  with  the  date  of  1833,  he  issued  another  volume, 
where  the  same  defects  of  detail  were  relieved  by  a  far  greater  height 
of  aim  and  range  of  delivery.  This  contained;  and  indeed  took  title 
from,  the  "The  Lady  of  Shalott,"  not  yet  in  its  full  perfection  of 
tapestried  scene  and  ringing,  waving  rhyme,  but  still  beautiful  already ; 
the  wonderful  "  Lotus-Eaters  "  ;  the  great  pair  of  picture-galleries,  the 
Palace  of  Art  7m^  the  Dream  of  Fair  Women',  the  splendid,  force- 
ful, new  blank  verse  of  "  Oinone " ;  "  Mariana  in  the  South  "  (the 
poet  had  made  a  flying  visit  to  the  Pyrenees  the  summer  before),  a 
wonderful  pendant  to  the  Northern ;  the  fiery  "  Fatima,"  one  of 
his  few  excursions  in  the  line  of  direct  passion,  but  a  great  one ;  the 
"  Two  Voices,"  a  piece  usually  rated  far  too  low ;  and  the  inferior  and 
popular,  but  pretty,  "  Miller's  paughter  "  and  "  May  Queen." 

But  in  this  the  faults  of  execution  still  remained ;  and  both 
volumes  were  savagely,  but  not  quite  unfairly,  criticised  for  faults 
which  in  most  cases  were  removed  by  the  poet  in  consequence  of 
these  very  criticisms.  They  acted,  indeed,  not  as  a  killing  frost,  only 
as  a  frosty  but  kindly  nip  to  a  too  precocious  and  exuberant  growth, 
keeping  tlie  plant  back  and  causing  infinite  improvement  in  flower 
and  fruit  later.     For  all  but  ten  years  Tennyson  wrote  a  good  deal, 

altered   freely,  but  pulDlished  nothing,  and  it  was  not  till 
'^''of^is'"'""    ^^42    *^i^t    he    reappeared   with    two    small   volumes,    one 

containing   a   selection  of    the    earlier    pieces    thoroughly 
revised    and    enormously    improved,    the    other   a   collection    of    new 


CHAP.  I  TENNYSON   AND   BROWNING  729 

"English  Idylls  and  Other  Poems."  It  is  customary  to  fix  on  some 
of  these  latter  as  his  first  perfect  work,  and  it  has  not  been 
uncommon  for  judges  of  importance  to  put  them  above  anything 
that  he  produced  later.  But  nothing  in  the  Tennysonian  kind  can 
surpass  "  Mariana,"  or  the  "  Lotos-Eaters,"  or  the  "  Dream  of  Fair 
Women."  Still,  it  is  not  wonderful  that  such  things  as  "Ulysses" 
and  the  first  ''  Morte  d'Arthur "  confirmed  old  admirers  and  obtained 
hosts  of  new  ones  for  the  poet.  The  "English  Idylls"  of  the  title, 
"The  Gardener's  Daughter,"  "Dora,"  "Walking  to  the  Mail,"  and 
others  were  exxeedingly  popular,  though  they  cannot  be  called  very 
great  poetry,  exquisite  as  are  some  of  the  pictures  in  the  first  named ; 
and  "The  Day-Dream,"  and  "Will  Waterproof's  Monologue"  (the 
latter  the  poet's  best  light  thing)  also  fall  short  of  the  grand  style. 
But  this  is  perfectly  attained  in  "Ulysses."  in  the  "Morte  d'Arthur," 
in  "Love  and  Duty,"  in  "  Locksley  Hall,"  in  the  batch  of  other 
pieces,  perhaps  to  be  called  Ballads  for  want  of  any  better  name  — 
"  St.  Agnes'  Eve,"  "  Sir  Galahad,"  "  Sir  Lancelot  and  Queen  Guin- 
evere "  —  in  "  The  Vision  of  Sin,"  and  the  still  more  exquisite  batch 
of  songs  and  fragments,  "  Break,  break,"  "  Come  not,  when  I  am 
dead,"  "The  Poet's  Song,"  and  others.  In  these,  ears  not  origi- 
nally deaf  to  poetry,  and  not  obstructed  by  any  special  prejudice, 
could  not  fail  to  detect  the  notes  of  a  poetry  newer,  more  individual, 
and  richer  than  had  been  heard,  except  in  the  great  writers  of  the 
generation  immediately  preceding,  for  the  best  part  of  two  centuries. 
The  main  notes  of  this  poetry,  once  more,  were,  first,  the  felicity  of 
presentation  of  the  visual  picture,  whether  in  the  sharp,  succinct 
fashion  of  the  compartments  of  the  "  Palace "  and  the  "  Dream,"  or 
in  larger  groups  or  smaller  touches ;  secondly,  the  new  modulation 
of  vowel,  syllable,  word,  line,  and  stanza,  so  as  to  produce  a  running 
musical  accompaniment  at  once  to  the  image  and  to  the  idea. 
Subsidiary  to  the  first  gift  was  the  also  mentioned  faculty  of  obser- 
vation of  small  details  of  nature ;  to  the  second,  a  rich,  but  not 
promiscuous,  store  of  words  both  simple  and  compound,  and  a 
metrical  gift  which  showed  itself  in  many  measures,  but  specially  in 
a  new  and  magnificent  kind  of  blank  verse,  ranking  below,  if  below, 
Milton's,  only  because  it  owes  a  certain  amount  of  debt  thereto. 
These  gifts  and  others  had  not  yet  been  set  to  the  composition  of 
any  .long  i)oem,  but  liad  produced  numerous  and  singularly  varied 
handlings,  in  the  special  taste  of  the  century,  of  things  past  and 
present,  scenes,  characters  (tiiough  character  was  not  Tennyson's 
forte),  emotions,  incidents,  thoughts  —  each  placed  for  itself  and  for 
ever  in  an  eternising  frame  and  setting  of  poetry. 

Tennyson    lived    for   exactly  half  a   century  after    tlio    ])ul)lication 
of  the  volumes  of  1842,  and  increased  immensely  the  bulk,  the  variety, 


730  VICTORIAN  LITERATURE  book  xi 

the  scale  of  his  productions ;  but,  as  generally,  though  not  always, 
happens  with  poets  of  the  first  rank,  he  produced  little  that  was  new  in 

kind,  and  perhaps  nothing  that  was  at  once  new  in  kind 
and  works*   ^^^  '^^  ^hc   Very  first  value.     For  this  last  estimate  can 

certainly  not  be  allowed  either  to  his  dramas  or  to  his 
poems  in  Lincolnshire  dialect,  though  the  latter  were  very  effective, 
and  the  former  have  received  praise,  higher  than  that  generally 
accorded  to  them,  from  some  good  judges.  But  the  success,  not 
striking  or  popular,  but  certain,  of  the  1842  issue  was  in  many  ways 
a  turning-point  in  his  career.  By  degrees  the  sale  of  his  verse  gave 
him  first  a  small,  then  a  moderate,  and  latterly  an  ever-increasing 
income.  Before  this  happened,  and  when  his  private  means,  which 
had  always  been  very  narrow,  were  threatened  by  an  injudicious 
investment,  he  received  a  Crown  pension  which  placed  him  above 
want.  Neither  at  this  time,  nor  at  any  other,  did  he  ever  desert 
poetry  for  lucrative  avocations  of  any  kind,  even  literary.  He  slowly 
elaborated  the  important  collection  of  Elegies  which  was  to  appear 
as   /n   Memoriam,   and    he   completed,   and   in    1847   published,   the 

"medley"   of    The   Princess  —  his   first    long    poem,    his 

The  Princess  or? 

'longest,  if  we  except  the  congeries  of  the  Idylls  —  the 
consummate  expression  of  his  mastery  in  blank  verse,  and,  at  least 
in  its  second  and  slightly  altered  form,  with  inserted  songs,  one  of  the 
most  charming,  if  not  one  of  the  greatest,  poems  in  English.  The 
exceedingly  difficult  kind  of  the  playfully  romantic,  if  not  mock- 
heroic,  in  which  it  is  written,  is  not  universally  relished ;  it  is  too 
serious  for  some,  not  serious  enough  for  others,  and  prejudices  of 
various  sorts  have  interfered  with  its  reception.  But  it  is  as  much  at 
the  head  of  its  own  division  of  poetry  on  the  Romantic  side  as  The 
Rape  of  the  Lock  is  on  the  Classical,  and  it  has  appeals  which  are 
unknown  to  Pope''s  glittering  little  masterpiece. 

Three  years  later,  in   1850,  Tennyson  not  only  married,  and  was 

appointed  Poet-Laureate  in  succession  to  Wordsworth,  but  published 

/«  Me»toriam.     This  volume  —  composed  of  a  large  number  of  short 

/« Memo-     pieces  in  the  four-lined  octosyllabic  stanza  rhymed  abba, 

nam.  -which  had  been  sparingly  employed  by  seventeenth- 
century  poets,  but  out  of  which  they  had  only  by  accident,  and  once 
or  twice,  got  the  full  metrical  value  —  has  been  often  put  forward  as 
Tennyson\s  greatest  work,  and  has  been  hotly  attacked  and  defended 
as  not  merely  a  rite  of  friendship,  but  a  theological  eirenicon  between 
faith  and  scepticism.  The  first  judgment  is  one  of  will-worship, 
and  the  second  practice  is  merely  an  instance  of  the  apparently 
ineradicable  habit  of  shrinking  from  the  judgment  of  poetry  as  poetry, 
and  endeavouring  to  drag  it  into  another  court.  As  poetry  /« 
Memoriam  contains  things  which  are  equal  to  Tennyson's  best ;  but 


CHAP.  I  TENNYSON   AND   BROWNING  731 

it  is  necessarily  less  varied  in  subject,  more  sombre  in  hue  and  im- 
agery, and  pervaded  by  an  atmosphere  which,  when  it  ceases  to  be 
impressive  —  if  it  should  happen  to  do  so  with  this  or  that  mood  or 
character — becomes  slightly  oppressive.  Its  highest  praise  is  that 
it  applies  and  expresses  in  a  new  field  those  gifts  of  the  poet  which 
have  been  already  described,  and  shows  that,  like  all  true  poetic  gifts, 
they  are  capable  of  universal  application. 

His  next  two  works,  the  Ode  on  the  Death  of  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  (1852)  and  Maud  (1855)  were  rather  violently  attacked, 
as  generally  happens  when  a  man  has  lately  risen  to  any  eminence. 
There  is  no  nobler  passage  in  the  poetry  of  patriotism 
than  part  of  the  first.  The  second  showed,  and  fortu- 
nately for  almost  the  last  time,  that  uncertainty  and  inequality  of  taste 
and  touch,  at  the  first  time  of  asking,  which  had  always  distinguished 
the  poet.  Developing  out  of  some  earlier  verses,  "  O  that  'twere 
possible,"  which  are  still  its  central  and  most  exquisite  passage,  it 
aimed  at  too  much  political  and  social  satire  in  the  style  of  Carlyle's 
contemporary  Latter-day  Pamphlets,  denunciation  of  "peace  at  any 
price,"  commercialism,  and  the  like,  neglecting  for  these  its  legitimate 
theme  of  "love  that  never  met  its  earthly  close,"  despair,  madness, 
and  reconciliation.  It  was  improved  later,  and  contains  some  of 
the  most  passionate  and  echoing  things  that  the  poet  ever  did,  but 
it  is  as  far  below  The  Princess  in  homogeneity  and  adjustment  to  its 
aim  as  it  is  above  it  in  these  parts. 

The  detraction  died,  and  the  next  volume,  the  Idylls  of  the  King 
(1859),  estated  Tennyson  securely  for  the  rest  of  his  life  as  not  merely 
the  official  but  the  unquestioned  head  of  English  poetry.  It  was 
devoted  to  the  Arthurian  Legend,  which  it  treated,  not 
consecutively,  but  in  four  episodes  —  the  Welsh  story  of  JheKing'jL 
Geraint  of  Devon  and  his  patient  wife  Enid,  the  less 
poetical  version  of  Merlin's  enchantment,  a  variant  of  that  adventure 
of  Lancelot  which  he  had  earlier  touched  in  "  The  Lady  of  Shalott," 
and  (greatest  of  all)  the  parting  of  Arthur  and  Guinevere.  In  later 
issues  fresh  episodes  were  added,  and  the  whole  was  in  a  manner 
framed  by  a  new  "Coming  of  Arthur,"  and  by  the  original  and 
splendid  "  Morte "  eked  with  less  precious  matter  in  a  "  Passing " 
to  match.  Next  came  Enoch  Arden  (1864),  containing  among 
larger  but  lesser  things  the  lovely  "Voyage,"  "  Tithonus,"  "In  the 
Valley  of  Cauteretz,"  and  others,  as  well  as  the  first  of  the  dialect 
pieces  alluded  to.  And  in  the  nearly  thirty  years  whicli  remained  to 
him  Tennyson  rounded  otT  the  Idylls  to  an  Arthuriad  in  twelve  books, 
began   in    1875    and    continued    a   series    of   cliicfiy   historical    plays  ^ 

"^  Queen  Mary,  \Z-]ij\   Harold,  x^-jt,    The  Promise  of  May,  1882;  Becket,   1884; 
The  ('up  and  the  Falcon,  1884  ;    Tkc  Foresters,  1892. 


732  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

of  more  dubious  value,  and  at  intervals  issued  by  themselves, 
or  with  instalments  of  the  Idylls,  volumes  of  miscellaneous  verse,^ 
the  last  of  which,  the  Death  of  QLnotte,  was  not  published  till  after 
his  own  death  on  6th  October  1892.  No  one  of  these  failed  to 
contain  things  worthy  of  his  best  days,  and  that  of  1880,  called 
Ballads  and  Other  Poems,  was  especially  rich  in  them,  while  the  last 
issued  in  his  lifetime,  Demeter,  closed  with  the  marvellous  swan-song 
of  "Crossing  the  Bar." 

He  had  added  to  English  poetry  a  body  of  work  which,  though 
not  the  greatest  contributed  by  any  man,  though  falling  short  of 
Chaucer  and  Coleridge  in  fresh  and  original  gift,  of  Spenser  in 
uniform  excellence  and  grasp  of  a  huge  subject,  of  Shakespeare  in 
universality,  in  height  and  depth  and  every  other  creature,  of  Milton 
in  grandeur  and  lonely  sublimity,  of  Wordsworth  in  ethical  weight 
and  grip  of  nature  behind  the  veil,  of  Shelley  in  unearthliness,  and 
of  Keats  in  independence  and  voluptuous  spontaneity,  yet  deserves 
to  be  ranked  with  the  best  of  these,  except  Shakespeare  only,  in 
virtue  of  its  astonishing  display  of  poetic  art.  Tennyson  had  never, 
no  matter  what  his  detractors  may  say,  come  short  in  poetic 
thought ;  in  poetic  style  he  had  shown  a  uniform  mastery  not 
elsewhere  to  be  equalled,  and  a  quality  hardly  elsewhere  to  be  sur- 
passed. He  had  carried  the  special  poetic  mission  of  the  nineteenth 
century  in  English  —  that  of  applying  the  powers  of  colour,  form,  and 
music  to  the  investment  of  the  largest  possible  number  of  themes  with 
the  imaginative  suggestion  of  poetry  —  to  a  point  not  reached  by  any 
other,  and  in  all  his  long  and  fertile  career  had  never  finally  failed 
in  a  single  application  of  them,  putting  the  dramatic  attempts,  in 
which  he  was  merely  a  stranger,  aside.  He,  had  justified  that 
"return  to  nature"  —  of  which  the  danger  was  that  it  should  become 
as  conventional,  as  cut  and  dried,  as  the  generalising  away  from 
nature  vC'hich  had  preceded  it  —  to  a  pitch,  not  merely  by  an  infinity  of 
fresh  and  felt  observations,  but  by  invariably  touching  these  observa- 
tions with  the  necessary  point  of  generalisation  itself.  He  is  always 
real,  but  never  realist ;  never  conventional,  but  also  never  photo- 
graphic. His  music  is  more  difficult  to  praise,  because  the  ear  is  a 
more  arbitrary  sense  than  the  eye.  To  those  who  have  ears  to  hear 
there  is  absolutely  no  poet  so  inexhaustible  and  original  in  harmony 
as  Tennyson.  The  story  told  in  his  Life  of  a  hearer  who  knew  no 
English,  but  knew  Tennyson  to  be  a  poet  by  the  hearing,  is  probable 
and  valuable,  or  rather  invaluable,  for  it  points  to  the  best,  if  not  the 
only  true,  criterion  of  poetry. 

"^The  Holy  Grail,  1870;  Gareth  and  Lynefte.  1872;  Ballads,  1880; 
Tiresias,  1885;  Locks  ley  Hall  Sixty  Years  After,  1887;  Demeter,  1889,  were 
the  chief  of  these. 


CHAP.  I  TENNYSON   AND   BROWNING  733 

The  life  of  Robert  Browning  was  as  wholly  devoted  to  literature 
as  that  of  Tennyson,  but  he  was  rather  more  attracted  by  society ; 
much  of  it  was  spent  abroad,  whereas  Tennyson  never 
left  England  save  for  trips ;  and  it  lacked  the  usual  Browning 
introductory  experiences  of  an  Englishman.  Browning 
was  born  in  May  18 12,  in  the  southern  suburbs  of  London,  went  to  no 
regular  school,  nor  to  Oxford  or  Cambridge ;  and  though  his  reading 
was  wide  and  appreciative,  it  lacked  throughout  his  life  the  touch  of 
scholarship  in  the  wide  and  liberal  sense  which  distinguished  Tennyson. 
Nor  was  this  circumstance  by  any  means  unimportant  in  condition- 
ing the  peculiarities  of  his  poetical  style.  His  first  poem  was 
Paiili7ie,  written  in  his  nineteenth  and  published  in  his  twenty-first 
year;  his  next,  Paracelsus,  appeared  in  1835.  Paiilinc,  though  not 
consummate,  is  characteristic ;  neither  the  verse,  nor  the  style  proper, 
nor  the  substance,  could  be  affiliated  on  anybody,  except  perhaps 
Shelley,  and  on  Shelley  to  a  limited  extent  only.  Certain  passages 
have  a  regular  beauty  not  common  later  with  the  author,  and 
assuredly  not  to  be  found  in  any  contemporary  work  except  that  of 
Tennyson ;  but  the  chief  interest  of  the  piece  is  its  early  revelation 
of  the  breathless,  intense,  "  monodramatic "  manner,  eschewing 
incident  but  delighting  in  analysis,  which  was  to  be  one  of  the  poet's 
points  throughout  and  ultimately  to  prevail  over  all  the  others. 
Paracelsus  has  far  more  direct  charm.  Here  the  form  is  openly 
dramatic,  at  least  the  personages  speak  personally.  The  blank  verse 
is  still  more  breathless  and  peculiar ;  there  are  lyrics  showing  some 
beauty  and  promising  much,  and  the  characters  are  projected  in  an 
entirely  novel  fashion. 

From  this  time  the  poet's  vocation  may  be  considered  as  fixed ; 
and  though  his  public  was  at  first  smaller  even  than  Tennyson's,  and 
took  far  longer  to  increase,  he  always  had  his  devotees,  and  never 
allowed  detraction  or  neglect  to  check  him.  The  play  — 
a  play  in  a  manner  actable  and  acted  —  of  Strafford  came  hUwork. 
in  1837;  then  the  poem  of  Sordello  (less  distinguished 
now  among  its  author's  work,  perhaps,  since  his  last  thirty  years  of 
vogue,  than  it  was  as  an  "  awful  example  "  or  a  cherished  idol  during 
the  previous  thirty  of  contempt)  and  the  collection  called  Bells  and 
Pomegranates,  which  appeared  between  1841  and  1846.  After  the 
publication  of  the  pieces  contained  in  this  last,  it  was  no  longer 
permissible  for  any  catholic  judge  of  poetry  to  dismiss  Browning's 
claim  to  the  position  of  a  poet,  true  certainly,  and  probably  great. 
The  plays,  after  his  own  strange  mode,  wliich  were  included,  might 
still  have  left  a  doubt,  and  sometimes  more  than  a  doubt.  But  the 
pieces  called  Dramatic  Lyrics,  especially  "In  a  Gondola"  and 
"  Porphyria's  Lover,"  should    have  settled   the  question.     The  public 


734  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

reception  was,  however,  still  cold  or  totally  wanting.  He  married 
the  poetess  Elizabeth  Barrett  at  this  time.  1850,  the  year  of  In 
Mei/ioria/n,  saw  the  great  monodramatic  piece  of  Christmas  Eve  ajid 
Easier  Day;  and  1855,  the  year  of  Maud,  the  still  greater  Men  and 
Women.  In  these  three  books  Browning  had  taken  his  place  once 
for  all ;  and  the  poet  of  "  The  Last  Ride  Together  "  and  "  Love  among 
the  Ruins "  could  speak  in  the  gate  with  any  one,  enemy  or  friend. 
He  still  wrote  rather  sparingly,  and  his  next  publication  was  prob- 
ably checked  by  his  wife's  death  in  1861,  after  which  he  returned 
to  England.  In  1864,  however,  came  Dramatis  Personce,  the  last 
of  his  middle  period,  and  the  last  volume  containing  his  very  greatest 
work.  "James  Lee,"  "Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,"  and  "  Prospice "  are 
among  the  greatest  poems  of  the  century.  This  volume,  and  a 
collected  edition  of  the  previous  work  which  had  ushered  it,  produced 
a  great  effect  on  the  generation  which  had  been  growing  up  for 
Browning ;  and  it  was  probably  with  some  confidence,  though  with 
a  defiant  acknowledgment  of  his  earlier,  if  not  still  existing,  un- 
popularity, that  he  attempted  to  convert  the  public  with  one  of  the 
most  audacious  of  advances.  The  Ring  and  the  Book,  a  mighty 
collection  of  pieces  in  some  twenty  thousand  lines,  telling  the  same 
story  over  and  over  again  so  as  to  exhibit  different  personalities  in 
a  dozen  different  ways.  The  public  "  came  to  heel,"  and  for  the 
twenty  years  more  during  which  his  life  lasted  Browning,  though 
still  anathematised  by  a  very  few,  was  grudgingly  tolerated  by  more, 
admitted  by  the  general,  and  wildly  and  foolishly  adored  by  a  certain 
sect.  He  could  not  throw  off  things  too  rapid,  too  apparently 
crabbed,  too  really  flimsy  and  ill-digested,  for  them ;  and  though  he 
seldom  during  this  time  put  out  a  book  without  something  good  in 
it,  he  did  nearly  as  much  to  damage  his  fame  as  he  had  previously 
done  to  build  it  up.  Fortunately,  his  lyric  gift  remained,  showing 
itself  at  times  charmingly,  and  in  his  last  volume,  Asolando  (published 
at  the  very  moment  of  his  death  in  1889),  with  sufficient  volume  and 
variety  to  end  by  reconciling  those  who  had  been  for  a  time  estranged 
by  the  verbiage,  the  pretentiousness,  the  real  vacuity,  of  things  like 
Red  Cotton  Nightcap  Coutitry  (1873)  ^'^d  The  Inn  Album  (1875)  ; 
not  much  charmed  by  the  inequality  and  tapage  of  Balaustion's 
Adventure  (its  companion  of  the  year  1871,  Prince  Hohenstiel- 
Schwattgau,  is  better),  Aristophanes'*  Apology  (1875),  La  Saisiaz 
(1878),  Dramatic  Idylls  (1879-80),  Ferishtah's  Fancies  (1884),  and 
Parley ings  with  Certain  People  of  Importance  (1887)  ;  and  alternately 
reconciled  and  redisgusted  by  Fifine  at  the  Fair  (1872),  Pacchiarotto 
(1876),  zxidi  Jocoseria  (1883). 

Despite,  however,  this  unfortunate  inequality,  or  rather  this  unfort- 
unate  yielding  to  temptation,  even  Browning's  aberrations  from   the 


735 


CHAP.  I  TENNYSON  AND  BROWNING 

true  poetic  provide  at  least  passages  which  are  poetry.  Their  plan 
is,  with  an  appearance  of  diversity,  very  much  the  same  from 
Pauline  to  the  Parleyings.  The  poet  takes  a  character, 
an  anecdote,  sometimes  little  more  than  a  name;  and  "me^thod"'' 
instead  of  focussing  it  from  the  outside,  or  making  it 
speak  in  simple  dramatic  fashion,  with  such  passages  of  ornament 
as  he  can  give,  he  shakes  it  about,  dissecting,  or  trying  to  dissect,  its 
"soul,"  analysing  its  constituents,  folding  and  unfolding  it  to  get 
different  lights  and  aspects,  but  never  exactly  summing  up  or  giving 
us  the  whole.  In  this  process  —  using  as  he  does  for  the  most  part 
blank  verse  of  great  variety  and  vigour,  but  breathless,  somewhat 
prosaic  in  rhythm  and  cadence,  or  else  rhymed  arrangements  fluid 
enough,  but  with  their  fluency  much  chequered  by  verbal  tricks,  and 
rhyming  in  the  most  audacious,  though  rarely  in  any  positively 
incorrect,  fashion  —  he  produces  effects  which  perhaps  seem  even  more 
formless  than  they  are,  but  which  certainly  dispense  with  the  exacter 
graces  of  form  to  an  extent  very  unwise,  and  perhaps  distinctly  ille- 
gitimate for  the  poet.  A  green  or  a  jaded  taste  may  sometimes  relish 
his  phrase  and  period  ;  but  the  finer  palate  at  once  declines  the  labour 
that  is  required,  and  fails  to  rank  very  high  the  pleasure  that  results. 

But  in  his  shorter,  and  especially  in  his  lyrical,  pieces,  where  the 
imperative  melody  of  stanza  and  rhyme  not  merely  sweetens  his 
acerbity  and  makes  his  jejuneness  succulent,  but  applies  a  positive 
check  to  his  verbiage,  his  prolixity,  his  headlong  readi-  His  real 
ness  to  accept  the  first  word  that  comes,  Browning  is  poetical 
usually  a  poet,  very  often  a  great  poet,  not  seldom  a  ^pp^^- 
poet  almost  or  quite  of  the  greatest.  Some  surprise  was  expressed 
when  a  critic,  soon  followed  by  others,  designated  him  at  his  death 
"the  poet  of  love,"  for  his  later  worshippers  had  been  wont  to  extol 
his  "thought"  and  philosophy,  not  his  passion.  But  the  conversion 
of  at  least  some  of  the  fittest  was  soon  effected.  It  is  always  on  this 
subject,  and  on  a  certain  optimist  view  of  the  triumph  of  life,  that 
Browning  is  happiest,  while  in  connection  with  both  he  has  the 
faculty  of  the  century  for  giving  what  Dr.  Johnson  scornfully  called 
"the  streaks  in  the  tulip."  "The  Last  Ride  Together,"  innumerable 
as  are  the  great  love-poems  in  English  from  "A'ison"  to  "Rose 
Mary,"  admits  no  superior  and  very  few  equals.  "Rabbi  ben  Ezra," 
the  praise  of  age,  of  failure,  of  approaching  death,  the  triumphant 
assertion  of  — 

All  I  could  never  be,  all  men  mistook  in  me, 

is  practically  unique,  though  no  doubt  it  owed  a  certain  suggestion 
and  start,  such  as  is  common  with  poets,  to  passages  of  Fitz(ierald\s 
Omar  Khayyam  (see    below).       Of  Browning   we   may   say,   Timor 


736  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

mortis  non  conturbabat .  In  a  hundred  other  pieces  hardly  inferior, 
in  the  browner  shades  of  age  as  well  as  in  the  spring  of  youth,  he 
sang,  not  like  most  poets,  Love  and  Death,  but  Love  and  Life. 

That  he  was  a  great,  a  consummate  master  of  poetic  music, 
as  well  as  of  poetic  thought  and  vision,  meets  more  gainsayers.  It 
is  certain  that  he  was  dangerously  prone  to  indulgence  in  discords, 
and  that  for  long  stretches  of  his  verse,  especially  in  his  later  lucubra- 
tions, he  seems  to  be  indifferent  to  any  music  at  all  except  that  of  the 
horse-fiddle,  or  at  best  the  hurdy-gurdy.  But  in  the  class  of  lyrics 
just  referred  to  —  and  even  in  others  — there  is  no  softness  that  he 
cannot  insinuate,  no  crash  or  clangour  that  he  cannot  reach.  That 
he  too  often  contemns  the  demand  of  his  passenger  to  be  "  carried 
softly  along  in  the  melodious  coach  "  is  true  likewise.  But  when  he 
cared  to  use  it  he  had  a  chariot  of  that  kind  which  yielded  in  pure 
voluptuous  caressing  movement  to  none,  and  which  is  perhaps  all 
the  more  enjoyed  when  the  passenger  is  shot  into  it  from  the  jolting 
tumbrels  of  his  more  ordinary  rolling-stock. 

The  almost  unprecedented  fashion  in  which  these  two  poets  at 
once  lead  and  sum  up  the  poetic  production  of  two-thirds  of  a  century 
has  made  it  necessary  to  treat  them  at  greater  length  than  is  usual 
in  these  later  Books.  We  must  now  be  briefer,  yet  not 
FhzGerald.  t°<^  brief,  wjth  the  most  remarkable  of  their  more  imme- 
diate contemporaries,  the  wife  of  the  one  and  a  very  early 
and  intimate  friend  of  the  other,  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning  and 
Edward  FitzGerald.  FitzGerald  was  born  in  1809,  at  Woodbridge 
in  Suffolk,  a  district  which  was  his  residence  by  choice  as  well  as 
chance  during  almost  the  whole  of  his  life.  He  was  the  younger  son 
of  a  man  of  property,  and  spent  great  part  of  his  childhood  in 
France,  but  was  sent  to  the  Grammar  School  of  Bury  St.  Edmunds, 
entered  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  in  1826,  and  during  his  days 
there  knew  Tennyson  only  by  sight,  though  he  was  intimate  with 
Thackeray.  Of  independent  though  small  means,  and  intolerant  of 
general  society  and  business,  he  entered  no  profession,  and  gradually 
settled  down  on  the  banks  of  the  Deben,  smoking,  reading,  dreaming, 
and  at  times  using  the  sea  a  good  deal,  until  his  death  on  14th  June 
1883.  He  had  married,  rather  late  in  life,  the  daughter  of  Lamb's 
friend,  Bernard  Barton,  the  Quaker  poet. 

FitzGerald's  literary  interests,  though  a  little  crotchety,  were 
intense,  and  he  was  at  different  times  an  intimate  friend  of  the  three 
greatest  men  of  letters  of  the  Victorian  age  —  Tennyson,  Thackeray, 
and  Carlyle ;  but  he  published  comparatively  little,  and  that  little  had 
a  rather  false  appearance  of  want  of  originality.  His  delightful 
letters,  published  after  his  death  in  two  collections,  first  made  him 
known  to  the  general.     He  had  written  earlier  an  exquisite  Platonic 


CHAP.  I  TENNYSON   AND   BROWNING  737 

dialogue,  of  deep  if  not  wide  or  commanding  originality,  called 
Euphranor  (1851),  had  translated  divers  plays  of  Aeschylus  and 
Calderon  (1856),  and  had  in  1859  issued  a  version,  also  in  appear- 
ance a  translation,  of  the  Rubaiyat  of  the  Persian  poet,  astronomer,  and 
Epicurean,  or  rather  Cyrenaic,  Omar  Khayyam.  The  first  edition  of 
this  was  published  in  small  numbers,  and  did  not  become  generally 
known,  but  its  effect  upon  those  who  did  become  acquainted  with  it, 
and  who  were  prepared  for  its  reception,  was  extraordinary.  It  is 
not  in  the  strict  sense  a  translation  at  all,  FitzGerald  having  combined, 
transposed,  omitted,  and  even  inserted,  to  such  an  extent  that  the  thing 
is  almost  as  much  his  own  as  another's.  But  the  poetical  value  of  it 
is  extraordinary.  The  note,  somewhat  resembling  that  of  the  later 
English  Renaissance  as  presented  by  Donne,  but  with  a  marked 
difference,  showing  its  Oriental  suggestion,  is  one  of  a  musical 
sensuality,  intensely  fatalist,  yet,  with  the  usual  inconsistency  of 
fatalism,  ringing  the  changes  on  Carpe  diem  as  well.  Nothing  in 
English  had  been  quite  like  the  melancholy  and  voluptuous  clangour 
of  these  rolling  quatrains,  rhymed  as  a  rule  aaba,  with  the  b  sound 
left  ringing  in  the  air,  and  not  caught  up  in  the  succeeding  stanza, 
but  sometimes  monorhymed  throughout.  His  other  renderings  of 
Persian,  Salai/ian  and  /Ibsal  and  the  Bird  Parliament,  less  known, 
are  only  less  charming. 

FitzGerald  did  not  admire  Mrs.  Browning.  And  indeed  no  two 
writers  could  be  more  unlike,  m  anything  but  devotion  to  literature 
and  faculty  of  poetry.  Elizabeth  Moulton  Barrett,  the  daughter  of  a 
wealthy  West-Indian,  was  born  in  Durham  on  6th  March  ,,,.  ,  ., 
1806,  and  brought  up  chiefly  in  Herefordshire,  but  Barrett 
afterwards  lived  much  in  London.  She  had,  after  rowmng. 
her  first  youth,  very  bad  health,  and  was  an  eager  though  rather 
amateurish  reader  and  student.  She  published  poems  at  nineteen, 
but  she  was  thirty-two  before,  in  a  second  volume,  entitled  The 
Seraphim,  she  developed  a  distinct  poetical  character ;  and  it  was 
not  till  the  middle  of  the  century  was  approaching,  and  her  own 
fortieth  year  was  past,  that  the  pieces  which  really  speak  her  talent 
appeared.  In  1846  she  married  Robert  Browning  (somewhat  after 
the  fashion  of  an  elopement).  The  pair  lived  chiefly  at  Florence, 
and  had  one  child.  In  1851  she  published  Casa  Giiidi  Windmvs, 
and  in  1857  Aurora  Leiffh,  a  verse  novel-with-a-purpose.  Poems 
before  Compress  came  a  year  before,  and  Last  Poems  a  year  after,  her 
death  in  1861.  Perhaps  she  had  never  done  anything  better  than 
"The  Great  God  Pan,"  which,  written  just  before,  api)cared  in  the 
Cornhill  Magazitie  during  its  brilliant  opening  year  under  Thackeray's 
editorship. 

There  is  scarcely  any  writer  in  English  deserving  the  name  of  poet 
3B 


738  VICTORIAN  LITERATURE  book  xi 

who  illustrates  by  defect  the  importance  of  poetic  style  so  well  as 
Mrs.  Browning.  The  word  is  constantly  used  in  reference  to  poetry 
with  a  sense  too  general  and  even  improper,  but  here  it  can  be  used 
with  exact  propriety.  In  all  the  qualities  (with  the  exception  of  ear 
for  rhyme)  which  distinguish  the  poet  from  the  prose-writer  she  was 
a  very  considerable  proficient,  though  even  in  these  she  lacked 
self-criticism.  She  could  think  as  a  poet,  could  feel,  though  rather 
too  gushingly,  as  a  poet,  could  see,  sometimes  with  eminent  clearness, 
as  a  poet  should  see,  and  in  some  respects  had  an  equally  eminent 
gift  of  poetic  music.  But  in  the  qualities  which  the  prose-writer 
shares  with  the  poet,  and  the  absence  of  which,  because  less  common, 
is  even  more  distressing  in  the  latter,  she  was  extraordinarily  de- 
ficient. The  dulness  or  falseness  of  her  ear  for  consonance  of  sound 
was  quite  unparalleled,  and  she,  with  all  the  advantages  of  gentle 
birth,  feminine  sex,  country  breeding,  and  an  almost  scholarly  educa- 
tion, confuses  rhymes  in  a  manner  usually  supposed  to  be  limited  to 
the  lower  class  of  cockneys.  And  this  insensibility  to  pure  sound 
finds  its  counterpart  in  slipshod  and  tasteless  vocabulary,  in  awkward 
and  solecising  uses  of  phrase  —  in  short,  in  a  general  slatternliness  as 
regards  all  the  minor,  and  some  of  the  major,  points  that  constitute 
style. 

This  carelessness  or  numbness  of  feeling  extends  also  to  some 
things  which  lie  deeper  than  style.  At  hardly  any  time,  except  when 
the  beneficent  restriction  of  the  sonnet  braces  her  up,  is  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing's composition  or  her  conception  clear,  well-knit,  and  orderly. 
This  flaccidity  is  indeed  a  symptom  in  all  the  poets  of  the  second 
Romantic  school.  It  had  been  threatened  in  Keats ;  there  were 
dangerous  appearances  of  it,  fortunately  exorcised  by  the  kind  cruelty 
of  criticism  and  his  own  good  sense,  in  Tennyson ;  Robert  Browning's 
verbosity,  his  lawless  abundance,  was  perhaps  in  fact  only  a  rather 
more  healthy  and  vigorous  variety  of  it.  But  over  Mrs.  Browning  it 
ruled,  except  in  the  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese  and  a  very  few 
other  pieces.  Still,  despite  the  constant  imperfection,  there  is, 
on  the  whole,  a  pervading  charm,  the  sense  of  the  vision  though 
sometimes  not  of  the  faculty.  In  "  Cowper's  Grave,"  in  "The  Rhyme 
of  the  Duchess  May,"  in  the  "Lay  of  the  Brown  Rosary,"  in  the 
"Romaunt  of  Margret "  (where  the  different  cadence  given  to  the 
refrain  "  Margret !  Margret ! "  by  the  form  of  the  name  adopted, 
contributes  a  marvellously  new  music  to  the  piece,  and  where, 
terribly  as  the  whole  is  in  need  of  compression  and  concentration,  the 
separate  effects  are  sometimes  quite  miraculous),  in  the  "  Vision  of 
Poets,"  in  "  The  Soul's  Travelling  "  and  the  "  House  of  Clouds,"  in  a 
hundred  others,  we  never  want  more  poetry,  we  only  want  more 
criticism. 


CHAP.  I  TENNYSON   AND   BROWNING  739 

A  paragraph  of  mention  must  suffice  for  some  verse-writers  more 
than  one  of  whom  may  be  justly  called  a  poet,  and  who  were  nearly 
contemporary  with  these,  or  at  any  rate  born  between  Mrs.  Browning 
and  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold :  the  too  famous  Martin  Farquhar  Tupper 
(1810-89),  the  enormous  and  almost  incomprehensible  popularity  of 
whose  worthless  Proverbial  Philosophy  has  secured  him  an  uncom- 
fortable immortality,  and  who  wrote  much  else ;  Archbishop  Trench 
(1807-86),  a  popular  philologist  of  great  acuteness,  an  admirable 
judge  of  Latin  Mediaeval  poetry,  and  himself  a  poet ;  Thomas  Gordon 
Hake  (1809-94),  author  of  much  verse,  rather  too  mystical  and  diffi- 
cult, but  always  high  and  often  sweet ;  Richard  Monckton  Milnes,  first 
Lord  Houghton  (1809-85),  a  friend  of  Tennyson  and  the  immediate 
procurer,  though  at  Carlyle's  instigation,  of  his  pension,  a  great  figure 
in  society,  literary,  poHtical,  and  other,  a  good  critic  and  an  admi- 
rable song-writer;  Sir  Samuel  Ferguson  (1810-86),  an  Irish  bard  of 
humour  as  well  as  of  romance ;  "  Father  Prout,"  Charles  Mackay, 
Mrs.  Archer  Clive  ("'V")  —  but  especially  William  Edmonstoune 
Aytoun  (1813-65),  joint-author  of  that  admirable  book  of  light  verse, 
the  equal  of  anything  earlier  and  certainly  not  surpassed  since,  the  B071 
Gaultier  ballads,  and  author  of  the  Lays  of  the  Scottish  Cavaliers, 
Firmilian,  Bothwell,  etc.  Besides  Bon  Gaultier,  though  of  a  some- 
what different  fashion,  must  be  ranked  the  Ingoldsby  Legends  of 
Richard  Harris  Barham  (i 788-1845),  who  by  birth  belonged  to  an 
older  generation,  but  wrote  the  Legends  late.  In  grotesque  poetry 
no  language  holds  their  superiors. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE   VICTORIAN   NOVEL 

Dickens  —  Thackeray — His  early  work — Charlotte  Bronte  —  Mrs.  Gaskell  — 
Charles  Reade  —  Anthony  Trollope  —  George  Eliot  —  Charles  Kingsley  — 
Others  —  R.  L.  Stevenson 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that,  great  as  have  been  its  achievements 
in  poetry  and  history,  and  not  small  as  they  have  been  in  literary 
criticism  and  the  essay  generally,  the  nineteenth  century,  as  a  whole, 
will  take  future  rank  as  the  age  of  the  novel.  But  there  was  a 
time,  covering  about  the  fourth  decade  of  the  century,  when  it  might 
have  seemed,  and  did  seem  to  one  very  acute  and  well-informed 
judge  (Lockhart),  that  the  progress  of  fiction  would  be  arrested. 
The  immense  impetus  given  by  Scott  appeared  to  be  exhausted  with 
himself;  the  hardly  less  real  revolution  introduced  by  Miss  Austen 
was  so  quiet  as  to  be  very  nearly  imperceptible.  Not  a  few  of  the 
novelists  mentioned  in  the  last  Book  were  writing,  and  one  or  two, 
Lever  and  Bulwer  especially,  had  their  best  work  to  come,  in  1837, 
and  even  in  1850.  But  between  1814  and  1836  no  one  of  absolutely 
the  first  class  put  in  his  titles. 

At  this  very  time,  however,  there  were  breeding  up,  and  not  even 
in  their  very  first  youth,  two  of  the  very  greatest  writers  of  English 
prose  fiction  —  perhaps,  indeed,  the  only  two  who  can  pretend  to  rank 
with  Fielding,  Miss  Austen,  and  Scott.  These  were  Charles  Dickeas 
and  William  Makepeace  Thackeray,  who  were  very  nearly  of  an  age, 
though  Dickens,  a  little  the  younger  of  the  pair,  made 
his  mark  first.  He  was  born  in  1812  at  Portsmouth, 
where,  as  subsequently  at  Chatham,  his  father  was  a  clerk  in  the 
dockyard.  This  father,  the  original  of  the  "  Mr.  Micawber "  of 
David  Copperfield^  a.  novel  in  great  measure  autobiographical,  lost  his 
post  in  some  departmental  reconstruction ;  and  the  family  for  some 
time  experienced  straits  which  have  left  their  mark  both  here  and 
elsewhere,  especially  in  Little  Dorrit  (for  Dickens  senior,  like  old 
Dorrit,  was  a   prisoner  for  debt  in  the   Marshalsea).     After  a  time, 

740 


CHAP.  II  THE   VICTORIAN   NOVEL  741 

however,  he  found  work  on  the  press,  as  did  his  son,  whose  education 
was  not  more  irregular  than  might  be  expected.  Charles  himself 
learnt  shorthand  and  became  a  reporter  at  seventeen,  but  wrote,  or 
at  least  published,  nothing  till  his  twenty-second  year  was  nearly 
finished.  At  the  end  of  December  1833  he  began  to  contribute 
papers,  of  the  descriptive-fanciful  kind  that  Leigh  Hunt  had  intro- 
duced, to  magazines,  and  the  Sketches  by  Boz  were  collected  out  of 
these  and  issued  as  a  book  early  in  1836,  while  before  the  spring  of 
that  year  was  over  Dickens  began  the  Pickwick  Papers  and  married. 
He  was  ever  afterwards  a  prosperous  man  as  far  as  money  was  con- 
cerned, and  Pickwick  immediately  made  him  famous.  He  was  soon 
able  to  leave  off  all  work  but  book-writing ;  he  made,  by  his  novels,  by 
the  periodicals  of  Household  U'o?-ds  and  All  the  y^ear  Round,  which 
he  edited,  and  by  reading  his  own  work  in  England  and  America,  a 
very  large  fortune  for  a  man  of  letters,  and  died  suddenly  in  July 
1870,  the  most  popular  author  of  his  day,  and  with  no  failure  of 
mental  powers,  though  his  actual  death  was  due  to  brain  disease. 

Dickens's  work  was  very  considerable,  and  the  book  part  of  it, 
after  those  just  mentioned  (^Pickwick  was  published  at  the  end  of 
1837),  appeared  as  follows:  Oliver  Twist,  1838;  Nicholas  Nickleby, 
1839;  The  Old  Curiosity  Shop  (this  and  the  next  at  first  appeared 
with  a  framework,  afterwards  discarded,  as  "Master  Humphry's 
Clock"),  1840-41;  Barnaby  Pudge,  1841  ;  American  Notes,  1842; 
Martin  Chuzzlewit,  1843;  a  series  of  Christmas  Books  between  the 
latter  year  and  1848  (this  was  continued  in  a  way  later  by  his  con- 
tributions to  the  Christmas  numbers  of  his  periodicals)  ;  Pictures  from 
Italy,  1845;  Dombey  and  Son,  1846-48;  David  Copperfield,  1849-50; 
Bleak  House,  1852-53  ;  The  Child's  History  of  England  (his  only 
worthless  book),  1854;  Hard  Times,  same  year;  Little  Dorrit, 
1855-57;  A  Tale  of  Two  Cities,  1859;  The  Uncommercial  Traveller 
(a  better  Bos),  1861  ;  Great  Expectations,  same  year;  Our  Mutual 
Eriend,  1864-65;  and  the  unfinished  Edwin  Drood,  which  was  ap- 
pearing when  he  died.  Most  of  these,  except  those  contributed  to 
the  two  periodicals,  came  out  in  numbers  with  illustrations,  a  plan 
very  popular  in  the  middle  of  the  century. 

Although  from  the  first  to  the  last  there  is  unmistakable  unity  in 
'Dickens,  and  although  nobody  who  had  ever  read  Pickwick  could 
mistake  Our  Mutual  Eriend  for  the  work  of  any  other  author,  his 
genius  submitted  to  certain  changes,  though  perhaps  it  never  at- 
tained any  great  expansion.  He  had  been  as  a  child  an  enthusiastic 
student  of  Smollett,  and  Smollett's  peculiar  construction  or  absence 
of  construction,  was  reproduced  exactly  in  his  earlier  work,  and  did 
not  di.sappear  from  his  later.  Nor,  though  this  is  less  generally  known, 
does  he  owe  much  less  to  Theodore  Hook,  who  influenced  his  early 


742  VICTORIAN  LITERATURE  book  xi 

--■'■■'-■■  ■ '  '     » ' 

novels  as  much  as  Hunt  influenced  his  early  essays.  Pickwick  itself 
is  merely  the  picaresque  adventure-novel  in  a  modern,  more  good- 
natured,  and  slightly  softened  and  exalted  form  —  a  set  of  scenes 
hardly  connected  at  all  except  by  the  presence  of  the  same  figures  in 
them.  If  Oliver  Twist  and  Nicholas  Nickleby  have  some  approach 
to  greater  unity,  it  is  only  because  of  the  melodramatic  interest  of  the 
fortunes  of  Nancy  in  the  first  case  and  the  poetical  justice  of  the 
downfall  of  Squeers  in  the  second.  Even  Martin  Chiizzlewit,  nay, 
even  David  Copperfield,  are  chronicles  merely.  The  Old  Curiosity 
Shop  is  not  even  this ;  it  depends  sentimentally  upon  Little  Nell, 
really  on  the  immortal  Dick  Swiveller.  Doinbey  and  Son  attempts 
something  but  does  not  succeed.  From  Bleak  House  onwards 
Dickens  did  make  a  strong  effort  at  connected  plots  —  plots  some- 
times, as  in  the  case  of  Little  Dorrit  and  even  Bleak  House  itself, 
so  elaborate  as  to  be  in  parts  unintelligible.  But,  either  as  a  conse- 
quence or  as  a  concomitant  of  this,  the  separate  scenes  and  characters 
lost  a  great  deal  of  their  early  freshness  and  ease,  though  the  real 
appeal,  the  real  merit,  of  the  books  always  lay  in  them. 

If  we  examine  Dickens  carefully,  and  without  prepossessions,  we 
shall  find  certain  gifts  the  presence  of  which  cannot  reasonably  be 
disputed,  and  certain  grave  faults  or  lacks  nearly  as  certain  as  the 
merits.  No  writer  has  ever  had  a  more  marvellous  faculty  of 
depicting  what  may  be  called  town-scenery  than  Dickens.  He  can 
give  the  interior  of  a  house  or  room,  the  "  atmosphere "  of  furniture, 
the  general  air  of  a  street,  as  no  one  had  given  these  things  before 
him.  Further,  he  can  people  these  scenes  with  figures  which  at 
their  best  have  a  vivacity,  an  arresting  power,  again  inferior  to  none. 
And  he  can  adjust  scenes  and  figures  for  several  purposes,  but  above 
all  for  the  purpose  of  humorous  action  tending  slightly  to  the  farci- 
cal, with  a  felicity  in  his  earlier  and  better  days  almost  unerring, 
and  even  in  his  later  seldom  far  out.  Yet  it  has  been  questioned 
whether  the  life  with  which  his  scenes  and  characters  are  provided 
is  altogether  human  life  —  whether  his  world  is  not  rather  a  huge 
phantasmagoria  of  his  own  creation. 

His  main  faults  again  are  hardly  denied,  save  by  extravagant 
adorers.  Dickens's  range  of  character,  though  extensive,  was  also 
peculiar  and  strictly  limited.  He  certainly  did  not  draw,  with  any 
success,  persons  beyond  the  lower  and  the  lower  middle  classes ;  and 
the  defence  sometimes  put,  that  he  did  not  wish  to  do  so,  must 
be  ruled  out,  for  he  tried  and  failed  to  do  it.  His  characters  of  the 
upper  and  upper  middle  classes  (with  whom,  it  must  be  remembered, 
he  had,  in  the  time  when  he  was  "  making  himself."  hardly  associ- 
ated at  all,  while  later  he  was  too  busy,  too  much  set  in  one  groove, 
and  it  may  be  too  prejudiced,  to  study  them  with  impartiality)  have 


CHAP.  II  THE  VICTORIAN   NOVEL  743 

not  merely  the  fantastic  quality,  the  doubtful  reality,  of  his  Sam 
Wellers  and  his  Dick  Swivellers.  They  are  not  creatures  who,  in 
another  and  slightly  altered  world,  might  be  real  and  are  still 
delightful,  but  monsters  not  suited  to  any  conceivable  scheme.  The 
relations  of  the  second  Mrs.  Dombey  (except  Cousin  Feenix,  who  is  at 
least  a  genial  improbability),  the  society  of  the  Dedlocks,  the  guests  of 
the  Dorrits  in  their  prosperity,  and  some  of  those  of  the  Veneerings, 
have  hardly  a  touch  of  life  —  they  are  to  the  human  species  what  the 
fancy  birds  and  beasts,  by  creating  which  the  late  Mr.  Waterton  used 
to  amuse  himself  and  display  his  skill  in  taxidermy,  were  to  the  actual 
fauna  of  this  earth.  Nor  is  it  reasonably  deniable  that  Dickens  had 
many  irritating  mannerisms,  a  lack  of  anything  like  real  acquaint- 
ance or  sympathy  with  great  and  high  regions  of  thought,  and  an 
unfortunate  proneness  to  talk  about  what  he  did  not  understand. 
But  he  remains  the  greatest  fantastic  novelist  of  England,  and,  with 
Balzac,  the  greatest  fantastic  novelist  of  the  world ;  and  his  three 
best  books,  which  may  be  taken  to  be  Pickwick,  David  Copperfield, 
and  Great  Expectations,  are  the  masterpieces  of  their  special  kind. 

William  Makepeace  Thackeray  was  born  at  Calcutta  (where  his 
father,  a'  cadet  of  a  family  originally  of  Yorkshire,  and  grandson  of 
a  headmaster  of  Harrow,  was  a  Company's  servant)  in  July  181 1. 
His  father  died  when  he  was  five  years  old,  and  his  „„  , 
mother  marrying  again,  the  boy  was  sent  home,  and, 
after  living  at  Tunbridge  Wells  and  afterwards  in  Devonshire,  went 
to  Charterhouse.  He  proceeded  in  1829  to  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, but  took  no  degree.  He  contributed,  however,  to  an  under- 
graduates' paper,  The  Snob,  and  parodied  Tennyson's  "  Timbuctoo," 
or  at  least  wrote  a  burlesque  poem  in  competition  with  it,  the  first 
couplet  of  which  is  a  pleasant  foretaste  of  his  style  all  through 
life  — 

In  Africa  —  a  quarter  of  the  world  — 

The  men  are  black,  their  locks  are  crisp  and  curled. 

After  leaving  Cambridge  he  travelled  in  Germany,  and  began  to  read 
for  the  Bar ;  but  the  loss  of  a  competent,  though  not  large,  income 
which  he  had  inherited,  made  some  more  speedily  remunerative 
occupation  necessary,  and  he  took  to  journalism,  sinking  most  of  his 
remaining  property  in  running,  instead  of  merely  writing  for,  papers. 
He  went  to  Paris,  where  his  mother  and  stepfather  were  living,  to 
study  painting,  for  he  was  much  more  set  on  art  than  even  on  litera- 
ture, and  had,  as  his  illustrations  show,  great,  though  curiously 
warped  and  incomplete,  ability  tlierefor.  He  married  in  1836,  and 
settled  after  a  time  in  London,  writing  busily  for  all  sorts  of  papers 
from  the  Times  and  Fraser  downwards.      Hut,  after  the  birth   of  his 


744 


VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  XI 


third    child,    his   wife's    mind   gave   way,   and    she   never  recovered, 
though  she  survived  him  for  some  thirty  years. 

Despite  what  seems,  on  looking  back,  the  unmistakable,  and 
indeed  unique,  quality  of  Thackeray's  most  immature  work,  it  was 
very  long  before  it   attained   popular   recognition,    while   it   never  at 

any  time  brought  him   anything   like    the   substantial   re- 
earl^work.    wards   earned   by  Dickens.     But,   while    the   latter   never 

much  excelled  his  first  distinct  essay,  it  was  years  before 
Thackeray  gave  his  full  measure.  His  first  book,  the  Paj'is  Sketch 
Book,  published  in  1840,  and  consisting  of  reprints  of  his  work  as  a 
Paris  correspondent  for  .newspapers,  is  extremely  unequal,  much  of 
it  mediocre,  some  poor,  and  very  little  of  the  best.  It  had  no  suc- 
cess, nor  had  the  much  more  characteristic  collection  of  Tales  which 
followed  next  year,  though  this  contained  the  Yellowplush  Papers,^  the 
admirable  extravaganza  of  Major  Ga/iagan,  and  T/ie  Bedford  Row 
Conspiracy,  a  story  owing  a  little  to  Charles  de  Bernard,  but  a  master- 
piece in  itself.  Catherine,  The  Hoggarty  Diamond,  and  The  Shabby 
Gefiteel  Story  had  the  same  inequality ;  while  Barry  Lyndon,  though 
it  has  long  been  fashionable  to  rank  it  very  high,  attracted  no  great 
attention  at  first,  and  to  some  of  Thackeray's  most  fervent  -admirers 
has  always  seemed  chiefly  noticeable  as  his  first  display  of  that 
extraordinary  faculty  of  simulating,  or  rather  re-creating,  eighteenth- 
century  thought  and  feeling  which  he  afterwards  showed.  The  Irish 
Sketch  Book  of  1843,  though  a  book  almost  peerless  in  its  kind,  did 
not  please  greatly,  nor  the  admirably  From  Cornhill  to  Grand  Cairo, 
or  Eastern  Sketches  of  three  years  later.  Thackeray  had  reached 
the  full  limit  of  thirty-five  before  thriving  in  any  real  literary  sense 
seemed  possible  for  him. 

But  his  luck  was  now  turned  by  three  different  publications — the 
charming  trifle  of  Mrs.  Perkinses  Ball  (1847),  which  seems  at  last  to 
have  converted  the  public  coldness  into  appreciation;  the  wonderful 
Book  of  Snobs  (1848),  published  in  Punch;  and  most  of  all  the  great 
novel  of  Vanity  Fair  (1848).  This  last,  though  at  first  coldly  re- 
ceived, and  perhaps  not  at  first  displaying  its  full  quality,  could  not 
fail  to  win  over  whatever  critics  there  may  have  been  in  England 
(which,  by  the  way,  as  it  happened,  was  at  the  particular  moment 
by  no  means  overstocked  with  that  article).  By  the  beginning  of 
1848,  Thackeray  was  established,  in  the  estimate  of  the  best  judges, 
as  the  greatest  living  novelist,  and  he  had  made  himself  popular 
enough  to  secure  profit  as  well  as  fame.  He  lectured  a  little, 
and  the  lectures  gave  the  admirable  essays,  rather  than  lectures, 
known  as  The  English  Humourists  and   The  Four   Georges  (not  pub- 

1  The  "  Yellowplush  Correspondence  "  had  appeared  even  before  the  "  Paris  " 
book  in  1838. 


CHAP.  II  THE  VICTORIAN   NOVEL  745 

lished  till  later).  He  continued  his  Christmas  books.  But  it  was  of 
more  importance  that  he  also  continued  his  great  series  of  novels. 
Peiidennis  (1849-50),  which  followed  Vanity  Fair,  was  a  more 
amusing  and  genial,  if  not  a  greater,  book  than  its  forerunner;  and 
Esmond  (1852),  which  followed  Pendennis,  is  among  the  very 
summits  of  English  prose  fiction,  exquisitely  written  in  a  marvellous 
resurrection  of  eighteenth-century  style,  touched  somehow  with  a 
strange  modernity  and  life  which  make  it  no  pastiche,  containing  the 
most  brilliant  passages  of  mere  incident,  and,  above  all,  enshrining 
such  studies  of  character,  in  the  hero  and  heroine  in  particular,  but 
also  in  others,  as  not  four  other  makers  of  English  prose  and  verse 
can  show. 

After  a  tour  to  America,  Thackeray  produced  The  Newcomes 
(1853-55),  ^  book  resembling  Pendennis,  with  which  it  was  con- 
nected by  the  reappearance  of  some  personages,  but  with  more 
pathos,  though  perhaps  a  little  less  freshness.  He  had  a  bad  attack 
of  Roman  fever  in  the  winter  of  1855,  and  it  is  believed  that  his 
health  was  permanently  affected ;  but  this  stay  at  Rome  saw  the 
writing  of  The  Pose  and  the  Ping,  the  last  and  best  of  his 
extravaganza-romances.  The  Virginians,  the  novel  of  the  next 
two  years  (in  one  of  which  he  stood  for  Oxford  and  was  beaten), 
exhib'ted  something  of  the  inequality  of  his  earlier  work,  but  has 
much  of  the  excellence  of  the  later.  At  the  beginning  of  i860,  he 
undertook  the  editorship  of  the  new  Cornhill  Magazine,  a  task  in 
itself  very  uncongenial  to  him.  He  contributed  to  it,  however,  the 
Poundaboiit  Papers,  which  show  him  to  the  very  last  at  his  very 
best  as  an  essayist ;  and  furnished  it  with  the  slight  but  amusing 
novel  of  Lovel  the  Widower,  and  the  much  longer  but  much  less 
good  Adventures  of  Philip.  He  gave  up  the  editorship  after  two 
years,  but  began  and  carried  some  way  a  third  novel,  the  unfinished 
Denis  Dinuii.  In  this,  the  old  faculty  of  re-creation,  as  regards 
scenes,  manners,  and  speech,  is  unimpaired,  but  tlie  book  is  hardly 
long  enough  to  give  ground  for  judging  whether  the  old  wizardry  of 
character-drawing  v/ould  have  been  retrieved.  He  was  found  dead 
in  his  bed  at  his  house  in  Kensington  on  Christmas  Eve,  1863. 

Both  in  prose  and  in  verse  (for  in  a  certain  humorous-pathetic 
variety  of  the  latter  he  displayed  gifts  which  very  nearly,  if  they  do 
not  quite,  give  him  positive  and  high  rank  as  a  poet)  Thackeray's 
characteristics,  both  of  conception  and  expression,  are  wonderfully 
distinct  and  extremely  original.  During  his  lifetime  some  foolish 
persons  called  him  cynical ;  since  his  death,  others  not  more  wise 
have  called  him  a  sentimentalist.  Both  judgments  were  comple- 
mentary exaggerations  of  the  fact  just  glanced  at,  that  his  is  the 
extremest  known  development  of  that  mixture  of  the  pathetic  and  the 


746  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

humorous  which  is  latent  in  all  humour,  which  Shakespeare  had 
brought  out  occasionally  —  as  he  brought  out  everything — which  had 
been  driven  in  and  turned  to  a  furious  indignation  by  unhappy  fate 
in  Swift,  and  which  both  the  time  and  his  own  temperament  had 
allowed  only  occasionally  to  appear  in  Fielding.  An  intense 
appreciation  of  the  ludicrous  aspects  of  actual  human  life  exists  in 
Thackeray,  not  so  much  alternately  as  side  by  side  with  an  equally 
intense  appreciation  of  "  the  pity  of  it."  At  times  he  may  shock 
the  weak,  at  times  he  may  disgust  the  strong ;  but  hardly  ever  in 
his  master-work  is  there  a  real  excess  in  either  direction.  The 
verse,  as  usual  with  the  higher  form,  gives  the  simplest  and  best 
expression  of  this  mixture,  as  in  such  pieces  as  the  "  Ballad  of 
Bouillabaisse,"  "The  Age  of  Wisdom,"  "Vanitas  Vanitatum,"  and 
others ;  but  it  constantly  suffuses  the  larger  and  better  part  of  the 
prose  with  a  "  humanity "  not  so  much  "  terrible,"  though  FitzGerald 
called  it  so,  as  wonderful. 

This  peculiarity  of  thought,  however,  he  shares ;  his  peculiarity 
of  expression  is,  as  always  with  the  greatest  ones  of  literature,  wholly 
his  own.  Owing  to  whatever  cause  —  for  his  education  was  not 
irregular,  and  his  literary  taste  was  exquisite  —  Thackeray  was  at 
first  a  rather  "  incorrect "  writer,  in  the  school  sense,  and  he  never 
became  a  very  correct  one ;  but  this  was  of  the  slightest  possible 
importance.  We  can  see  in  his  very  earliest  writings  a  peculiarity 
of  phrase,  of  style  in  the  greatest  sense,  which  is  nowhere  discernible 
before  him,  though  its  easier  and  more  tangible  mannerisms  have 
been  copied  by  some  after  him.  It  is  an  extremely  conversational 
style,  and  at  even  its  highest  pitches  it  always  seems  to  be 
addressed  to  a  listener,  rather  than,  like  some  of  the  great  literary 
styles,  those  of  Shakespeare's  soliloquies  in  particular,  to  be  com- 
posed without  reference  to  reading  or  hearing  at  all.  Thackeray 
always  presupposes  an  interlocutor  or  at  least  an  auditor,  and  in  so 
far  as  we  can  lay  the  finger  on  any  really  formative  peculiarity  of  his 
style,  it  is  this,  that  he  is  constantly  meeting,  as  it  were,  the  fancies, 
objections,  assents,  and  the  like  which  he  supposes  to  arise  in  this 
double  of  himself.  This  peculiarity  is  observable  not  more  in  his 
elaborate  digressions  of  "address  to  the  reader"  (suggested,  as  no 
doubt  they  were,  by  Fielding's  more  set  exordia)  than  in  the  smallest 
turns  of  his  phrase  in  novel  or  essay  alike.  His  play  on  words,  —  a 
point  in  which  he  is  again  Shakespearian,  —  his  broken  sentences,  the 
rapid  zigzag  turns  of  his  thought  and  fancy,  are  all  due,  partly  at 
least,  to  this  intense  excitement  of  brain,  which  overhears  beforehand, 
as  it  were,  the  coming  repartee,  comment,  annotation,  and  half 
annexes,  half  parries  it  ere  it  arrives.  It  follows  from  this  that 
there  is   no   phrase   in   English   so   nervous,  so  flutteringly  alive,  as 


CHAP.  II  THE  VICTORIAN  NOVEL  7^7 

Thackeray's.  It  stands  at  the  very  opposite  pole  from  such  other 
phrase  as  Lander's,  which  is  complete,  majestic,  imposing,  but  a  very 
little  dead —  to  be  contemplated,  to  be  even  received  with  respect  and 
admiration  by  the  reader,  but  separated  from  him  by  a  gulf.  Whereas 
between  Thackeray  and  his  reader  there  is  a  constant  pulse  and 
current  of  sympathetic  feeling  and  thought.  The  reader  knows  that 
the  author  is  all  attention  to  know  what  he  will  think,  what  he  will 
feel,  and  he  is  all  the  more  sensitive  to  the  thoughts  and  the  feelings 
of  the  author.  If  we  find  this  anywhere  before  in  English  literature, 
we  find  it  in  the  great  fantasts  —  Burton  and  Browne  —  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  and  just  before  Thackeray  in  Charles  Lamb,  from 
whom,  if  from  anybody,  he  may  have  derived  hints  for  it.  It  may 
also  be  noticed  that  he  was  a  constant  student  of  Howell,  who  has  it 
in  a  far  inferior  degree,  but  after  something  the  same  kind  as  his 
greater  contemporaries.  These  gifts,  and  that  other  singular  one  of 
simulating  the  style  of  former  times,  do  not  fully  explain  Thackeray's 
mastery,  but  they  are  historically  noticeable.  They  would  not  have 
made  him  what  he  is,  the  recorder  for  ever  of  the  higher  English  life  in 
the  middle  nineteenth  century,  and  the  creator,  in  that  period  and  out 
of  it,  of , Becky  Sharp  and  of  Beatrix  Esmond ;  but  they  helped  him 
to  be  this,  and  they  made  him  one  of  the  very  greatest  of  English 
writers. 

The  determination  of  genius  and  talent  towards  the  novel,  of 
which  these  two  great  writers  were  the  greatest  and  earliest  expres- 
sion, affected,  as  we  have  said,  older  men  like  Bulwer  and  Lever,  and 
extracted  from  them  better  work  than  they  had  at  first  produced. 
But  it  was,  naturally,  shown  with  more  distinctness  in  younger  men 
and  women,  who  may  in  some  cases  have  imitated  Dickens  or 
Thackeray  directly,  but  who  in  most  were  not  their  children  so  much 
as  their  younger  brothers  and  sisters. 

Among   the   earliest   of    these   was   Charlotte    Bronte,    a    novelist 
whose  life  has  received  rather  disproportionate  and  even  unfortunate 
attention,  but  whose  work  is  still  very  variously  judged,  and  in  fact, 
from     its     peculiarities    of    circumstance,     will     probably 
always  remain  a  problem.      She  was   born   in    1816,  the      ^''r^n?-" 
daughter  of  a  clergyman  of  Irish  extraction,  but  beneficed 
in   Yorkshire,  and    she   had    two    younger  sisters,  Emily  and    Anne. 
The  three  in  1846  published  a  volume  of  poems  under  the  names  of 
Currer,  Ellis,  and  Acton  Bell.     It  attracted  no  attention,  and,  so  far 
as  Charlotte's  and  Anne's  verse  was  concerned,  did  not  deserve  any. 
But    Emily    had    a    narrow    intense    vein    of  poetry   in    her,    and    her 
"  Kcmemljrance  "  and  one  or  two  other  things  are  almost  great.     They 
then    tried    prose    fiction,   Charlotte    writing    The   Professor,   Emily, 
Wilt  her  ing  Heights,    and   Anne,    The    'Tenant  of   Wild/ell  Hall  and 


748  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

Agnes  Grey.  These  two  last  are  ordinary  things  ;  IVuthering  Heights 
an  extraordinary  one,  though  its  merits  may  be  variously  judged  ; 
The  Professor  did  not  in  the  least  give  Charlotte's  quality,  and  she 
could  not  get  it  published.  Nor  was  she  at  first  more  fortunate  with 
Jane  Eyre.,  which,  however,  was  at  last  accepted  by  Messrs.  Smith 
and  Elder,  and  issued  in  1847.  It  was  extravagantly  attacked  for 
'•  impropriety "  and  other  crimes,  but  was  popular.  Yet  its  author, 
though  she  lived  seven  or  eight  years  longer,  wrote  little  more, 
Shirley  in  1849,  and  Villette  in  1852,  neither  of  them  long  books, 
being  her  only  completed  work.  She  married  Mr,  Nicholls,  who  was 
her  father's  curate  at  Ha  worth,  in  1854,  and  died  next  year  on  the  31st 
of  March.  The  Professor  also  found  its  way  at  last  into  print,  but 
her  '■'■  remains  "  were  quite  fragmentary. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  circumstances  of  Miss  Bronte's  work 
are  rather  peculiar.  Critics  have  often  to  judge  from  a  small  amount 
of  work,  when  the  author  has  been  precocious  and  has  died  young. 
But  Charlotte  Bronte  published  nothing  of  importance  till  she  was 
past  thirty,  and  though  she  was  not  far  off  forty  when  she  died,  and 
had  a  great  success  to  encourage  her,  increased  her  work  but  little. 
In  such  a  case  it  may  at  least  be  doubted  whether  longer  life  would 
have  given  much  more  work  or  whether  there  was  indeed  much  more 
to  come. 

But  there  are  other  and  more  intimate  features  which  point  to  the 
same  inference.  Of  the  talent  —  in  fact  of  the  genius  in  a  certain 
flawed  and  limited  sense  —  of  "  Currer  Bell  "  there  can  be  no  doubt. 
She  followed  no  one,  and  many  have  followed  her.  Her  work, 
however  questionable  it  may  be  in  itself,  stands  in  the  middle  of  the 
century,  marking  distinctly  a  transition  period.  It  is  distinguished 
as  much  from  Thackeray  and  from  Dickens  by  a  curious  spirit  of 
irregular  and  stunted  romanticism,  as  it  is  distinguished  from  the 
romantics  proper  by  a  realist  touch  no  less  unmistakable. 

And  yet  her  limitations  are  extraordinary.  It  seems  as  if,  unless 
in  the  grim-grotesque  of  parts  of  Jane  Eyre,  she  could  never  get 
beyond  her  personal  experiences.  The  exacter  and  less  dreamy  part 
oijane  Eyre  itself  is  merely  a  half-vindictive  record  of  her  sufferings 
as  a  school-girl  and  a  governess.  Shirley  is,  in  the  heroine,  a  portrait 
of  her  sister  Emily ;  Caroline,  it  is  believed,  was  another,  hardly  less 
direct ;  the  curates  and  their  chiefs  are  a  series  of  almost  libellous 
likenesses.  Villette  reproduces  her  stay  in  Brussels  with  the  same 
audacious  fidelity.  Out  of  this  circle  of  personal  experiences  she 
could  never  get,  or  could  get  out  of  it  only  into  the  imaginary  and  not 
very  wo^rthy  society  of  her  Rochesters,  in  which  she  certainly  created 
the  ugly  and  unattractive  hero. 

This  indicates,  if  not  a  grave  fault,  at  any  rate  a  distinct  want  in 


CHAP.  II  THE   VICTORIAN  NOVEL 


749 


her  artistic  nature.  The  transcript  of  personal  experience  is  not 
only  a  legitimate,  but  an  almost  invariable,  part  of  the  novelist's  re- 
sources. We  have  it  in  Fielding  as  in  Smollett,  in  Sterne  as  in  Miss 
Barney,  in  Miss  Austen  as  in  Scott,  in  Dickens  as  in  Thackeray. 
But  the  novelist  cannot,  like  the  poet,  "  look  in  his  heart,"  and  his 
memory,  and  write  exclusively.  The  result,  save  in  a  person  of 
almost  supernatural  experience  and  quite  supernatural  character, 
must  be  monotonous,  and  can  hardly  fail,  even  in  its  monotony,  to 
be  scanty.  Every  life  (it  has  been  said  in  many  forms)  will  give  one 
book  if  the  liver  knows  how  to  write  it ;  but  few  lives  indeed  will  give 
more  than  one. 

There  are  other  things  in  this  curious  writer  which  might  be 
noted  as  faults,  as  well  as  some  which  might  be  set  to  her  credit. 
But  her  great  merit  is  that  she  really  did  initiate.  We  had  the 
picaresque  novel,  the  romance  of  adventure,  the  prose  comedy  of 
manners  and  character,  the  extravaganza,  the  historical  novel,  the 
novel  intensely  domestic.  She  introduced  a  new  cross  and  blend 
which  was  at  once  domestic  and  romantic,  analytic  and  imaginative, 
pathetic  and  ethical  —  the  novel  neither  namby-pamby  nor  goody- 
goody,  nor  idly  handling  sham  terrors,  nor  clumsily,  and  without 
magic,  trying  to  emulate  the  Great  Magician's  dealings  with  the  past, 
nor  decorating  the  present  with  mawkish  sentiment  and  third-hand 
rhetoric.  In  a  word,  she  showed  the  way,  though  in  her  own  work 
she  hardly  discovered  the  country. 

She  was  followed,  and  pretty  close,  by  a  group  of  remarkable 
novelists,  most  of  whom  cannot  be  said  to  have  owed  each  other 
anything,  because  they  were  very  nearly  of  the  same  age.  The 
eldest  of  the  group,  who  became  the  biographer  of  Char- 
lotte Bronte  herself,  was  not  the  most  remarkable,  though 
she  has  her  partisans.  This  was  Elizabeth  Stevenson,  a  name  in 
which  few  will  recognise  Mrs.  Gaskell.  She  was  born  in  1810  at 
CheLsea,  but  was  brought  up  at  Knutsford,  near  Manchester,  and  in 
1832  married  a  Unitarian  minister  of  that  city.  Her  first  novel  of 
importance,  Mary  Barton  (1848),  was  almost  the  first  attempt 
(though  Disraeli  had  touched  the  subject  in  his  meteoric  way  in  Sybil, 
and  others  otherwise)  to  make  the  lower  life  of  a  great  manufacturing 
town,  faitlifully  pictured,  into  tlie  sul)stance  of  a  novel,  rather  in  the 
way  in  wliicli  Miss  Austen  had  used  the  life  of  English  parsonages  and 
manor-houses  than  in  the  fantastic  manner  of  Dickens.  It  was  a 
great  and  a  deserved  success.  Ruth,  five  years  later,  develops  the 
more  theatrical  side  of  the  talent  shown  in  Afary  Barton,  but  Cran- 
ford,  its  contemporary  (1853),  is  nearer  to  the  actual  subjects  and 
manner  of  the  mistress  —  for  there  can  he  very  little  doubt  that  it 
would    hardly  have  been  what   it   is  if  I-lvnna   luid  not  been   written, 


750  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

though  Mrs.  Gaskell  replaced  the  slightly  merciless  satire  of  the 
original  with  an  amiable  sympathy,  less  potent  but  hardly  less  agree- 
able. Of  the  books  which  followed,  till  her  death  in  1865,  North 
and  South  (1855),  and  Syhna^s  Lovers  (1863),  with  the  unfinished 
Wives  and  Daughters  (1866),  may  be  especially  mentioned.  In  Mary 
Barton  the  labour-trcubles  of  her  scene  give  her  something  of  the 
extraordinary  interest  and  excitement  to  which  the  elder  novelists  had 
thought  it  almost  obligatory  to  have  recourse ;  but  in  most  of  her 
other  work  she  dared  the  dangers  of  the  obvious  and  found  them 
vain. 

Next  in  order  of  birth  was  a  slightly  eccentric  but  very  powerful 
tale-teller,  Charles  Reade,  who  tried  all  styles,  and  never  did  any- 
thing commonplace  in  any,  though  perhaps  he  never  turned  out  an 
actual   masterpiece.     He  was  born  in   181 4,  at  Ipsden  in 

Read"  Oxfordshire,  of  a  family  of  the  squirearchy,  became  a 
Demy  and  then  in  due  course  a  Fellow  of  Magdalen 
College,  Oxford,  and  was  called  to  the  Bar,  but  neither  practised  nor 
took  up  any  regular  employment.  After  the  manner  of  a  French 
rather  than  of  an  English  man  of  letters  he  began  with  play-writing, 
which  he  never  gave  up,  though  he  was  not  more  successful  in  pro- 
ducing literary  drama  than  most  of  his  contemporaries  ;  and  he  did 
not  make  his  mark  as  a  novelist  till  he  was  nearly  forty,  when,  in 
1852,  he  published  Peg  IVoffington.  Thenceforward  he  was  a 
frequent,  but  not  too  frequent,  producer  of  novels,  which  he  wrote  on 
the  modern  system  of  "  document  "-collecting  —  gathering  from  news- 
papers and  books  every  particular,  about  things  past  or  present,  that 
he  thought  might  give  principal  or  auxiliary  interest  to  his  tales, 
but  infusing  into  each  touches  of  remarkable  idiosyncrasy.  His  best 
books  beyond  all  question  are  //  is  Never  too  Late  to  Mend  (1856) 
and  the  Cloister  and  the  Hearth  (1861)  :  the  one  a  story,  first  of 
brutality  towards  prisoners  in  gaols,  and  then  of  the  new  Australian 
gold-fields ;  the  other  a  wonderful  adaptation,  in  the  special  spirit 
of  the  later  nineteenth  century,  of  the  Colloquies  and  other  autobio- 
graphical or  semi-autobiographical  writings  of  Erasmus,  which  are 
drawn  upon  to  give  a  romantic  picture  of  that  humanist's  father. 
But  it  may  be  questioned  whether  the  already-mentioned  Peg  IVoffing- 
ton and  Christie  Johnstone  (1853),  also  an  early  piece,  to  which 
may  be  ?Ld.6.t6.  Love  me  Little,  Love  me  Long  (1859),  do  not  show 
him  at  his  very  best,  if  they  are  not  his  very  best  books,  because 
they  are  less  overladen  than  the  others,  and  still  less  than  his  later 
works  from  Griffith  Gaunt  (1863)  to  A  Woman-Hater  (1877),  with 
"  purpose,"  with  "  document,"  with  episode,  and  with  digression.  He 
died  in  1884. 

Yet   another  year,    and    in    181 5    was   born  Anthony   Trollope,  a 


CHAP.  II  THE   VICTORIAN   NOVEL 


751 


novelist  immensely  prolific,  popular  for  a  time,  though  not  quite  till 
his  death,  a  good  deal  underrated  since,  never  perhaps  rated  or  likely 
to  be  rated  by  good  critics  among  the  first,  but  sure 
with  such  critics,  sooner  or  later,  of  recognition  as  xr"o'nop^ 
interesting  and  singularly  typical.  He  belonged  to  a 
literary  family,  for  his  mother  was  herself  a  popular  and  prolific 
novelist,  and  his  elder  brother,  Thomas  Adolphus,  was  a  miscellaneous 
writer  of  industry  and  merit,  chiefly  on  Italian  subjects.  Anthony 
himself,  though  he  went  for  a  time  to  two  great  public  schools, — 
Winchester  and  Harrow,  —  was  rather  irregularly  educated  on  the 
whole,  and  entered  the  public  service  early,  reaching  a  high  position 
in  the  Post  Office,  and  deriving  not  a  few  of  his  scenes  and  char- 
acters from  his  experiences  there.  He  had  also  a  rather  wide  know- 
ledge of  different  kinds  of  English  upper  middle-class  society  and 
of  some  of  the  lower,  was  an  enthusiastic  fox-hunter,  knew  London 
society,  literary  and  other,  well,  and  at  the  same  time  had  a  knowledge 
of  the  peculiar  and  characteristic  life  of  cathedral  towns  which  would 
not  have  disgraced  Fielding  or  Miss  Austen.  After  some  initial 
experiments,  in  which  he  did  not  show  himself  at  his  full  strength,  he 
began  in  1855  to  make  his  mark  with  The  Warden,  and  made  it 
unmistakably  a  little  later  with  Barchester  Tcnvers,  which  wants  only 
a.  Je-ne-sais-qnoi  to  be  one  of  the  greatest  English  novels.  The  new 
development  of  magazines,  with  serials  running  through  them  instead 
of  appearing  separately  in  parts,  exactly  suited  Trollope's  business- 
like fashions  of  composition,  and  contributed  enormously  to  his  profit, 
though  it  may  be  doubtful  whether  it  did  not  injure  his  fame  by 
tempting  him  to  over-production.  He  lived  too  long  even  for  his 
profit,  and  he  wrote  far  too  much  for  his  fame :  but  his  truth  to  life, 
and  not  merely  to  external  life,  was  extraordinary,  his  fertility  in 
scene  and  character  wonderful,  and  his  positive  power  far  greater 
than  it  has  recently  been  usual  to  admit.  As  the  prince  of  a  whole 
class,  of  novelists  who  have  flourished  throughout  the  later  nineteenth 
century,  he  at  least  must  occupy  a  representative  position  when  the 
rest  of  his  tribe  are  forgotten  ;  and  it  is  by  no  means  impossible  that 
some  who  go  to  him  merely  out  of  the  curiosity  aroused  bv  this 
representative  position  will  continue  to  read  him  for  his  intrinsic 
merit. 

1819  saw  the  birth  of  two  greater  writers,  though   the  uncertainty 
of  reputation  which  seems  to  affect  the  novelist  more  than  any  other 
class  has  attacked  them  too,  especially  the  elder.     Mary  Ann  Evans, 
later   Mrs.    Cross,    known   in    literature   as   George    Eliot, 
was    born   at    Arbury,   in   Warwickshire,   and   till   the   age         vxJoT 
of   thirty  lived  in   the   same   ncighl)ourlu)nd.     She   wrote, 
or  at  least  published,  nothing  early,  but  having  altered   her  religious 


752  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

views,  translated  Strauss's  Life  of  Jesus,  and  in  1849  went  abroad  to 
Geneva.  When  she  returned  she  began  writing  for  the  IVestniinster 
Review,  her  essays,  reviews,  and  some  further  translations  of  anti- 
Christian  work  showing  ability,  but  no  very  great  talent,  and  not 
even  an  approach  to  genius.  But  she  met,  was  attracted  by,  and  in 
a  short  time  went  to  live  with  George  Henry  Lewes  (1817-78),  a 
somewhat  Bohemian  man  of  letters,  of  great  attainments  and  remark- 
able critical  power,  who,  though  apparently  unable  to  produce  original 
work  of  merit  himself,  seems  somehow  to  have  discovered,  developed, 
or  accidentally  started  the  faculties  of  his  companion.  The  tales 
called  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  began  to  appear  in  Blackwood's  Maga- 
zine at  the  beginning  of  1857,  and  next  year  the  more  ambitious 
novel  of  Adam  Bede  was  published.  The  humour,  pathos,  and  un- 
copied  distinction  of  this  hit  both  the  critical  and  the  public  taste  of 
the  moment,  and  the  author  (who  retained  her  pseudonym,  though 
attempts  to  claim  the  credit  of  her  work  made  it  necessary  before 
very  long  to  disclose  her  identity)  strengthened  her  position  by  The 
Mill  on  the  Floss  (i860)  and  Silas  Marner  (1861).  There  are 
those  who  think  that,  had  she  died  at  this  time,  her  reputation  would 
have  been  less  exposed  to  danger  than  it  has  actually  proved  to  be ; 
and  it  is  certain  that  in  all  her  novels  after  this  time  there  is  a  shift- 
ing of  the  ground  from  the  humorous-pathetic  treatment  of  the  lower 
or  lower-middle  provincial  classes,  which  had  hitherto  been  her 
stronghold,  and  of  which  she  had  perhaps  exhausted  the  capabilities. 
But  public  taste  came  for  a  time  more  and  more  to  her,  and  Romola, 
an  Italian  Renaissance  story  (1863),  Felix  Holt  (1866),  and  Middle- 
march  (1871)  were  novels  which  brought  in  more  fame  and  more 
profit  than  any  of  their  time.  Indeed,  this  last,  appearing  as  it  did 
just  at  the  time  when  an  engouement  (as  the  French  term  it)  for 
undogmatic  religion,  unconventional  morality,  and  apparently  free 
thought  had  set  in,  made  her  a  sort  of  coterie-idol.  It  was  for  a 
time  almost  treason  to  "culture"  not  to  admire  her.  Then  the  tide 
turned,  and  though  her  next  and  last  novel,  Daniel  Deronda  (1876), 
had  a  great  sale,  yet  its  rather  preposterous  subject  (the  delight  of  a 
supposed  young  English  gentleman  in  finding  out  that  he  is  really 
a  Jew),  and  the  appalling  semi-scientific  jargon  in  which  it  was 
written,  turned  most  tastes  against  it.  Miss  Evans's  only  later  work 
(her  marriage  with  Mr.  Cross  took  place  after  Mr.  Lewes's  death 
in  1878,  and  shortly  before  her  own)  was  the  Impressions  of  Theo- 
phrastus  Such  (1879),  and  was  better  than  it  seemed  to  be,  but  was 
not  popular.  Her  posthumous  memoirs  (she  died  at  the  end  of  1880) 
were  rather  instructive  as  biography  than  interesting  as  literature. 

In  the  years  which  have  passed  since  her  death,  though  her  works 
are  believed  still  to  be  widely  read,  her  repute  with  the  critics  has 


CHAP.  II  THE   VICTORIAN   NOVEL 


753 


decreased  out  of  all  proportion  to  her  real  merits,  tliough  in  pretty 
exact  proportion  to  the  extravagant  heights  to  which  the  same  critics 
or  their  likes  had  formerly  raised  it.  This  factitious  height  she  can 
never  recover  in  the  estimate  of  a  competent  judgment.  But  it  is 
probable  that  her  four  first  books  in  fiction/  with  passages  in  all  her 
later,  will  gradually  recover  for  her,  and  leave  her  safely  established 
in,  a  high  position  among  the  second  class  of  English  novelists,  those 
who  have  rather  observed  than  created,  rather  unlocked  a  hoard  of 
experience  than  developed  a  structure  of  imagination,  who  have  no 
very  good  or  attractive  style,  but  write  clearly  and  with  knowledge. 
And  the  most  saving  grace  of  all  will  doubtless  be  found  in  her 
humour,  a  variety  of  that  great  gift  which  is  not  itself  of  the  greatest, 
being  partial,  entirely  absent  at  times,  and  never  of  the  most 
abounding  or  original  even  at  its  best,  but  real,  true,  and  at  times 
singularly  happy.  The  same  description,  though  in  a  less  degree, 
will  apply  to  her  pathos. 

Charles  Kingsley,  a  little  George  Eliot's  senior   (he  was  born  in 
the  same  year,  but  earlier,  at  Holne  in  Devonshire),  might  almost  be 
described  as  the  counterpart,  complete  in  difference,  of  that  remarkable 
woman.     He   had   the   poetry,  the  eloquence,   the  varied 
glow  and  colour,  the  interest  in  active  life,  sport,  travel,      Kingsley. 
adventure,  which  she  lacked ;  but  he  was  destitute  of  the 
philosophical  aptitudes  which,  not  always  to  her  peace,  she  possessed. 
And  though  it  would  be  almost  as  untrue  to  represent  him  as  desti- 
tute of  the  power  of  creating  character  as  it  would  be  to  represent 
her  as  destitute  of  that  of  depicting  incident,  yet  he  is  eminently  the 
romancer,  she   eminently   the   novelist  of  their  respective    time,    the 
features   of  which   each    reflected  with    uncommon  though  divergent 
fidelity. 

Kingsley  went  first  to  King's  College.  London,  then  to  Magdalene 
College,  Cambridge,  obtained  first  the  curacy  and  then  the  rectory 
of  Eversley  in  Hampshire,  and  spent  there  a  busy  and  happy,  though 
not  very  long,  life,  which  closed  in  1875.  Besides  his  living,  he  held 
at  different  times  a  canonry  of  Middleham,  the  Professorship  of 
Modern  History  at  Cambridge,  canonrics  of  Chester  and  West- 
minster, and  a  chaplaincy  to  the  Queen.  And  he  was  busy,  all  his 
life,  with  literary  work  rather  unusually  excellent,  considering  its 
variety  in  kind.  His  verse  is  not  voluminous,  but  his  Sti//if\- 
Trai^edy  (184S)  is  much  above  the  average  of  the  .semi-dramatic 
work  of  tlie  century,  and  tlie  small  volume,  Andnuitcda  and  other 
Poems   (1858),   which   chiefly  contains   the   rest   of   his    work    outside 

1  She  wrote  a  good  deal  of  verse,  of  very  lillle  merit  as  poetry,  though 
touched  occasionally  with  a  certain  fervour  of  undogmatism  and  other  will 
worships. 

3C 


754  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

prose,  includes  in  the  title-poem  the  best,  and  almost  the  only  good, 
continuous  hexameters  in  the  English  language ;  some  of  the  most 
exquisite  songs  for  music  —  "  The  Three  Fishers,"  •*  The  Starlings," 
"The  Sands  of  Dee,"  and  others  —  that  have  ever  become  popular; 
ballads,  from  "  The  Last  Buccanier  "  and  "  The  Red  King "  down- 
ward, of  extraordinary  force  and  fire ;  and  not  one  single  bad  thing, 
nor  hardly  a  weak  one,  in  the  whole  volume.  His  sermons,  in  the 
plainer  kind,  are  of  singular  goodness ;  his  miscellaneous  essays 
of  unusual  interest  and  brilliancy,  except  when  definitely  critical,  a 
function  for  which  his  prejudices,  and  his  defect  in  logical  power, 
together  with  a  certain  tendency  to  inaccuracy  of  fact,  unfitted  him. 
He  was  for  the  same  reasons  not  very  successful  as  a  historical 
writer,  and  on  one  unfortunate  occasion,  engaging  in  controversy 
with  nearly  the  most  formidable  controversialist  of  the  century. 
Cardinal  Newman,  he  experienced  a  discomfiture  which  was  rather 
due  to  the  blundering  of  his  tactics  than  to  the  weakness  of  his 
case.  But  his  special  vocation  was  fiction,  and  though  his  failings 
and  inequalities  appear  fully  in  his  novels,  those  readers  are  to  be 
pitied  who  are  prevented  by  them  from  enjoying  work  which  some- 
times approaches,  if  it  does  not  actually  equal,  the  very  best  in 
English,  and  never  leaves  the  reader  long  without  brilliant  consola- 
tions for  any  disappointment  it  may  have  inflicted.  Kingsley  began 
life  as  an  enthusiastic  Carlylian,  but  with  a  belief  in  "  the  people " 
which  he  certainly  did  not  learn  from  Carlyle ;  and  though  his  early 
crude  "  Christian  Socialism  "  was  a  little  toned  down  by  experience,  it 
left  him  to  the  last  a  politician  more  generous  than  exactly  wise. 
At  first,  however,  it  helped  to  inspire,  just  after  the  great  Chartist 
year  of  1848-49,  two  novels  —  Alton  Locke  {i?>^())  and  Veast  (1851), 
the  one  embodying  his  experiences  of  University  life  and  of  the 
slums  of  London,  the  other  touching  on  Tractarianism,  English 
country  life,  sport,  and  passing  politics,  all  blended  with  a  passionate 
love-story  —  which  will  bear  comparison  with  the  first  attempts  of  any 
writer.  Indeed,  prose  fiction  had  never  given  anything  like  the 
splendid  pictures  of  Veast,  inspired  partly,  no  doubt,  by  Mr.  Ruskin, 
though  Kingsley  was  far  above  mere  copying.  The  power  shown 
in  these  books  was  applied,  in  perhaps  increasing  measure,  to  a 
dangerous  subject,  the  break-up  of  the  Roman  Empire,  in  Hypatia 
(1853),  a  book  of  extreme  brilliancy,  where  the  author  almost 
entirely  eluded  the  curse  that  rests  on  most  classical  novels.  But 
the  full  range  and  reach  of  Kingsley's  faculty  was  not  seen  till 
Westzvard  Ho  I  (1854),  a  novel  of  Elizabethan  adventure,  written  in 
the  full  glow  of  that  return  of  patriotic  fervour  which  came  upon 
Englishmen  with  the  Crimean  war,  exhibiting  hardly  any  of  his 
defects,  and  on  a  wonderfully  sustained    level   of  excellence.      Some 


CHAP.  II  THE   VICTORIAN   NOVEL  755 

have  found  it  "  dull,"  while  others,  or  even  the  same,  have  been 
offended  by  its  religious,  political,  and  national  enthusiasm.  The 
last  is  not  a  literary  objection  ;  the  first  can  best  be  compared  with 
Gabriel  Harvey's  opinion  of  ''  that  Elvish  Queene."  Kingsley  was 
never  again  at  his  best,  except  in  the  best  parts,  which  are  not  the 
whole,  of  the  delightful  fantasy  of  The  Water  Babies  (1863),  where 
his  magnificent^  descriptive  power,  his  poetic  fancy,  and  his  not 
quite  trustworthy,  but  at  best  exquisite,  blend  of  humour  and  pathos 
find  scope.  Two  Years  Ago  (1857),  a  modern  novel  referring  to 
the  time  of  the  Crimean  war  itself,  mingles  good  and  bad  in  an  unsafe 
proportion;  and  Hereward  the  Wake  (1866),  a  new  rendering,  with 
additions,  of  the  adventures  of  the  historical  or  legendary  defender  of 
the  East  Anglian  fens  against  William  the  Conqueror,  does  the  same 
thing  in  different  material.  In  inequality  Kingsley  has  few  equals, 
in  goodness  not  many  more  superiors. 

His  brother!  Henry  (1830-76)  had  some  of  his  merits,  was  a 
better  humourist,  and  perhaps  a  better  novelist,  if  not  so  good  a 
romancer ;  but  he  had  to  write  for  bread,  ar\d  never  succeeded,  save 
perhaps  once  in  the  Australian  novel  of  Geoffrey  Ha?/ilyn 
(1859),  in  doing  himself  justice  so  far  as  an  entire  book 
is  concerned.  But  his  best  and  most  charming  things  are  to  be 
found  in  Ravenshoe  (1862),  which,  chaotic  as  a  novel,  contains 
character,  humour,  and  chivalry  that  would  do  credit  to  the  very 
greatest.  Wilkie  Collins,  who  was  born  in  1824,  and  died  in 
1889,  was  the  son  of  an  estimable  painter  of  the  English  school, 
was  a  friend  and  close  follower  of  Dickens,  and,  during  the  time 
between  1850  and  1870  chiefly,  composed  novels.  The  Dead  Secret 
(1857),  The  Woman  in  White  (i860).  No  Name  (1862),  The 
Moonstone  (1868).  etc.,  which  had  a  great  deal  of  popularity,  and 
may  be  said  to  stand  about  midway  between  Dickens's  and  Charles 
Readers  in  kind,  but  a  good  deal  below  both  in  humorous  and 
romantic  quality.  Wilkie  Collins,  however,  was  in  pure  literary 
gift  inferior  to  his  brother,  Charles  Alston,  who  did  various  things, 
especially  the  Cruise  upon  Wheels,  a  sort  of  new  ''Journey."  neither 
wholly  sentimental  nor  wholly  humorous,  which  has  a  singular 
combination  of  truth  with  fanciful  grace.  Other  novelist.s,  Mrs. 
Craik,  Major  Whyte-Melville,  "the  author  of  Guy  Livingstone'^ 
(that  is  to  say,  G.  A.  Lawrence),  Frank  Smcdley,  can  but  receive  the 
notice  of  bare  inclusion.  But  a  little  more  is  due  to  Margaret 
Oliphant  Wilson,  .Mrs.  Oliphant  (1828-97),  who  is  among  women 
novelists  the   parallel    to    Anthony  Trollope    among    men    for   prolific 

lA  third  brother,  (jeorRC,  was  p.-irt  .luthor  with  the  Earl  of  Pembroke  of  .t 
remarkable  record  of  their  South  Sea  experiences,  South  Sea  Buddies,  or  The  Earl 
and  the  Doctor. 


756  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

and  popular  production,  for  diffused  talent,  and  for  having  at  one 
period  (in  her  case  that  of  the  Chronicles  of  Carlingford,  1863-66, 
as  in  his  of  the  Chronicles  of  Barsei)  shown  something  like  genius. 
Mrs.  Oliphant,  too,  like  Trollope,  but  more  copiously,  wrote  things 
outside  fiction,  and  her  last  work,  the  posthumous  House  of  Black- 
wood, was  a  singularly  successful  attempt  in  a  very  difficult  kind. 

Many  of  the  novelists  born  in  the  second  quarter  of  the  century, 
including  their  acknowledged  chief  Mr.  George  Meredith,  are 
still  alive,  and  therefore  not  to  be  noticed  here.  They  have  all 
exhibited,  in  different  degrees  and  blends,  that  characteristic  of  the 
novel,  as  it  was  reconstituted  towards  the  middle  of  the  century, 
which  has  been  noticed  above  —  the  preference  (with  occasional 
divergencies  and  flights  into  the  historical,  the  fantastic,  and  other 
varieties)  of  strictly  ordinary  life.  It  so  happened,  however,  that  at  a 
still  later  period,  and  when  a  third  generation  had  grown  or  was 
growing  up,  popular  taste  veered  somewhat  round  to  the  adventurous, 
and  in  the  strict  sense  romantic ;  and  as  it  happens  likewise,  the  most 
remarkable  practitioner  of  this  kind  by  far  —  a  writer  not  less  note- 
worthy strictly  as  such  than  as  a  teller  of  tales  —  has  passed  away  and 
abides  our  censure. 

This  was  Robert  Louis  Balfour  Stevenson,  who  dropped  his  third 
name  on  his  title-pages.  He  was  born  on  13th  November  1850, 
was  educated  at  Edinburgh,  and  called  to  the  Bar,  but  had  tastes 
neither  for  science  nor  for  the  professions,  and  before  long 
son?^^"  took  to  wandering  and  literature,  which  remained  his 
occupations  during  the  too  brief  remainder  of  his  life.  He 
did  not  make  himself  very  early  known,  and,  perhaps  because  he  was 
somewhat  slow  in  settling  to  his  real  vocation  of  romance,  the  public 
did  not  find  him  out  for  some  time  after  he  actually  presented  him- 
self. Before  1883  he  had  published  five  volumes,  partly  reprinted 
matter. 

The  first  two  of  these  were  accounts  of  eccentric  travels,  An 
Inland  Voyage  (1878)  and  Travels  with  a  Donkey  (1879);  ^^en 
followed  two  others  of  essays,  Virginibiis  Puerisque  (1881)  and 
Familiar  Studies  of  Men  and  Books  (1881)  ;  only  at  the  tail  (1882) 
came  New  Arabian  Nights,  which  he  had  contributed  earlier  to  a 
periodical  called  London.  The  first  four  were  less  noticeable  for  their 
matter  (though  a  strong  originality,  a  pleasant  humour,  and  a  great 
faculty  of  enjoyment  were  all  evident  in  them)  than  for  a  style  some- 
times curiously  ''  tormented,!'  never  entirely  free  from  labour,  but 
always  of  the  most  ambitious  kind,  and  constantly  on  the  verge  of 
a  success  from  which  it  was  only  debarred  by  the  prominence  of 
struggle  and  reminiscence.  The  last,  with  something  of  this  also, 
showed  a  daring  fancy,  a  command  both  of  the  grotesque  and   the 


CHAP.  II  THE    VICTORIAN  NOVEL  757 

terrible,  in  short  a  liold  on  tlie  true  Romantic,  which  escaped  the 
vulgar  judgment,  but  was  unmistakable  to  those  who  could  see. 
Both  appeals  were  combined,  and  forced  home  upon  the  most  careless 
reader,  in  the  famous  story  of  Treasure  Island^  which  appeared  at  last 
in  1883,  and  established  Mr.  Stevenson's  reputation. 

He  lived  eleven  years  longer,  wandering,  partly  in  search  of  health 
(he  was  hopelessly  consumptive)  and  partly  from  natural  errantry,  all 
over  the  world,  till  he  finally  fixed  himself  in  Samoa,  where  he 
became  a  sort  of  white  chieftain,  interested  himself,  with  characteris- 
tic intensity  and  half-conscious  whim,  in  native  politics,  and  died 
suddenly  in  the  winter  of  1894.  He  had  in  the  interval  published, 
sometimes  in  ostensible  collaboration,  many  volumes  of  prose,  and 
three  of  verse. 

These  last,  A  ChilcVs  Garden  of  Verse  (1885),  Underwoods 
(1887),  and  Ballads  (i88g),  had  the  note  of  not  always  quite 
disengaged  originality,  which  he  could  not  help  giving,  but  do  not 
show  him  to  the  same  advantage  as  does  the  prose  of  Prince  Otto 
(1885),  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde  (1886),  Kidnapped  (1887),  The 
Black  Arrow  (1888),  the  Master  of  Ballantrae  (1889),  and  Catriotta, 
the  second  part  of  Kidnapped  {\Zc)-^.  This  was  his  last  completed 
story,  and  perhaps  his  best.  At  his  death  he  was  engaged  on  two 
others,  which  he  left  unfinished,  Weir  of  Hermiston,  an  altogether 
masterly  fragment,  where  the  presence  of  his  native  soil,  and  the 
strong  character  of  the  apparently  intended  story,  seemed  likely  to 
have  got  him  free  altogether  from  his  trammels  ;  and  St.  Ives.,  a  much 
inferior  performance,  which  reads  oddly  like  an  imitation,  not  of  him- 
self, but  of  some  of  his  own  imitators,  who  by  this  time  were  numerous. 

Mr.  Stevenson  presents  for  us,  in  a  new  and  extremely  interesting 
form,  the  problem  whether  it  would  not  have  been  better  for  him  to 
have  been  born  in  a  period  not  "  literary  "  at  all.  In  such  a  case  he 
miirht  have  written  nothing ;  but  in  such  a  case,  had  he  written  anv- 
thing,  his  native  fund  of  humour  and  of  imagination,  his  hardly  surpassed 
faculty  of  telling  a  .story  (though  not  exactly  of  finishing  one),  his  wit. 
his  command  at  once  of  the  pathetic  and  the  horrible,  must  have 
found  organs  of  expression  which  would  not  have  been  choked  and 
chained  and  distorted  as  they  were  by  the  effort  to  imitate —  to  make  a 
style  eclectic  yet  original.  But  we  may  very  well  be  thankful  for  him 
as  he  was.  and  hope  that  the  first  great  novelist  of  the  coming  century 
will  be  half  as  good  as  he,  the  last  exclusively  of  the  nineteenth. 


CHAPTER   III 

HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM 

Carlyle— His  life  and  works  — His  genius— His  style  —  Kinglake  —  Buckle — 
Freeman  —  Green  —  Froude  —  Matthew  Arnold  —  Mr.  Ruskin  —  Art  in  Eng- 
lish literature  — Symonds  —  Pater 

There  is  a  certain  advantage  in  taking  the  prominent  departments 
of  prose,  in  any  given  period,  together ;  that  the  prominent  depart- 
ments, apart  from  fiction,  of  English  prose,  during  the  last  two-thirds 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  have  been  history  and  criticism,  there  will 
be  little  question ;  and,  moreover,  the  two  are  connected  by  more  than 
this  chance  link.  As  a  matter  of  fact  nearly  all  permanent  historians 
of  the  time,  Macaulay,  Carlyle,  Froude,  have  been  critics,  even 
literary  critics,  while  Mr.  Ruskin,  the  most  proininent  critic,  pure  and 
simple,  has  paid  constant,  if  sometimes  fantastic,  attention  to  history. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  we  may  meet  with  a  historian  like  Mr.  Freeman, 
whose  taste  is  not  mainly  for  literature,  or  with  a  critic  like  Mr. 
Arnold,  who  has  a  positive  distaste  for  history.  But  these  are 
exceptions  which  make,  not  unmake,  the  rule.  As  stated  before, 
this  chapter  will  be  headed  by  Carlyle,  who,  though  an  older  man 
than  almost  any  mentioned  in  this  Book,  hardly  made  any  definite 
mark  till  the  thirties,  and  maintained  his  primacy  during  no  less  than 
forty-four  years  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria. 

Thomas    Carlyle    was    born    on    4th    December    1795,   at    Eccle- 

fechan  in  Dumfriesshire.       He  was    the    son    of  a  stone-mason,  and 

both  his  father  and  his  mother  were  persons  of  strong  character,  not  a 

few  of  their  famous  son's  phrases  and  ways  of  speech  being, 

^"^y^^-  jt  would  seem,  traceable  to  them.  The  parish  school, 
the  Academy  or  Grammar  School  of  Annan,  and  the  University  of 
Edinburgh,  which  he  entered  in  his  fifteenth  year,  saw  his  education ; 
and  then,  having  no  fancy  for  the  Church,  and  less  for  the  Law,  he 
became  a  schoolmaster,  and  practised  that  office,  against  the  grain,  for 
some  years  in  different  places.  He  did  some  hackwork  for  ency- 
clopaedias, etc.,  and  wrotQ  a  little   for  the    London  Magazine,  as  he 

758 


CHAP.  Ill  HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM  759 

did  later  for  Fraser  and  the  Edinburgh.  Blackwood,  a  more  con- 
genial place  than  any  of  these,  he  seems  never  to  have  tried,  and  its 
Toryism  would  probably  then  have  repelled  him.  He  lived  for  a 
time  in  London,  knew  Coleridge,  wrote  (in  the  orthodox  late 
Georgian  style,  as  different  from  his  later  and  characteristic  way  as  a 
wax  candle  from  a  Roman  one)  his  respectable  Life  of  Schiller 
(1825),  and  in  1826  secured  his  future  career  by  marrying  Miss  Jane 
Welsh,  a  young  lady  much  his  superior  in  position,  possessed  of  a 
small  property,  attractive,  though  no  beauty,  in  person,  and  albeit  pro- 
vided, as  became  a  descendant  of  John  Knox,  with  a  quick  temper  and 
an  exceedingly  sharp  tongue,  yet  also  endowed  with  something  like 
genius,  with  extraordinary  resolution  and  devotion,  and  with  the  prac- 
tical wits  necessary  to  nurse  or  mother  (for  it  very  nearly  came  to  that) 
a  dyspeptic,  desponding,  and  extremely  unpractical  man  of  genius  him- 
self. The  small,  and  probably  not  very  exceptional,  unhappinesses  of 
the  pair  have  been  unfairly  made  known,  and  unduly  exaggerated  by 
comment.  But  it  is  not  very  certain  that  Mrs.  Carlyle  would  have 
been  happier  with  any  one  else,  certain  that  she  received,  as  none  of  her 
contemporaries  except  Mrs.  Tennyson  did,  the  position  of  "wife  to  a 
man  of  genius,"  which  she  coveted,  and  certain  also  that  this  genius 
would  very  likely  have  come  to  little  or  nothing  but  for  her.  Carlyle 
retired  to  his  wife's  farm  of  Craigenputtock,  in  his  native  county ; 
and  between  1828  and  1834,  at  Craigenputtock,  he  digested  (in  so 
far  as  he  ever  did  digest)  the  chaos  of  thought  and  doubt  that  had 
been  seething  in  him  for  a  third  of  a  century,  acquired  his  own  style, 
and  applied  it  in  Sartor  Resartus,  The  French  Revolution  (at  least 
most  of  it),  and  by  far  the  greater  part  of  the  articles  and  reviews 
which  compose  his  Miscellaneous  Essays. 

The  first  of  these  —  one  of  the  wildest  books  in  appearance  (so 
much  so  that  it  disgusted  and  frightened  most  of  the  subscribers  to 
Fraser'' s,  in  which  it  appeared),  but  original  and  memorable  as  few 
are  —  contains,  in  the  guise  of  an  account  of  the  German  philoso])her, 
Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh,  and  his  "  philosophy  of  clothes "  (a  notion 
borrowed  from  Swift,  as  much  of  the  nomenclature  is  translated  from 
Scott),  a  good  deal  of  autobiography.  Entepfuhl  is  Ecclefechan,  and 
the  spot  of  the  revelation  of  the  "  Everlasting  No,"  nominally  the 
Rue  St.  Thomas  de  I'Enfer  in  Paris,  has  been  authoritatively  identi- 
fied with  the  junction  of  Leith  Walk  and  Pilrig  Street,  on  the 
outskirts  of  Edinl)urgh.  But  it  also  contained  tlie  first  and  almost 
the  definite  manifesto  of  Carlyle\s  celebrated  ''"Gospel"  —  a  gospel 
very  negative  in  general  and  not  in  detail  very  positive,  hut  wholly 
tonic  and  healthy  in  its  denunciation  of  the  shams  which  at  no  time 
in  the  world's  history  have  been  more  prominent  than  in  the  nineteenth 
century. 


760  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

In    1834   the    Carlyles    moved    to    London,   and    soon   established 

themselves  in  the  Chelsea  house  which  continued  to  be  their  home. 

Tlie  French   Revolution,    after   being  destroyed   by   acci- 

works!"  dent  and  rewritten,  appeared  in  1837,  and  there  could 
be  no  doubt  about  Carlyle  after  this.  No  such  com- 
bination of  historical  research  and  vivid  dramatic  quality  had  been 
seen  before.  It  stands,  and  ever  will  stand,  alone  —  at  once  a 
history  of  remarkable  accuracy  (the  errors  detected  since  are  all 
trifles)  and  a  romance  of  hardly  equalled  splendour.  Carlyle  lect- 
ured a  good  deal  in  his  early  London  years,  but  only  one  course 
was  published  by  himself,  the  Heroes  and  Hero-VVorship  of  1841. 
Between  this  and  The  French  Revolution  he  had  issued  the  short 
piece  on  Chartism  (not  his  happiest)  ;  and  with  the  Heroes,  or 
nearly  so,  appeared  the  first  collection  of  his  admirable  Essays.  His 
peculiar  historical  method  reappeared  in  Past  atid  Present  (1843),  the 
earlier  part  of  which  is  an  astonishing  imaginative,  yet  not  fabulous, 
reconstruction  of  the  Middle  Ages  ;  and  then  he  set  it  to  a  new  and 
severe  task  in  The  Letters  and  Speeches  of  Oliver  Cromwell  (1845). 
These  latter  documents,  many  of  which  are  written  in  the  most  obscure 
jargon  that  ever  called  itself  English,  are  by  Carlyle  not  merely 
woven  up,  after  the  fashion  which  Boswell  had  begun  and  Lockhart 
perfected,  into  a  continuous  biography,  but  interpreted  with  alto- 
gether marvellous  patience,  ingenuity,  and  devotion.  He  did  not 
publish  anything  more  till  1850,  when  the  Latter-Day  Pamphlets  — 
things  more  like  the  Sartor  in  style  than  anything  he  had  written  in 
the  interval,  and  among  the  greatest  of  political  satires  —  appeared, 
while  he  followed  them  up  next  year  with  the  quietest,  and  in  the 
common  sense  most  human,  of  all  his  books,  the  Life  of  his  friend 
John  Sterling.  And  then  he  grappled  with  the  History  of  Frederick 
the  Great,  which  practically  exhausted  even  his  energies  for  fourteen 
years.  The  result  was  a  book  as  to  which  some  extreme  Carlylians 
are  in  doubt  whether  to  wish  or  not  that  he  had  never  written  it.  The 
hero  is  quite  unworthy  of  him,  the  scale  and  scheme  could  not  be 
made  other  than  scrappy,  and  few  of  the  incidents  and  characters  are 
of  the  very  first  interest.  Yet  out  of  the  vast  miscellany,  for  that  is 
what  it  really  is,  almost  innumerable  things  of  the  first  excellence 
may  be  picked.  It  was  finished  in  1865.  Carlyle  was  soon  after 
elected  Rector  by  the  students  of  his  old  University,  and,  again  a 
little  later,  his  wife  died.  He  passed  the  remaining  years  of  his 
life,  which  ended  in  1881,  in  arranging  his  own  and  his  wife's 
memoirs,  publishing  only  a  few  things  —  Early  Kings  of  Norway 
(1875)  the  best.  His  autobiographical  remains  were  published  after 
his  death  by  Mr.  Froude  —  in  undoubted  good  faith,  and  not  to  the 
direct  annoyance  of  any  reasonable  disciple,  but  with  the  certain  eflfect 


CHAP.  Ill  HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM  .  761 

of  for  a  time  alienating  the  foolisher  folk  by  their  nature,  and  with  the 
too  probable  one  of  deterring  posterity  by  their  bulk.  Some  day,  no 
doubt,  a  Carlyle  will  arise  for  Carlyle  himself,  and  do  for  him  what  he 
did  for  Cromwell  if  not  for  Frederick. 

About  his  genius  there  can  be  no  doubt  from  the  true  com- 
parative and  historical  view,  whatever  temporary  disturbances  and 
displacements  of  opinion  may  have  been  or  may  be.  It  has  three 
aspects  —  the  first,  which  concerns  us  least,  that  of  gen- 
eral tone  ;  the  next,  which  concerns  us  more,  that  of  hand-  '^  8="'"=. 
ling  and  treatment  of  subject ;  and  the  last,  which  concerns  us  most, 
that  of  style.  It  is  because  of  his  peculiar  handling  and  treatment 
that  Carlyle  almost  alone,  of  persons  born  before  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  has  been  included  in  this  Book.  Whether  the 
nineteenth  has  developed  remarkable  types  of  its  own,  in  life  and 
character,  may  be  a  question  less  confidently  to  be  answered  in  the 
affirmative  than  most  of  its  children  seem  to  suppose ;  that  it  has 
endeavoured  to  enter,  and  to  a  great  extent  has  succeeded  in  entering, 
as  no  other  has  done,  into  types  and  characters  of  the  past,  is  certain. 
And  in  this  respect  no  writer  has  expressed  its  tendencies  more  pow- 
erfully than  Carlyle.  He  may  almost  be  said  to  have  been  the  first 
to  present  historic  characters  "■realised"  after  the  fashion  of  the 
novelist,  but  with  limitation  to  fact.  In  other  words,  he  wrote  history 
as  Shakespeare  long  before  and  Scott  in  his  own  time  wrote  drama  or 
romance,  though  he  tasked  his  imagination  not  to  create  but  to  vivify 
and  rearrange  the  particulars. 

The  style  which  he  used  for  this  purpose,  and  which  undoubtedly 
had  not  a  little  to  do  with  the  success  of  the  method,  could  hardly 
have  come  into  existence  except  at  the  time  of  the  revolt  of  prose, 
following  that  of  poetry,  against  the  limitations  and  con- 

r   .1  •    1  ,         ,1  ,  Ti  •  •         His  style. 

ventions  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Representing,  as  it 
did,  that  revolt  pushed  to  its  very  furthest,  it  naturally  shocked  pre- 
cisians, some  of  whom  are  not  reconciled  to  this  day ;  and  it  must 
be  admitted  that  it  was  suscejitible  of  degradation  and  mannerism 
even  in  its  creator's  hands,  and  lias  jiroved,  almost  without  exception, 
a  detestable  thing  in  those  of  imitators.  But  Carlyle  himself  at  his 
best,  and  sometimes  to  his  last,  could  use  it  with  such  eflect  of  pathos 
now  and  then,  of  magnificence  often,  of  vivid  and  arresting  presenta- 
tion in  all  but  a  few  cases,  as  hardly  any  prose-writer  has  ever  excelled. 
His  expression,  like  the  matter  conveyed  in  it,  may  be  too  strong  for 
the  weak,  too  varied  and  elusory  in  its  far-ranging  purport  for  tlie  dull, 
too  much  penetrated  with  etliic.il  gravity  and  clear-eyed  recognition 
of  fact  for  those  who  like  mere  prettiness  and  mere  aesthetic  make- 
believe  ;   but  both  are  of  the  rarest  and  greatest. 

Its  characteristics,  like  those  of  nearly  all  great  styles,  are  partly 


762  ^  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  XI 

obvious,  partly  recondite,  or  altogether  fugitive,  even  from  the  most 
acute  and  persevering  investigation.  In  the  lowest  place  come  the 
mechanical  devices  of  capitals  —  a  revival,  of  course,  of  an  old  habit 

—  italics,  dashes,  and  other  recourses  to  the  assistance  of  the  printer. 
Next  may  be  ranked  certain  stenographic  tricks  as  regards  grammar 

—  the  omission  of  conjunctions,  pronouns,  and  generally  all  parts  of 
speech  which,  by  relying  strictly  on  the  reader's  ability  to  perceive 
the  meaning  without  them,  can  be  omitted,  and  the  omission  of 
which  both  gives  point  and  freshness  to  the  whole  and  emphasises 
those  words  that  are  left.  Next  and  higher  come  exotic,  and  specially 
German,  construction,  long  compound  adjectives,  unusual  compara- 
tives and  superlatives  like  "  beautifuller,"  unsparing  employment  of 
that  specially  English  idiom  by  which,  as  it  has  been  hyperbolically 
said,  every  verb  can  be  made  a  noun  and  every  noun  a  verb,  together 
with  a  certain,  though  not  very  large,  admixture  of  actual  neologisms 
and  coinings  like  "Gigmanity."  Farther  still  from  the  mechanical  is 
the  art  of  arrangement  in  order  of  words  and  juxtaposition  of  clauses, 
cadence  and  rhythm  of  phrase,  all  of  which  go  so  far  to  make  up  style 
in  the  positive.  And  beyond  these  again  comes  the  indefinable  part, 
the  part  which  always  remains  and  defies  analysis. 

The  origin  of  the  whole  has  been  much  discussed.  It  is  certain 
that  in  his  first  published  book  there  is,  as  has  been  said,  no  trace  of 
it.  The  Life  of  Schiller  is  not  very  distinguishable  from  the  more 
solemn  efibrts  of  Lockhart  or  Southey ;  while  in  Sartor  Resartus, 
partly  written  almost  at  the  same  time,  the  style  is  full-blown  and  in 
its  very  wildest  luxuriance.  It  used  to  be  put  down  almost  wholly 
to  imitation  of  the  Germans,  especially  Richter ;  but  though  some 
influence  from  Jean  Paul  is  not  to  be  denied,  it  may  be  very  easily 
exaggerated.  Undoubtedly  there  are  some  reminiscences  of  Sterne, 
Jean  Paul's  master.  Carlyle  is  said  himself  to  have  attributed  much 
of  it  to  family  slang  caught  from  his  father  and  mother,  and  it  is 
certain  that  there  are  strong  resemblances  in  it  to  Scottish  writing  of 
the  seventeenth  century  of  the  more  fantastic  kind,  such  as  that  of 
Sir  Thomas  Urquhart.  But  we  find  premonitions  of  Carlyle  in  many 
places,  even  .such  unexpected  ones  as  Johnson,  and  on  the  whole  the 
manner  may  be  most  safely  and  accurately  described  as  in  the  smaller 
part  a  mosaic  from  his  immense  reading,  in  the  larger  part  due  partly 
to  the  creative,  but  more  to  the  arranging  and  transforming,  power  of 
his  own  genius. 

The  historical  production  of  the  latter  half  or  two-thirds  of  the 
century  has  been  very  considerable,  but  there  are  perhaps  not  more 
than  four  or  five  other  writers  who  can  secure  a  place  here,  while  even 
in  the  case  of  one  or  two  of  these  objections  might  be  raised. 

Alexander   Kinglake,   not   exactly   a  great   historian,  and   a  con- 


CHAP.  Ill  HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM  763 

spicuous  victim  of  the  temporary  craze  for  devoting  histories  of 
enormous  length  to  periods  of  short  duration,  occupies  a  very  im- 
portant place  in   the  history  of  English   stvle.     He  was      „.    ,  , 

.  ^  .1  r-  '1     ^        1-1  Kmelake. 

born  in  181 1,  was  educated  at  Eton  and  Cambridge, 
and,  being  a  man  of  easy  means,  spent  the  rest  of  his  life  partly 
as  a  Member  of  Parliament,  partly  in  travel  abroad,  and  partly  in 
London  club-life  at  home,  till  his  death  in  1891.  He  set  a  certain  note 
of  style,  with  more  distinctness  and  effect  than  has  been  always  rec- 
ognised, in  the  brilliant  volume  of  travel  called  Eothen,  which  appeared 
in  1844.  Of  the  brilliancy,  and  to  a  great  extent  the  novelty,  of  the 
style  of  this  there  can  be  no  question.  But  of  its  positive  goodness 
there  may  be  much.  The  hard  brassy  flash  of  almost  swaggering 
epigram,  which  Matthew  Arnold  later  denounced  in  the  History  of 
the  Crimean  War,  is  already  apparent,  and  is  partly  induced  by  the 
author's  affectation  of  a  sort  of  "  tborn-crackling  "  persiflage  over  things 
in  general,  animated  by  a  superficial  and  deliberate  cynicism.  Nor 
are  the  contrasted  passages  of  fine  writing  more  agreeable,  being 
even  more  than  Bulwer's  (which  they  partly  follow)  gaudy  and 
insincere,  while  in  both  keys  there  is  a  determination  to  write  unlike 
other  people,  to  be  clever  at  all  costs,  to  unite  surprising  epithets  with 
unexpected  nouns.  The  general  effect  is  certainly  "Corinthian";  but 
the  length  of  the  book  is  not  sufficient  to  make  it  positively  disagree- 
able, and  Kinglake's  influence,  direct  and  transmitted,  has  been  enor- 
mous. It  was  perhaps  unfortunate  for  him  that  he  ever  undertook  his 
vast  History  of  the  Crimean  War  (1863-87).  He  had  many  things  in 
his  favour  —  personal  knowledge  of  part  of  the  matter,  almost  unlimited 
access  to  documents,  vivid  interest,  and,  as  Eothefi  had  shown,  a  pen 
which,  to  whatever  dangers  it  was  exposed,  had  almost  superabundant 
energy,  facility,  and  resource.  But  all  the  faults  of  his  style  and 
attitude  (except  that  he  exchanged  that  of  a  cynical  flaneur  for 
that  of  a  prose  epic-maker)  reappeared  in  e.xaggerated  form,  and 
were  aggravated  further  by  two  fatal  faults  of  handling.  In  the  first 
place,  going  beyond  even  his  models  Thiers  and  Macaulay,  he  mag- 
nified the  scale  of  his  book  to  a  quite  intolerable  extent ;  and,  in  the 
second,  he  allowed  personal  passion  and  animus  to  transform  parts 
of  it  into  laboured  panegyric,  and  other  parts  into  virulent  lampoon. 
In  short,  great  as  are  the  powers  which  the  book  displays,  it  must 
be  called,   on  the  whole,  an  imposing  failure. 

Another,  though  a  very  different,  instance  of  the  influence  of  the 
idols  of  the  middle  of  the  century  is  to  be  found  in  Henry  Thomas 
Buckle,  who   was    born    in    1823   (or   182 1?).   was  privately  educated, 
followed   no  profession,  and   died  young   at    Damascus  in        j{„^,,j|j 
1862.      Apart  from    some   unnoteworthy   Miscellanies,  his 
work  is  contained  in  his  unfinished  History  of  Civilisation  in  Europe, 


764  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

of  which  two  volumes  (1857-61)  only  appeared.  Buckle,  who  was 
a  kind  of  disciple  of  French  Positivism,  emulated  French  writers 
even  more  in  the  audacious  and  fallacious  sweep  of  his  generalisa- 
tions, attributing  eifects  in  bulk  to  the  simple  operation  of  certain 
physical  causes,  forcing  facts  to  agree  with  his  theories  wherever  an 
agreement,  even  in  appearance,  was  possible,  and  unceremoniously 
neglecting  them  where  it  was  not.  His  style  is  neither  picturesque  nor 
elaborate,  but  very  clear  and  forcible,  admitting  no  doubt  about  his 
meaning,  and  at  the  same  time  putting  that  meaning  with  a  vigour 
which  the  extremely  clear  styles  very  often  lack.  He  had  no  taste, 
not  much  judgment,  a  great  deal  of  prejudice,  and  was  almost  entirely 
dominated  by  the  unintelligent  iconoclasm  and  anti-supernaturalism 
of  the  Ust  and  the  early  part  of  the  present  century.  But  his  faults 
(except  a  certain  violence)  were  not  English,  and  he  had  merits 
which  also  are  not  the  commonest  in  English  writers,  so  that  he  may 
be  treated  by  orthodox  critics  with  more  charity  than  he  showed  in 
his  own  unorthodox  criticism. 

Edward  Augustus  Freeman  (1823-92)  and  John  Richard  Green 
(1837-83)  stood  to  each  other  in  the  relation  of  master  and  pupil, 
while  both,  though  they  devoted  their  chief  energies  to  a  period 
which  Macaulay  despised,  owed  him  a  good  deal  — 
Green  a  very  great  deal  —  in  method  and  style.  Mr. 
Freeman,  who  as  a  boy  was  privately  educated,  but  went  to  Oxford 
and  became  a  Fellow  of  Trinity  College,  first  distinguished  himself 
by  work  on  church  architecture ;  but  this  was  in  his  case  chiefly  a 
means  to  the  study  of  History,  and  he  soon  concentrated  himself 
upon  that  of  England  before,  during,  and  for  a  century  or  so  after 
the  period  of  the  Norman  Conquest.  His  History  of  that  event,  the 
pubhcation  of  which  occupied  the  decade  between  1867  and  1876, 
was  not  only  the  most  thorough  examination  of  the  subject  ever  made 
up  to  its  own  time,  but,  whatever  minor  alterations  or  supplements 
it  may  require,  is  not  likely  to  lose  the  position  of  classical  work  on 
the  subject.  Also  Freeman,  whose  time  was  his  own,  and  who  was 
a  very  facile  writer,  produced  largely  in  book  form,  and  in  contri- 
butions to  newspapers  (only  a  small  part  of  which  was  ever  collected), 
on  the  subjects  of  history,  historical  geography,  historical  politics, 
and  architecture.  He  was  a  very  learned,  and  generally,  if  not 
invariably,  a  very  accurate  writer;  and  the  value  of  his  writings  for 
reference  and  as  materials  is  not  easily  to  be  exaggerated.  Unfor- 
tunately, he  was  both  prolix  and  pedantic  in  his  general  handling,  was 
extremely  violent  and  unfair  in  the  controversies  in  which  he  delighted, 
and,  besides  other  defects  of  style,  had  almost  from  the  first  an  irritat- 
ing habit  of  allusive  periphrases  partly  caught  from  Gibbon,  but  used 
without  any  of  Gibbon's  matchless  judgment. 


CHAP.  Ill  HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM  765 

He  was,  however,  hardly  to  be  called  a  picturesque  historian  by 
direct  intention ;  his  pupil,  John  Richard  Green,  was  this  first  of  all. 
He  was  a  native  of  Oxford,  and  educated  first  at  Mag- 
dalen College  School,  and  then  at  Jesus  College.  He  ^''""' 
took  orders,  contributed  a  good  deal  to  the  Saturday  Review,  and  did 
a  certain  amount  of  parochial  work  in  London.  His  Short  History 
of  the  English  People  appeared  in  1874,  and  became  more  popular 
than  any  other  historical  work  of  the  century  except  Macaulay's.  This 
book  he  afterwards  expanded  somewhat,  and  supported  with  a  series 
of  monographs,  which  was  probably  only  prevented  by  his  early  death 
from  forming  a  valuable  historical  library.  But  his  fame  will  rest  on 
the  Short  History,  which  has,  if  not  a  few  of  the  defects,  all  the 
merits  of  its  popularity.  As  in  Macaulay's  case,  the  accuracy  of  fact 
is  usually  scrupulous,  but,  also  as  in  Macaulay's  case  (and  even  to 
a  greater  extent,  inasmuch  as  Mr.  Green  took  further  liberties  of 
picturesque  style),  the  facts  are  generalised,  grouped,  and  rhetorically 
presented  in  a  way  not  perhaps  invariably  tending  so  much  to  exact 
apprehension  of  the  fact  as  to  striking  exhibition  of  it. 

An  almost  infinitely  greater  writer  than  either  of  these  (who  were 
his  inveterate  and  hostile  critics),  not  perhaps  in  reality  much  more 
of  a  partisan  advocate  than  either,  but  unfortunately  the  inferior  of 
both,  to  an  altogether  surprising  degree,  in  accuracy  of 
statement,  was  James  Anthony  Froude.  He  was  born  ^'■°"'^*- 
near  Totnes  in  18 18,  and  died  near  Salcombe,  in  the  same  county, 
in  1894.  He  was  the  younger  brother  of  Richard  Hurrell  Froude, 
Newman's  companion  in  the  Oxford  Movement,  and  was,  after  his 
brother's  death,  himself  for  a  time  much  under  Newman's  influence. 
But  the  catastrophe  of  the  movement  sent  him  not  to  Rome  but  to 
freethought;  he  resigned  his  Fellowship  and  began  to  write  for  a 
living.  He  had  already  published  two  books.  Shado^vs  of  the  Clouds 
(1847)  and  the  Nemesis  of  Faith  (1849).  His  magazine  and 
review  contributions  included  the  admirable  Essays,  afterwards 
collected  as  Short  Studies  (1867-83).  But  he  had  more  ambitious 
designs,  and  being,  like  most  of  his  contemporaries,  bitten  with  the 
mania  for  history  on  an  enormous  scale,  began  a  great  History  of 
England  from  the  Fall  of  Wolsey  to  the  Defeat  of  the  Armada,  which 
appeared  in  twelve  volumes  between  1856  and  1869,  and.  though 
attacked  with  almost  frantic  bitterness  by  Freeman  and  his  disciples, 
made  a  great  reputation.  This  was  deserved,  despite  the  faults  of 
inaccuracy,  of  paradox,  and  of  partisanship,  which  are  undeniable, 
because  of  the  merit  —  at  times  the  transcendent  merit  —  of  the 
style,  the  novel  and  intense  kind  of  patriotism,  and  above  all,  the 
wonderful  gift  of  historic  realisation  which  it  displays.  This  last 
gift  Mr.   Froude  perhaps  got    from   his   following  of  Carlyle,  and    he 


766  VICTORIAN    LITERATURE  book  XI 

possessed   it   as  no  other   historian  of  our  time  except  Carlyle   has 
had  it. 

For  a  time  Mr.  Froude  edited  Eraser's  Magazine,  and  when  his 
great  book  was  done  he  undertook  another,  extensive  but  not  so 
extensive,  The  English  in  /relami,  which  appeared  in  three  volumes 
between  1871  and  1874.  In  this  latter  year,  and  again  in  the 
following,  he  was  sent  on  a  Government  mission  to  the  Cape,  and 
he  extended  his  journeys  to  other  English  colonies,  with  book  results 
—  Oceana  (1886),  The  Bow  of  Ulysses  (The  English  in  the  West  Indies) 
(1888).  In  1889  he  published  an  Irish  historical  novel,  The  Two 
Chiefs  of  Dunboy.  At  the  death  of  his  enemy  Freeman,  he  succeeded 
him  as  Professor  of  Modern  History  at  Oxford,  and  died  holding  the 
post,  his  lectures  in  which  had  given  birth  to  his  two  last  books  — 
Erasmus  (1894)  and  English  Seamen  (1895).  Even  in  this  list  not 
a  few  books  have  been  omitted,  such  as  his  admirable  Bunyan  (1880) 
and  the  less  good  Casar  (1879).  His  discharge  of  his  duties  as 
Carlyle's  literary  executor  from  1881  onward  had  brought  on  him 
much  obloquy,  and  even  some  accusations  of  treachery  to  his  friend 
and  master ;  but  these  latter  were  absurd,  and  it  probably  is  for 
posterity  to  judge  whether  the  apparently  ruthless  publication  of 
private  matter  was  judicious  or  not.  It  is  indeed  probable  that  in 
his  own  ironic  and  rather  cynical  mood,^  which  had  been  brought 
about  in  his  case,  as  in  some  others,  by  the  shock  of  religious  loss, 
Mr.  Froude  did  not  fully  anticipate  the  effect  which  the  disclosures 
would  have  on  an  age  as  sentimental  in  reality  as  it  is  pessimist  in 
affectation,.  This  temper  of  his,  which  is  well  vouched  for,  and 
which  escapes  in  a  tell-tale  manner  now  and  then  at  corners  of  his 
books,  by  no  means  colours  them  as  a  whole,  being  for  the  most 
part  subordinated  to  the  intense  enthusiasm  for  heroic  conduct  of  all 
kinds  which  he  had  learnt  from  Carlyle  himself,  and  which  was  of 
the  utmost  service  to  him  as  a  historian.  In  the  long  run,  however, 
he  is  certain  to  survive  chiefly  by  virtue  of  his  marvellous  style,  the 
greatest  simple  style  among  English  writers  of  the  latter  half  of  the 
century,  unless  that  position  be  accorded  equally —  it  cannot  be  awarded 
alone  —  to  his  other  master,  and  in  a  spiritual  sense  "lost  leader," 
Newman. 

Mr.  Froude's  chief  Oxford  contemporaries,  Arnold  and  Ruskin, 
were  not  historians,  but  the  transition  from  historian  to  critic,  and 
especially  from  this  historian  to  these  critics,  is  smooth  and  natural 
enough.  Not  only  did  all  "feed  their  flocks  upon  the  self-same 
Ijill,"  and  in  very  nearly  the  self-same  years,  but  all  in  different  ways 

iThe  best,  or  at  least  the  pleasantest,  expression  of  this  is  the  quite  charming 
Cat's  PilgrUnage,  published  in  1870,  and  afterwards  incorporatea  with  the  Short 
Studies. 


CHAP.  Ill  HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM  767 

were  products  of  that  incalculable  ocean-wave  of  English  thought, 
not  even  yet  half  enough  allowed  for,  called  The  Oxford  Movement ; 
and  it  was  merely  an  accident  of  individual  temperament  which  led 
one  to  history,  another  to  literature,  and  the  third  to  art,  as  their 
special  provinces  —  provinces  from  which,  however,  each  diverged 
not  a  little  widely,  and  in  the  cases  of  Arnold  and  Ruskin  not  a 
little  disastrously.  In  all,  too,  whether  nominally  historians  or  not, 
reigned  the  dominant  historical  spirit  of  the  nineteenth  century  —  the 
unconquerable  desire,  even  in  those  who  think  themselves  most  busy 
with  the  present,  to  know  first  of  all  what  the  past  has  said  and 
thought  and  done,  if  only  under  the  pretext  of  applying  the  discovery 
to  their  own  times. 

The  chief  dates  and  events  of  Matthew  Arnold's  life  will  be  given 
below  in  connection  with  his  poetry.  He  was  not  very  early  known 
to  the  public  as  a  critic  or  as  a  prose-writer  on  other  than  official 
subjects,  though  the  Preface  of  1853  revealed  him  in 
both  these  characters  to  those  who  could  read.  By  Arnold* 
degrees  his  contributions  to  magazines,  and  his  growing 
reputation  at  Oxford,  widened  the  circle  of  those  who  could  appreciate 
him,  and  the  main  doctrines  of  his  Essays  in  Criticistn  (1865)  —  the 
good  influence  of  Academies,  the  "Philistine"  tendencies  of  English 
thought  and  style,  the  necessity  of  adhering  to  the  ancients  and  the 
grand  manner,  the  deficiency  of  his  countrymen  in  ideas,  and  the 
like  —  may  be  seen  to  some  small  extent  in  the  writings  of  those  who 
had  read  him  before  the  publication  of  the  book.  That  publication, 
however,  established  his  position  —  a  position  which  he  held,  and  to 
some  extent  enlarged,  during  the  next  twenty  years.  He  was,  more- 
over, Professor  of  Poetry  at  Oxford  between  1857  and  1867,  and 
his  lectures  took  book  form,  principally  in  two  very  interesting 
works  of  criticism.  On  Translating  Homer  (1861)  and  On  the  Study 
of  Celtic  Literature  (1867).  It  cannot  be  said  that  at  any  time  he 
was  popular,  or  that  any  of  his  writings  had  a  very  wide  sale.  But, 
speaking  as  he  did  from  the  very  first  as  one  who  had  no  doubt 
of  his  own  authority,  that  authority  was  gradually  accepted  —  never, 
indeed,  without  dissents  —  in  his  proper  province  of  literature. 
Unfortunately,  he  was  tempted,  according  to  his  own  revival  of  the 
(ireek  doctrine  of  the  philosophic  position,  —  which  he  practically 
identified  for  modern  times  with,  that  of  "culture"  or  literature,  —  to 
stray  from  this  proper  domain  into  others.  The  quaint  and  long 
unreprinted  Frienils/tip\f  Garland  (1871),  in  which,  on  the  text  of 
the  Franco-Prussian  war,  he  took  occasion  to  reproach  his  country- 
men with  their  inferiority  to  Germany  in  ])()litics  and  practice  gen- 
erally (just  as  he  had  reproached  them  with  their  inferiority  to 
France  in   Ideas,  Sweetness,  Light,  and  so  forth),  redeemed,  indeed, 


768  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

an  excessive  affectation  of  tone  and  style,  and  some  rather  ephemeral 
jocularity,  by  great  liveliness  of  rather  mannered  satire,  and  by  a 
considerable  undercurrent  of  truth.  But  a  series  of  works,  mainly 
on  theological  subjects, —  Culture  and  Anarchy  (1869),  St.  Paid  and 
Protestantism  (1870),  Literature  and  Dogma  (1873),  ^^'^  ^''^  ^^^^ 
Bible  (1875),  —  occupied  too  much  of  his  time  and  was  not  fortunate. 
The  air  of  jaunty  infallibility,  which  had  sometimes  jarred  even  in 
matters  where  the  speaker's  competence  could  not  be  denied,  and 
which,  after  all,  were  matters  of  taste  or  nothing,  sat  but  ill  on  one 
speaking  as  an  amateur  on  the  gravest  subjects. 

Fortunately,  Mr.  Arnold  returned  before  his  death  to  his  proper 
sphere,  and,  in  ways  not  always  free  from  the  defects  acquired  in  this 
theological  escapade,  added  not  inconsiderably  to  his  total  stock  in 
his  real  business.  Mixed  Essays  (1879)  and  Essays  in  Criticism 
(second  series,  1888)  contained  much  admirable  work;  Irish  Essays 
(1882)  and  Discourses  in  America  (1885)  contained  some.  This 
business  was  in  effect  the  inculcation  —  by  dint  of  exhortation  in  a 
very  peculiar,  slightly  wearisome,  and  often  very  faultily  mannered, 
but  at  its  best  incomparably  dainty,  elegant,  and  fascinating  style  —  of 
a  literary  attitude  which  had  perhaps  always  been  too  rare  in  England, 
and  which,  during  the  Romantic  revolt,  as  well  as  during  the  Classical 
domination,  had  been  almost  unknown.  This  was  what  may  be 
called  the  comparative  attitude  in  literary  criticism,  the  comparison 
taking  in  not  merely  the  ancients  but  moderns  of  all  times.  By 
virtue  of  one  of  his  characteristic  crotchets,  Mr.  Arnold  declined  to 
infuse  this  comparison  with  the  full  historical  sense  which  it,  in  fact, 
requires,  and  of  which  it  is  in  reality  the  child.  He  erected  certain 
standards  and  barriers,  sometimes  just  enough,  sometimes  quite 
arbitrary,  which  he  called  "  the  grand  style,"  "  high  seriousness,"  and 
so  forth.  We  were  to  admire  the  Greeks  and  in  a  less  degree  the 
Latins  ;  but  we  were  not  to  admire,  save  very  moderately,  the  men  of  the 
Middle  Age  other  than  Dante.  The  French  were  held  up  as  models 
in  some  ways ;  but  Mr.  Arnold  could  not  honestly  recommend  French 
poetry.  Shakespeare  had  the  grand  style  only  by  accident.  Chaucer 
had  not  high  seriousness.  In  short,  no  criticism,  judged  by  individual 
utterances,  is  much  more  piecemeal,  arbitrary,  fantastic,  and  unsane 
than  Mr.  Arnold's  own,  austere  demander  though  he  be  of  order,  law, 
and  sanity  in  literature.  Nevertheless,  the  general  effect  of  this 
criticism  was  wholly  useful  and  good ;  and  if  it  be  somewhat 
unhistorical  to  say  that  it  changed  critical  habits  in  England  for  the 
better,  it  is  not  in  the  least  unhistorical  to  say  that  it  was  the  first 
important  symptom  of  such  a  change.  The  criticism  of  the 
Romantic  school  had  been  great,  but  by  force  of  genius  rather 
than  learning,  and  it  had,  even  in  the    hands   of  such    men  as    De 


CHAP.  Ill  HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM  769 

Quincey,  much  more  of  Hazlitt  and  Lamb,  been  far  too  insular.  The 
criticism  of  the  second  generation  had  not  been  great  at  all,  or  where  it 
had  possessed  greatness,  as  in  the  cases  of  Macaulay  and  Carlyle,  had 
not  been  strictly  literary.  Even  French  criticism  (to  which  Mr. 
Arnold  resorted  for  help,  especially  from  Sainte-Beuve)  was  in  his 
own  time  changing  for  the  worse,  and  becoming,  in  the  hands  of  Taine 
and  his  followers,  a  barren  branch  of  pseudo-science,  busying  itself 
with  question-begging  and  otiose  problems  of  race,  tendencies,  and 
the  like,  instead  of  attending  to  the  pure  art  of  literary  comparison. 
Accordingly  his  theory,  if  not  his  practice,  especially  at  a  time  when 
study  of  the  classics  was  being  ousted  from  the  place  which  it  had  so 
long  rightfully  held,  was  valuable.  And  though  the  style  in  which  it 
was  expressed  was  by  no  means  faultless,  yet  it  could  not  but  gain 
from  that  style  —  one  of  almost  impeccable  correctness  in  formal 
points,  glittering  but  not  gaudy  at  its  best,  possessing  the  indescrib- 
able rhythm,  which  is  never  metre,  of  the  best  prose,  pure  without 
being  pedantic  in  vocabulary,  and  at  least  sometimes  attaining  the 
very  and  mere  salt  of  classical  elegance. 

The  other  writer  who  has  been  specially  mentioned  (the  only 
living  writer  who  takes  full  place  in  this  book)  exhibits  most  excel- 
lent differences.  Mr.  John  Ruskin  was  born  in  London  on  8th 
February   iSig,  and  educated  at  home  chiefly,  his  father,    ,.    ,     ,. 

.  ■'  .  .  ,  ^       -^  .        .  Mr.  Ruskin. 

who  was  a  wine  merchant  and  a  man  01  means,  having 
a  house  at  Denmark  Hill.  He  went  to  Oxford  as  a  gentleman- 
commoner  of  Christ  Church,  gained  the  Newdigate  for  a  poem  on 
Salsette  and  Elephanta  in  1839,  and  took  his  degree  in  1842,  being  thus 
entitled  to  describe  himself  in  his  first  work.  Modern  Painters,  which 
followed  next  year,  as  "  a  graduate  of  Oxford."  Mr.  Ruskin  was  an 
ardent  student  of  art,  in  which,  as  far  as  drawing,  if  not  painting, 
went,  he  attained  considerable  proficiency ;  but  his  real  weapon  was 
the  pen,  not  the  pencil.  His  first  purpose  in  using  it  was  the 
extolling  of  Turner  above  all  painters  of  his  own  day  and  most  of 
days  past ;  but  the  book,  which  extended  to  five  large  volumes  and 
occupied  seventeen  years  in  composition  and  publication,  turned  to  a 
vast  assemblage  of  what  the  Middle  Ages  would  have  called  "quod- 
libetal  questions"  —  discussions  on  all  matters  connected,  and  some 
hardly  connected  at  all,  with  art.  Nor  did  the  author  confine  himself 
to  this  ample  channel  for  discharging  his  opinions  and  employing  his 
unique  style.  A  much  shorter  treatise.  The  Seven  Lamps  of  Arclti- 
tecture,  appeared  in  1849,  and  The  Stones  of  Venice,  in  scale  and 
character  almost  as  aml)ilious  as  Modern  Painters  itself,  in  1851-53; 
while  between  1855  and  18^9  Mr.  Ruskin  tor)k  up,  as  he  had  done 
earlier,  the  cudgels  for  tlie  Knglish  Pre-Raphaelite  school  in  a  series 
of  "Academy  Notes."     He  issued  two  sets  of  Lectures  on  Architect- 


77°  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 


tire  and  Painting  (1854),  and  began  to  diverge  into  somewhat  alien 
paths  with  The  Political  Economy  of  Art  (1857).  He  had  also 
written,  with  other  things,  Notes  on  the  Construction  of  Sheepfolds 
(1851),  the  title  showing  an  ingenious  perversity  which  gained  on 
him;  a  fairy  story,  The  King  of  the  Golden  River,  \n  1854,  etc. 

In  the  succeeding  decade  or  so  he  wrote  no  large  books,  but  a 
crowd  of  small  ones,  most  of  them  titled  in  the  fashion  above  noted  — 
The  Ethics  of  the  Dust  and  The  Crown  of  Wild  Olive,  1866; 
Sesame  ana  Lilies,  1865;  The  Queen  of  the  Air,  1869;  Unto  this 
Last,  1862;  Time  and  Tide  by  Wear  and  Tyne,  1867  —  in  which  he 
applied  his  peculiar  method,  always  intertwisting  a  strand  of  reference 
to  morals  and  another  to  art,  to  almost  every  conceivable  subject  — 
literature,  political  economy,  mythology,  and  physical  science,  in  fact, 
the  whole  encyclopaedia,  with  the  contents  of  any  daily  newspaper 
thrown  in.  Yet  another  decade  saw  him  Slade  Professor  of  Fine 
Art  at  his  own  University  (1869-79),  and  witnessed  the  addition  to  his 
miscellanies  of  Munera  Pnlveris,  1862-63;  Aratra  Pentelici,  1872; 
The  Eagle's  Nest,  1872;  Love's  Meinie,  1873;  Ariadne  Florentina, 
1876;  The  Laws  of  Fesole,  1877-79,  ^tc. ;  while  between  1871  and 
1884  he  issued  what  can  perhaps  best  be  called  an  autobiographic 
chronicle,  with  digressions,  entitled  Eors  Clavigera.  He  established 
himself  after  a  time  at  Brantwood,  on  Coniston  Lake,  and  for  the  last 
few  years  no  new  publications  have  issued  from  him,  though  new 
editions,  and  more  than  one  or  two  recastings  of  the  mighty  Modern 
Painters,  his  ?nagnum  opus,  have  to  be  added  to  the  list  already 
given,  which  is  of  itself  not  nearly  complete. 

An  influence  of  such  volume,  of  such  peculiarity,  and  directing 
itself  in  so  many  ways  could  not  but  have  great  and  manifold  results ; 
and  it  is  not  entirely  easy  to  separate  those  which  directly  concern 
literature  from  those  which  indirectly  concern  it.  Mr.  Ruskin  has 
written  a  great  deal  on  literature  itself,  and  has  said  many  very  true 
and  beautiful  things,  but  also  not  a  few  rather  false  and  silly  ones. 
But  he  is  most  important  for  us,  first  and  chiefly  because  of  the 
unique  character  of  his  style,  and  secondly  because  of  the  way  in 
which  he  not  only  once  for  all  gave  the  subject  of  art  a  firm  hold 
upon  English  literary  treatment,  but  affected  literature  itself  most 
powerfully  by  influences  drawn  from  painting  and  sculpture. 

Up  to  the  time  of  the  appearance  of  Modern  Painters,  the  arts  of 

design    had   had   but   little    literary  treatment   in    England,  and   had 

exercised  still  less  influence  upon  literature  itself.     Towards  the  end 

,     of  the    seventeenth    century   Evelyn,    Pepys,   and   Roger 

Art  in  English  T,,      .i       i       .        ,  •     /  n.  /  •  ,.  , 

literature.     North    had    shown    an    mtelligent    connoisseurship,    and 

Dryden    had   written   a   remarkable,    if   rather   "  outside," 

essay  on  the  parallel  of  Poetry  and  Painting.     Horace  Walpole  had 


CHAP.  Ill  HISTORY  AND   CRITICISM  771 

had  for  the  subject  not  the  least  sincere  of  his  many  fancies, 
and  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds's  very  remarkable  Discourses  had  bestowed 
on  it  formal  state  and  rank.  The  two  greatest  of  the  Romantic 
critics  proper,  Lamb  and  Hazlitt,  had  had  a  great  love  for,  and 
the  latter  a  considerable  knowledge  of,  it ;  while  Hartley  Coleridge, 
if  not  his  father,  had  the  same  bent.  But  despite  all  this,  and 
despite  the  further  fact  that  it  had  been  the  fashion,  ever  since  Charles 
I.  set  it,  for  men  of  rank  and  wealth  to  import  objects  and  make 
collections,  the  subject  had  taken  no  real  hold  of  literature ;  and  the 
general  attitude  of  men  of  letters  to  artists  was,  if  not  one  of  posi- 
tively sneering  superiority,  yet  one  of  patronising  condescension. 
The  position,  the  genius,  and  the  intimate  connection  with  letters  and 
men  of  letters  of  Reynolds  himself,  with  the  establishment  of  the 
Royal  Academy,  and  the  favour  (if  not  a  very  discriminating  favour) 
shown  by  George  III.  to  art,  began  to  alter  this;  the  half-mis- 
understood "  Picturesque "  of  Gilpin  and  his  followers  helped  the 
alteration ;  and  when,  after  the  cessation  of  the  Napoleonic  wars,  the 
English  began  to  return  to  the  Continent  and  investigate  its  treasures 
in  a  less  conventional  fashion  than  that  of  the  old  "grand  tour,"  a 
much  greater  impetus  was  given  to  art-study.  This  also  helped,  and 
was  helped  by,  the  determination  of  the  poetry  of  the  younger 
Romantics  —  Shelley,  Keats,  and  most  of  all  Tennyson  —  to  the  visual 
effect.  When  Mr.  Ruskin  was  a  mere  boy,  the  marvellous  gallery 
of  landscapes  and  figure-pieces  in  Tennyson's  Palace  of  Art  and 
Dream  of  Fair  IVonten  had  definitely  "placed"  the  new  method 
in  poetry ;  while  Landor,  De  Quincey,  and,  in  his  splashy  and  un- 
certain way,  Wilson,  with  such  minor  and  very  different  figures  as 
Wainewright  and  Darley,  had  even  earlier  done  the  same  for  prose. 
But  Mr.  Ruskin  gave  the  method  an  extension  which  could  hardly 
have  been  dreamed  of  by  readers  of  the  men  just  mentioned.  In 
his  three  great  early  books  almost  every  aspect  of  natural  scenery, 
almost  every  masterpiece  of  pictorial  and  architectural  art,  in  Europe 
was  described  with  a  fervour,  with  a  minuteness,  with  a  poetic  con- 
vincingness of  imagination,  and  above  all,  in  a  style,  whicli  had  never 
been  known  before.  From  that  time  the  blending  of  the  two  arts,  as 
far  as  literature  was  concerned,  and  the  place  of  the  younger  sister  or 
sisters  in  literary  treatment,  was  assured. 

The  most  important  agent  in  this,  of  course,  was  the  style. 
Here,  as  so  often  in  very  great  style,  there  is  no  single  or  obvious 
trick  —  no  Lylyan  antithesis  and  simile,  no  Johnsonian  parallelism  and 
balance,  to  put  the  finger  on.  Rlivthm,  as  in  all  the  great  prose  artists, 
is,  of  cout^se,  Mr.  Ruskin's  principal  weapon ;  and  it  is  of  a  piece 
with  the  wilful  lawlessness  and  ^ant  of  self-criticism  which  distin- 
guish all  his  work  that  he  too  often  transgresses  the  boundary  between 


772  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

rhythm  and  metre.  The  imbedded  blank  verse  is  altogether  too 
frequent  in  his  prose.  But  the  fault  is  rendered  less  apparent  by  the 
extreme  length  of  his  sentences.  He  is  the  first  writer  since  the 
seventeenth  century  who  has  dared,  not  once  or  twice  in  a  way  —  Burke 
did  that  —  but  constantly,  to  indulge  in  sentences  of  twenty  or  thirty 
lines,  nay,  of  more  than  a  whole  page,  in  length ;  and  while  the 
metrical  passages  act  to  some  extent  as  buoys  and  corks  to  keep  this 
length  floating,  they  are  also  to  some  extent  lost  in  it,  and  do  not 
offend  the  ear  as  they  would  in  smaller  units.  This  extreme  length 
is  also  partially  justified  by  the  fact  that  Mr.  Ruskin,  even  when 
nominally  arguing,  is  for  the  most  part  building  up  pictures  for  the 
eye  by  successive  strokes,  and  that  that  faithful  organ  retains  the 
earlier  and  accepts  the  later  touches  with  docility.  It  is  also  to  be 
said  as  one  of  his  highest  commendations  that,  magnificent  and  vari- 
coloured as  is  the  effect,  he  is  by  no  means  a  "  fine  writer  "  in  the 
ordinary  sense.  He  does  not  affect  unusual  words ;  he  is  by  no 
means  prodigal  of  adjectives,  unless  they  are,  strictly  speaking, 
wanted ;  and,  above  all,  he  is  entirely  free  from  the  besetting  fault  of 
the  generation  which  has  succeeded  him  —  the  quest  for  unusual  and 
surprising  conjunctions  of  phrase.  That  he  learnt  a  good  deal  from 
Carlyle  is  not  disputable ;  but  he  used  what  he  learnt  in  quite  differ- 
ent material,  and  with  a  totally  diiTerent  literary,  though  not  a  very 
different  moral,  effect. 

Although,    as    usually     (and    negligibly)    happens,    Mr.    Ruskin's 

ideas,    when    their   first    stage   of  unacceptance  and    their  second  of 

acceptance    were    over,    came    to    be   cavilled   at   and   pooh-poohed, 

nearly  all  writers  since  have  in  some  ways  been  affected 

ymon  s.  ^^  them.  The  two  most  noteworthy  of  these  were  Mr. 
Symonds  and  Mr.  Pater.  John  Addington  Symonds  was  born  in 
Bristol  in  1840.  He  was  the  son  of  a  local'physician  of  very  high 
repute,  was  educated  at  Harrow,  whence  he  passed  to  Oxford  (Balliol), 
and  as  a  Fellow  to  Magdalen.  He  succeeded  rather  early  to  more 
than  a  competence,  and,  suffering  from  comsumptive  tendencies,  spent 
most  of  his  later  years  at  Davos  in  the  Engadine.  He  died  at  Rome 
in  1893.  He  wrote  both  in  verse  and  in  prose,  but  in  verse  pro- 
duced nothing  of  real  importance.  Even  in  prose  his  work  was 
marred  not  merely  by  an  extremely  flowery  style,  which  did  not 
attain  to  the  higher  characteristics  of  Mr.  Ruskin's,  but  by  a  flux  of 
verbose  prolixity  with  which,  copious  as  has  been  the  production  of 
the  author  of  Modern  Painters,  no  one  could  charge  him.  Even 
Symonds's  chief  and  really  important  book,  the  History  of  the  Renais- 
sance in  Italy  (1875-86),  would  bear  much  compression,  and  almost 
every  one  of  his  numerous  volumes  of  essays  imperatively  calls  for  it. 

This  could  not  justly  be  said  of  Walter  Horatio  Pater,  who  was 


CHAP.  Ill  HISTORY    AND   CRITICISM  773 


Pater. 


born  in  London  in  1839,  "^^'as  educated  at  the  King's  School, 
Canterbury,  and  passing  to  Oxford,  became  in  due  time  a  Fellow  of 
Brasenose,  which  position  he  held  for  the  rest  of  his  life, 
though  latterly  he  lived  a  good  deal  in  London.  He 
printed  nothing  except  contributions  to  magazines  till  he  was  nearly 
thirty-five,  and  his  Studies  in  the  History  of  the  Renaissance,  which 
appeared  in  1873,  ^vas  a  very  carefully  selected,  and  still  more  care- 
fully revised,  body  of  essays,  scarcely  exceeding  two  hundred  pages 
in  length.  It  displayed  a  most  elaborate  and  novel  style,  and  in 
its  few  words  conveyed  something  like  a  complete  life-philosophy, 
inculcating  the  cultivation  of,  and  carefully  measured  indulgence  in, 
aesthetic  pleasures,  as  practically  the  one  thing  to  be  heeded.  But 
the  book  rather  attracted  the  attention  (and  not  always  the  admira- 
tion) of  the  few  than  the  worship  of  the  many,  and  lAIr.  Pater 
published  no  other  for  all  but  ten  years.  Afterwards  he  was  a  little 
more  prolific,  and  some  posthumous  publications  (he  died  in  1894),  not 
always  adjusted  for  press  with  his  own  anxious  care,  have  appeared. 
His  manner  and  matter  are  best  seen  in  the  Studies,  afterwards 
reissued,  with  some  slight  alterations ;  in  Marius  the  Epictirean 
(1885),  a  longish  novel,  not  at  all  of  action,  of  the  second  century; 
and  in  the  volume  of  essays  called  Appreciations,  which  opens  with 
a  deliberate  essay  on  "  Style."  ^ 

On  this  last  point  Mr.  Pater's  theory  and  practice  coincided 
with,  but  were  hardly  derived  from,  those  of  the  great  French 
novelist  Flaubert,  whose  doctrine  of  the  ''single  word,"  or  unique 
phrase  which  alone  will  express  the  author's  meaning,  he  almost  fully 
accepted,  though  he  saw  some  of  its  dangers  and  (in  fact)  absurdities. 
His  own  practice  included  the  careful  building  up  of  clause,  sentence, 
and  paragraph,  the  constituents  and  the  total  being  equally  regarded ; 
a  cunning  scheme  of  rhythm,  which  never  transgres.ses  the  bounds  of 
metre ;  and  an  almost  excessively  sifted  vocabulary,  in  which  epithet 
and  noun  are  chosen  with  attention  to  a  certain  effect  of  strangeness 
—  a  slight  shock  of  not  unpleasurable  surprise.  This  is  an  old  trick, 
to  which,  from  its  earliest  important  practitioner  in  their  language, 
the  French  had  applied  the  term  Marivauda_s:e.  Its  general  efli"ect  in 
Mr.  Pater's  own  best  passages  is  one  of  extreme  beauty;  indeed, 
these  passages  rank  with  the  choicest  in  English.  But  not  very 
seldom  in  himself,  and  very  frequently  indeed  in  his  imitators,  there 
resulted  a  new  Euphuism  which  is  rather  disastrous. 

1  Mr.  Pater's  other  works  in  his  hfctime  were  Imaginary  Portraits  (1887), 
a  book  of  remarkable  imagination,  more  nearly  approaching  the  creative  than 
most  of  his  work,  but  unequally  written  ;  and  Plato  and  Platonism  (1893). 


CHAPTER   IV 

POETRY   SINCE   THE   MIDDLE   OF   THE   CENTURY 

Matthew  Arnold—  The  "  Spasmodics  "  —  Clough  —  Locker  —  The  Earl  of  Lytton 

—  The  Pre-Raphaelites  —  Their  preparation — Dante  and  Christina  Rossetti 

—  William  Morris  —  O'Shaughnessy  —  Others 

There  can  be  little  hesitation  in  dating  a  change  in  attitude  towards 
poetry  from  about  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  when  the 
powers  of  Tennyson  and  of  Browning,  if  not  universally  recognised, 
were  still  thoroughly  manifested.  This  change,  which  has  resulted 
in  verse,  sometimes  not  far,  if  at  all,  below  the  level  of  the  best  of  the 
first  and  second  Romantic  periods,  exhibits,  except  in  the  single 
instance  of  Mr.  Swinburne,  a  somewhat  greater  resort  to  extrinsic 
sources  of  interest — a  kind  of  relapse  upon  the  classics  in  Matthew 
Arnold,  a  double  dose  of  Mediaevalism  and  Early  Renaissance  touches 
in  the  Pre-Raphaelites,  and  later  still  sporadic  and  spasmodic  excur- 
sions or  returns  to  science,  to  Wordsworthian  gravity  of  expression,  to 
this  or  that  reinforcement  or  crutch.  In  other  words,  there  is  a 
slight  want  of  confident  originality  and  independence. 

The  most  interesting  names,  or  groups  of  names,  here,  are  those  of 
Mr.  Arnold  by  himself,  of  the  abortive  "Spasmodic  School  "a  little 
later,  and  of  the  by  no  means  abortive  Pre-Raphaelite  group  later 
still ;  while,  though  many  of  the  later-born  individuals,  including  the 
great  poet  referred  to  in  the  last  paragraph,  are  alive,  and  so  excluded 
from  treatment,  the  "  abhorred  shears  "  have  already  given  us  but  too 
many  subjects. 

Matthew  Arnold  was  the  eldest  son  of    a  man  less  well  known 

than  himself,  and  already  registered  in  this  book,  Thomas  Arnold, 

headmaster   of  Rugby,   and   historian    of  Rome.     He   was    born    in 

1822,  and   educated   at  Winchester,  Rugby,   and    Balliol, 

Arnold!'      ^^°"^   which  last  college,   having  previously  obtained  the 

Newdigate,    he    passed    to    Oriel,  where    he    was    elected 

Fellow    in     1845.      He     did     not,    however,    take    college    work    or 

remain   in    Oxford    long,    but   after   serving   as   private    secretary  to 

774 


CH.  IV     POETRY   SINCE  THE   MIDDLE   OF  THE   CENTURY        775 

Lord  Landsdowne,  married,  and  accepted  an  inspectorship  of  schools 
in  1850.  He  had  already  —  with  ''By  A  "only  on  the  title-page  — 
published  in  1849  ^^^^  Strayed  Reveller  a7id  other  Poet/is.^  The 
same  initial  appeared  on  the  title-page  of  Empedocles  on  Etna,  1852. 
But  it  was  in  1853,  when  he  was  just  over  thirty,  that  he  gave,  with 
his  name,  the  measure  at  once  of  his  creative  and  critical  powers 
by  a  collection  of  verse,  prefaced  by  an  extremely  noteworthy  dis- 
cussion of  poetry,  the  first  of  his  attempts  at  critical  disquisition. 
In  this  he  took,  and  for  the  rest  of  his  life  never  ostensibly 
abandoned,  an  attitude  towards  poetry  which  was  partly  a  reversion 
to,  and  partly  an  extension  of,  the  Aristotelian  theory,  making  it 
depend  wholly  upon  the  choice,  conception,  and  conduct  of  the 
subject.  Mr.  Arnold  did  not  indeed,  like  Wordsworth,  dismiss 
metre  as  merely  facultative,  but  neither  did  he,  on  the  other  hand, 
like  Coleridge,  actually,  if  not  explicitly,  point  out  its  necessity. 
And  his  criticism,  like  that  of  every  one  almost  without  exception  of 
the  same  school,  is  accordingly  vitiated  by  the  glaring  contradiction 
that,  while  as  examples  of  poetry  he  invariably  takes  works  of  metre, 
there  is  not,  on  his  principles,  any  reason  why  he  should  not  take  works 
in  prose. 

His  poetical  practice  displays  something  of  the  same  inconsistency, 
or  at  least  dichotomy.  He  is  most  consistent  in  employing,  or  at 
least  endeavouring  to  employ,  a  severer  kind  of  diction  and  versifica- 
tion, drawing  itself  back  from  the  florid  and  flowing  Tennysonian 
schemes  toward  the  stiffer  movement  and  graver  tones  of  Words- 
worth, Gray,  and  (in  his  later  years)  Milton.  He  eschews  —  on 
principle  or  from  a  secret  sense  of  inability  to  arrange  them  —  the 
looser  lyric  measures,  and  sometimes  seems  to  seek,  especially  in  The 
Strayed  Reveller,  for  a  substitute  in  simple  decasyllabics,  broken  up, 
for  no  sufficient  reason,  into  fragments.  He  also  attempts,  here  and 
elsewhere,  unrhymed  measures  other  than  ordinary  blank  verse,  and 
with  the  usual  unsuccess. 

But,  like  his  nearest  master  Wordsworth,  he  is  seldom  or  never 
really  successful  except  when  he  discards,  or  at  any  rate  conveniently 
forgets,  his  theories.  It  is  a  little  surprising  that  he  did  not  oftener  try 
the  sonnet,  which  in  itself  meets  his  views  better  than  most  tilings,  from 
the  happy  compromise  it  affords  between  importance  of  matter  and 
beauty  of  form,  and  in  which  he  gave  one  splendid  example  —  that  on 

1  Since  his  death  the  Newdigate  poem  on  "  Cromwell  "  (as  usual,  in  couplets), 
the  still  earlier  "  Alaric  at  Rome,"  a  Rui:;bv  prize  poem  in  six-lined  stanzas  written 
in  1840,  have  been  reissued,  with  all  the  poems  up  to  1853,  Ijv  Dr.  (i.irnett 
(London,  1896).  As  for  his  later  poetical  publications,  a  second  series  of  P.>eiiis 
followed  in  1855,  Merope  in  1858;  then  prose  absorbed  iiim  mainly  till  the  Sew 
Poems  of  1867,  and  he  wrote  little  verse  later,  though  some  fine  things. 


776  VICTORIAN    LITERATURE  book  xi 

Shakespeare  —  and  others  that  are  fine.  But  even  here,  and  still  more 
elsewhere,  he  is  an  unequal  poet —  a  poet  who  frequently  breaks  down. 
And  in  the  direct  teeth  of  his  theory  he  is,  as  much  as  any  poet  of 
the  century,  a  poet  of  fine  things,  of  passages,  of  fragments,  sepa- 
rable to  the  greatest  advantage  from  the  wholes  in  which  they  appear. 
The  splendid  blank-verse  perorations  of  "  Mycerinus "  and  "  Sohrab 
and  Rustum  "  ;  the  outburst  on  "  Isolation  "  —  "  Yes,  in  the  sea  of 
life  enisled"  —  which,  with  some  other  things,  redeems  the  inequality, 
and  in  parts  the  doubtful  taste,  of  "Switzerland";  the  beautiful 
snatch  of  "  Requiescat " ;  the  gorgeous  stanzas  of  "  The  Scholar 
Gipsy,"  "  Thyrsis,"  "  Westminster  Abbey " ;  the  musical,  if  ever  so 
little  fantastic  and  insincere,  melancholy  of  "  Dover  Beach  "  and  "  A 
Summer  Night  " ;  and  above  all,  the  famous  "  Forsaken  Merman," 
the  one  completely  successful  monument  of  his  combined  poetic 
feeling  and  art  —  all  these  are  better  on  the  theories  he  combated  than 
on  the  theories  he  held.  In  all  of  them  Mr.  Arnold  was  different 
rather  in  intention,  and  in  a  certain  deliberate,  but  not  always 
maintained,  dialect  than  in  real  kind,  from  the  seniors  or  juniors 
whom  he  regarded  with  very  lukewarm  admiration,  and  whose  way 
he  did  not  hesitate  to  pronounce  wrong.  The  elaborate  simile 
at  the  end  of  "  The  Scholar  Gipsy  "  —  some  twenty  lines  long  — -  might 
take  place  as  well  in  a  poem  on  "  Timbuctoo,"  and  could  be 
transferred  thence  to  one  on  the  "  Battle  of  Armageddon."  His 
longer  things  —  Merope,  a  stiff  pseudo-Greek  play ;  Eiiipedocles  on 
Etna,  a  chaotic  and  unequal  medley  with  delightful  bursts ;  Balder 
Dead,  a  simple-seeming  narrative ;  Tristram  and  Is e nit,  an  un- 
achieved romaunt  —  besides  those  named,  are  always  unsuccessful  as 
wholes.  But  when  we  remember  such  bursts  (and  there  are  scores 
of  them)  as  the  distich  — 

Still  nursing  the  unconquerable  hope, 
Still  clutching  the  inviolable  shade  — 

then  we  know  that  Mr.  Arnold  was  a  poet  of  the  true  nineteenth- 
century  fashion,  and  a  great  one  almost  against  his  will.  He  has 
the  real  throb  and  cry,  the  indispensable  "moments,"  the  faculty  of 
transforming  and  transcending ;  and  if  these  gifts  are  beset  with 
hesitancy  and  checked  by  theoretic  rules,  this  is  rather  our  loss  than 
his  disqualification.  His  criticism,  invaluable  as  an  intention  and 
exhortation,  will  soon  be,  if  it  is  not  already,  little  more ;  his  poetry 
is  poetry,  and  therefore  immortal. 

The  "  Spasmodics "  of  the  middle  of  the  century  —  Mr.  P.  J. 
Bailey,  the  still  living  author  of  Festus  (1839),  Sydney  Dobell,  Alex- 
ander Smith,  and  perhaps  a  few  others,  such  as  Ernest  Jones,  the 
Chartist  lawyer  —  included  some  men  of  talent,  but   they  are  chiefly 


CH.  IV     POETRY   SINCE  THE  MIDDLE   OF  THE   CENTURY         777 

interesting  because  they  show  a  premature  and  unsuccessful  attempt 
to  do  in  one  direction  what  Arnold  attempted  in  another  —  to  improve, 
though  in  this  case  rather  by  advance  than  by  reaction, 
on  the  form  of  Tennyson.  Their  desire  was  to  be  more  ..Spas^modics." 
modern,  more  "thoughtful,"  and  at  the  same  time 
slightly  more  ungirt  in  form.  Sydney  Dobell,  born  at  Cranbrook  in 
Kent  in  1824,  was  privately  educated,  succeeded  his  father  as  a 
wine-merchant  at  Cheltenham,  and  was  well  favoured  by  circumstance 
except  in  the  matter  of  health.  He  pubhshed  a  closet  drama.  The 
Rovian.  in  1850;  and  another.  Balder,  in  1853;  a  little  later  he  pub- 
lished poems  on,  and  inspired  by,  the  Crimean  war ;  but  nothing  further, 
though  he  lived  for  twenty  years,  dying  in  1874.  His  best  and  best- 
known  thing  is  the  ballad  of  "  Keith  of  Ravelston ''  (not  called  by 
that  name),  where,  as  sometimes  elsewhere,  he  has  touched  a  string 
of  half-unearthly  music,  redeeming  a  total  want  of  self-criticism  in  his 
general  work,  and  a  tendency  to  rant  and  gush  and  frigid  triviality. 
In  fact,  to  read  Dobell  as  a  whole  (his  works  were  posthumously 
published)  is  a  disastrous  experiment.  Alexander  Smith,  who,  born 
at  Kilmarnock  in  1829  or  1830,  ended  his  days  as  secretary  to  the 
University  of  Edinburgh  in  1867,  began  about  the  same  time  as 
Dobell  with  a  Life  Drama,  also  showing  a  slight  tendency  to  rant, 
but  truer  and  less  unequal  as  a  whole  than  DobeH's  work  though 
without  its  occasional  "  cry."  He  followed  this  with  City  Poems 
(1857)  and  Edwin  of  Deira  (1861),  his  last  consumptive  years 
being  chiefly  occupied  by  prose.  These  men  are  rather  more 
interesting  historically  than  individually,  but  they  do  not  lack  indi- 
vidual interest. 

Arthur  Hugh  Clough  bears  some  curious  resemblances  to  Matthew 
Arnold,  whose  intimate  friend  he  was,  and  who  celebrated  him  in  a 
famous  following  of  Lycidas  and  Adonais.  He  was  a  slightly  older 
man,  having  been  born  in  1819,  and  was  educated  at 
Rugby  and  Balliol,  the  ferment  of  the  Oxford  Move- 
ment .sending  him  into  freethinking.  He  resigned,  in  1848,  a  Fellow- 
ship to  which  he  had  been  elected  at  Oriel,  and  betook  himself  first 
to  teaching  and  then  to  Government  work  in  the  Education  Office. 
He  died  in  1861.  Clough  was  an  odd  mixture  of  Arnold  and  of 
the  Spasmodics,  with  a  kind  of  distorted  and  cankered  Tractarian 
element  difterentiating  him  still  further.  This  .sort  of  distraction 
could  find  no  .satisfactory  poetic  utterance.  In  his  early  work, 
Ambarvalia  (1849)  ^"^^  the  Bothie  of  Tober-na-Vuolich  (1848)  (the 
latter  written  in  bad  hexameters),  as  in  the  later  Amours  de  Voyat^c 
and  Dipsychus,  there  are  good  bits,  scraps,  passages.  But  he  has 
hardly  written  a  single  poem,  however  short,  which  can  be  said  to  l)c 
good  as  a  whole,  and  perhaps  his  greatest  title  to  poetic  fame  is  the 


778  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 


one  exquisite  and  exquisitely  expressed  image  of  the  rising  tide  quoted 
at  the  beginning  of  Book  X.  p.  653.  His  "New  Decalogue"  and 
one  or  two  other  things  seem  to  show  that,  with  more  detachment 
and  self-command,  he  might  have  done  better  in  satirical  than  in 
serious  verse. 

No  doubts  choked  or  chequered,  or  were,  at  least  in  appearance, 
allowed  to  appear  in,  the  sunny  work  of  Frederick  Locker-Lampson, 
who  was  born  in  1821   and  died  in   1895.     His  books  are  two  only. 

Locker  ^'i^ion  Lyrics  (1857)  and  Patchwork  (1879),  while 
Patchwork  is  in  part  only  a  commonplace-book  of  verse 
and  prose.  In  the  original  parts  of  it,  and  in  the  verse  of  London 
Lyrics.  Mr.  Locker  obtained  a  secure  position  among  the  little  band  — 
half  a  dozen  strong  at  most,  if  so  many  —  of  the  writers,  with  capital 
effect,  of  verse  and  prose  "of  society"  in  English. 

Very  much  more  ambitious  and  prolific  was  Edward  Robert,  the 

first  Earl  of,  and  second  Lord,   Lytton,  long  known  in  literature  as 

"Owen  Meredith."     Born  in    1831,  and  educated  at  Harrow,  but  not 

„,    ^   ,   ,    at    Oxford    or    Cambridge,    he    entered    the    diplomatic 

The  Earl  of  •  .  i,,  ,.,  ,., 

Lytton.  service  at  an  unusually  early  age,  discharged  its  duties 
in  various  parts  of  the  world,  became  Viceroy  of  India 
in  1876,  and  died  at  Paris,  where  he  was  Ambassador,  in  1892. 
"Owen  Meredith"  published,  under  that  name,  Clytemnestra  in  1855, 
followed  it  with  The  Wanderer  (1859),  ^^tcile  (i860).  Songs  of 
Servia  (1861),  OrrW  (1869),  Chronicles  afid  Characters  (same  date). 
Fables  in  Song  (1874),  Glenaveril  (1888),  After  Paradise  (1887), 
while  he  had  earlier  collaborated  with  his  friend  Julian  Fane  in  a 
poem  on  Tannhauser ;  and  after  his  death  two  remarkable  volumes 
of  posthumous  poems.  Mar  ah  and  King  Poppy,  appeared.  In  this 
large  bulk  of  verse  many  lyrics  of  great,  though  seldom  quite  unflawed, 
beauty  are  contained,  the  longer  poems  yield  an  abundance  of  inter- 
esting and  not  a  few  fine  passages,  and  the  author  constantly  displays 
command  of  two  very  excellent  gifts  —  passion  and  satiric  power. 
He  had,  however,  a  pair  of  drawbacks  which  sorely  mar  his  work, 
and  have  sunk  it  in  general  estimation  to  an  unfair  degree  —  the  first  of 
Ihem  a  strange  tendency  to  imitate  and  echo  even  when  he  had  ample 
notes  of  his  own ;  the  second  an  utter  inability  to  criticise,  retrench, 
and  correct.  As  Tennyson  is  of  all  poets  that  one  who  has  used 
knife  and  file  with  most  advantage,  so  Lord  Lytton  is  he  who  has 
rejected  their  use  with  worse  effect. 

There  can,  however,  be  no  comparison  in  point  of  historical 
importance  between  any  of  these  figures,  or  the  imperfect  schools  and 
tendencies  which  they  represent,  and  the  group  which  arose  a  little 
later.  In  calling  this  group  "Pre-Raphaelite,"  certain  guards  and 
provisos   must  be  appended  to  the  designation.     There  is  no  other 


CH.  IV     POETRY   SINCE  THE   MIDDLE   OF  THE   CENTURY         779 

term  so  convenient,  or  on  the  whole  so   appropriate ;    but  the  Pre- 

Raphaelitism  of  poetry  rather  overlaps,  or  coincides  with,  than  directly 

resembles  the  Pre-Raphaelitism  of  art.     It  is,  however,  a 

direct  and  legitimate  development  of  the  great  Romantic    Raphaeihes. 

revival  in  England.     The  chief  notes  of  this  third  stage 

have   been   a  generally,    though    not    universally,    mediaeval    tone   of 

thought,  colour,  and  in  part  subject,  with,  in  method,  a  still  further 

elaboration  of  the  two  appeals  to  imagination  —  by  the  way  of  exact 

and  vivid  visual  presentation  and  by  that  of  subtle  and  varied  musical 

suggestion   of    sound  —  which    had    been  so   largely   carried    out    by 

Tennyson,  and  to  some  extent  originated  by  Keats. 

These  had  had  to  educate  themselves  and   their  readers.     Even 
Coleridge  hesitated  about  Tennyson's  prosody,  even  Wordsworth  was 
uncertain  about  his  fidelity  to. nature;  while,  until  a  critical  edition  of 
his  early  work  is  presented,  it  cannot  even  yet,  without 
great   labour,    be   appreciated   how   much    he    had    to   do    preparation, 
before  he  got  his  own  style  into  perfection.      But  men 
who  were  born  about   1830  or  later  found  that  style  ready  to  their 
hand,  they  found   its  examples    already  brought   to   perfection,  they 
found  the  public  taste,  if  not  fully  yet  partially,  educated  to  it. 

So,  too,  even  Tennyson,  much  more  Scott  and  Coleridge  and 
their  generation,  had  entered  only  very  partially  into  the  treasures  of 
Mediaeval  literature,  and  were  hardly  at  all  acquainted  with  those  of 
Mediaeval  art.  Conybeare,  Kemble,  Thorpe,  Madden  were  only  in 
Tennyson's  own  time  reviving  the  study  of  Old  and  Middle  English. 
Early  French  and  Early  Italian  were  but  just  being  opened  up. 
Above  all,  the  Oxford  Movement  directed  attention  to  Mediaeval 
architecture,  literature,  thought,  as  had  never  been  the  case  before 
in  England,  and  as  has  never  been  the  case  at  all  in  any  other 
country. 

The  eldest  poets  of  the   school  were   brother   and   sister,   Dante 
Gabriel  and  Christina  Georgina  Rossetti.     They  belonged  to  England 
wholly  by  birth  and  education,  but  only  partially  by   blood.     Their 
father,  Gabriel  Rossetti,  was  an  Italian  refugee,  a  teacher     ^^^^^  ^^^ 
of  his  native  language,  a  real  though  fanciful   student  of     Christina 
literature,  somethmg   of  a   poet    himself,    and    a   man    ot 
sterling   character.      He   married  a   Miss   Polidori,   who  was   English 
half  by  blood  and  wholly  by  associations.     His  eldest  son,  Gabriel 
Charles    Dante,    who    rearranged     his    Christian     names    for     public 
use,   was    born    in     1828;    his    second    daughter    (the    eldest,    Maria 
Francesca,    wa^   also   literary,   as   was   the    younger    son,   still    .alive, 
William  Michael)  in   1830.     The  life  of  neither  was  in  the  ordinary 
and    outward    sense    eventful,   and    it    was    almost    entirely    spent    in 
London  by  both.     Dante,  who  was  married  to  a  lady  of  great  beauty, 


78a  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  .  book  xi 

Elizabeth  Syddall,  but  lost  her  soon  after  marriage,  died  in  1882. 
His  sister,  who  was  all  her  life  a  fervent  member  of  the  Church  of 
England,  survived  him,  and  died  unmarried  at  the  end  of  1894. 

The  main,  or  at  least  the  professional,  occupation  of  Dante 
Rossetti's  life  was  not  poetry.  He  was  educated  at  King's  College 
School,  but  left  it  early  to  study  drawing,  and,  young  as  he  was, 
became  one  of  the  most  enthusiastic  members  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
Brotherhood,  which  was  at  the  middle  of  the  century  to  convert 
England  from  conventional  art.  His  own  form  of  painting  was,  and 
remained,  the  most  characteristic  of  all,  never  admitting  reconciliation 
■with  convention,  as  did  that  of  Millais,  and  in  part  of  Mr.  Holman 
Hunt,  while  it  possessed  far  greater  charm  than  that  of  any  other. 
His  drawing  was  always  cavilled  at ;  as  to  the  magnificence  of  his 
colour,  no  one  with  eyes  could  doubt.  But  these  characteristics,  and 
others  which  have  the  indefinableness  of  genius,  found  expression 
also  in  another  art.  Rossetti  wrote  verse  very  early  ("The  Blessed 
Damozel"  itself  dates  in  the  first  draught  from  boyhood),  but  the 
death  of  his  wife  in  1862  postponed  for  a  time  the  publication  of  his 
original  work.  He  had  contributed,  however,  to  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
magazines,  the  Germ  and  the  Oxford  and  Ca7nbridge  Magazine^  and 
had  in  1861  published  a  volume  of  translations  from  early  Italian 
poems,  which  displays  part  of  the  source,  and  still  more  of  the  nature, 
of  his  manner.  His  Poe^ns  appeared  in  1870,  with  great  acceptance 
from  the  competent,'  though  with  coarse  and  foolish  abuse  from 
others.  He  issued  another  volume  of  Ballads  and  Sonnets  the  year 
before  his  death,  and  the  contents  of  the  two,  with  alterations  and 
additions,  have  been  collected  since. 

Although  the  earlier  publication  of  work  by  his  sister,  and  by  his 
friends  Mr.  Morris  and  Mr.  Swinburne,  had  made  the  manner  of  his 
work  familiar  to  the  public  before  it  appeared,  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  it  was  most  original  in  his  case.  Naturally,  he  put  more 
of  the  pictorial  element  into  it  than  any  of  the  others  could  do,  and 
perhaps  naturally  also,  he  paid  less  attention  than  some  of  them  to 
the  direct  aspect  of  things  in  nature.  No  similar  professional 
explanation,  however,  can  be  found  for  the  almost  equally  remarkable 
mastery  of  mere  resonance,  of  mere  verbal  and  literal  music,  which 
his  verse  displays  ;  and  this  must  be  set  down  partly  to  the  tendency 
"  in  the  air,"  partly  to  individual  gift,  and  partly  to  the  new  instru- 
ment afforded  by  the  stately  varied  harmony  of  English  to  a  genius 
prepared  ancestrally  by  the  sweet,  intense,  but  slightly  monotonous 
melody  of  Italian.  ' 

Like  the  work  of  most  of  the  greater  poets  of  this  century, 
Rossetti' s  is  not  very  easily  or  profitably  to  be  classified,  save  perhaps 
as  regards  his  very  remarkable  sonnets,  in  mastery  of  which  form  he 


cii.  IV     POETRY   SINCE  THE   MIDDLE   OF  THE   CENTURY        781 

ranks  with  his  sister  and  Wordsworth.  It  is  possibly  unfortunate, 
though  in  his  case  it  was  more  than  excusable,  that  he  adopted  the  Pe- 
trarchian  form,  which  is  somewhat  less  suited  to  the  genius  of  the 
English  language,  and  not  at  all  better  suited  to  the  genius  of  the 
sonnet,  than  the  Shakespearian.  But  his  excellence  in  it,  like  that  of 
Milton  and  Wordsworth  himself,  justifies  the  indulgence.  Of  the  two 
great  divisions  of  the  sonnet,  the  meditative  and  the  pictorial,  the 
latter,  as  we  should  expect  from  his  double  vocation,  was  his  special 
forte.  The  "  sonnets  for  pictures  "  of  the  first  volume  have  never  been 
excelled,  if  they  have  ever  been  equalled.  But  he  was  hardly  inferior 
in  the  other  —  the  great  sonnet-sequence  of  "The  House  of  Life" 
coming  perhaps  next  after  Shakespeare's  as  a  sequence,  while  such 
single  examples  as  "  Refusal  of  Aid  between  Nations,"  and  the 
marvellous  "  Monochord,"  are  supreme. 

Another  group  might  be  formed  of  his  ballads  —  longer  and  almost 
miniature  romances  in  form,  like  Rose  Afary,  The  White  Ship,  and 
The  King's  Tragedy ;  or  shorter,  like  Tfoy  Town,  Eden  Bower,  and 
Sister  Helen.  But  the  really  important  thing  is  to  recognise  in  all 
these  forms,  from  sonnet  to  ballad-romance,  the  imposing  presence 
of  a  joint  pictorial  and  musical  appeal  different  from,  and  in  parts 
intenser  and  stranger  than,  that  of  any  other  poet.  He  could  also  write 
things  like  The  Burden  of  Nineveh  and  Jenny,  very  great  poems  of  a 
simple  cast  in  language  and  imagery,  direct,  with  hardly  any  display 
of  gorgeous  colour  or  intricate  music,  almost  satirical  in  a  sense. 

But  he  seldom  developed  this  vein,  and  chiefly  wrote  in  one  of 
mystical  Romanticism,  melancholy  in  tone,  but  suffused  with  such 
sunset  splendour  of  hue,  and  charged  with  such  a  burden  of  elfin 
music,  as  only  the  greatest  things  of  Coleridge  and  Shelley,  and  perhaps 
Keats,  had  shown  before.  "The  Blessed  Damozel"  sets  the  key-note 
of  tone  and  colour,  and  it  is  maintained  throughout  to  the  "beryl- 
songs  "  of  Rose  Mary  and  the  last  revised  sonnets  of  "  The  House  of 
Life."  The  colour  was  richer,  though  the  drawing  was  less  exact, 
than  Tennyson's ;  the  music,  less  perfect  and  less  varied,  had  even 
more  of  lialf-articulate  charm  ;  and  the  younger  poet  was  prodigal  of 
those  appeals  to  passion  and  to  mystery  of  which  the  elder's  more 
Northern  nature  had  been,  though  far  indeed  from  incapable,  yet 
somewhat  chary,  and  more  than  somewhat  shy.  That  the  charm  of 
Rossetti  is  a  morbidezza,  a  beauty  touching  on  and  partly  caused  by 
disease,  is  perhaps  indisputable ;  but  it  is  still  more  indisputably 
beauty.  The  dreamy  magnificence  of  "  The  Blessed  Damozel."  tiie 
soaring  beat  of  "  Love-Lily,"  the  concentrated  despair  of  "  Tlie  Wood- 
spurge,"  the  reality,  as  of  a  picture  actually  hanging  on  the  wall,  in 
"The  Wine  of  Circe,"  the  etherealised  description  of  the  dead  Rose 
Mary,  and  scores  of  other  things,  stand,  and  probably  ever  will  stand, 


782  VICTORIAN    LITERATURE  book  xi 

as  the  furthest  achievements  of  poetry  in  a  certain  direction.  Only 
in  a  certain  direction,  of  course,  and  leaving  endless  new  paths  open 
to  the  poet ;  but  final  in  that. 

The  greatness  of  Miss  Christina  Rossetti's  genius  is  best  shown 
by  the  fact  that  while  she  naturally  displayed  a  temper  akin  to  her 
brother's,  and  for  some  time  undoubtedly  wrote  to  some  extent  under 
his  inspiration,  large  parts,  and  some  of  the  best  parts,  of  her  poetical 
accomplishment  are  quite  distinct  from  anything  of  his.  Nor  is  this 
distinction  to  be  in  the  least  sufficiently  or  reasonably  accounted  for 
by  her  sex,  her  piety,  or  any  other  conventional  and  obvious  explana- 
tion. At  points,  of  course,  the  brother  and  sister  touch  —  they  even 
overlap.  The  sonnet  exercised  its  strong  restraint,  in  the  same 
Italian  form,  and  with  the  same  characteristics  of  colour,  music,  and 
meditation,  on  both :  her  sonnet-sequences  are,  with  allowance  for 
their  different  subjects,  by  no  means  unlike  his.  But  her  lyrics  have 
a  lighter,  more  bird-like,  movement  and  voice  than  his  stately 
descants ;  she  is  less  prone  to  an  extreme  regularity  of  metre,  and 
her  whole  tone  is  often  different.  She  began,  as  far  as  publication 
goes,  with  Goblin  Market  and  Other  Poems  in  1861,  followed  it  with 
another  volume.  The  Prince's  Progress,  in  1866,  and  after  a  much 
longer  interval  with  A  Pageant  and  Other  Poems  in  1881.  Later, 
her  verse  was  collected  more  than  once,  and  it  was  supplemented  by 
a  posthumous  volume  after  her  death.  But  a  good  deal  of  it  remains 
in  two  books  of  devotion  (partly  in  prose,  of  which  she  was  an 
exquisite  mistress,  partly  in  verse),  entitled  Time  Flies  (1885),  and 
The  Face  of  the  Deep  (1892),  which  she  issued  in  her  later  years. 

The  poem  in  which,  by  order  of  publication  and  title,  she 
announced  herself,  Goblin  Market,  though  very  pretty  and  almost 
beautiful,  has  too  much  of  the  deliberate  and  almost  trivial  fantas- 
ticality which  Pre-Raphaelitism  at  first  borrowed  from  the  earlier 
Romantic  schools.  But  other  things  in  the  same  volume,  such  as 
"Dreamland,"  "Winter  Rain,"  "When  I  am  dead,  my  Dearest," 
"  The  Three  Enemies,"  and  above  all,  "  Sleep  at  Sea,"  are  quite  free 
from  this  objection,  and  gave  an  astonishingly  true  and  new  note 
of  poetry,  which  was  sustained,  and  indeed  deepened,  varied,  and 
sweetened,  till  the  beautiful  lines  "  Heaven  overarches  sea  and  land," 
which  are  understood  to  be  her  last  work,  or  at  any  rate  composed 
within  a  very  short  time  of  her  death.  Her  range  was  distinctly 
wide.  She  had,  unlike  Mrs.  Browning,  and  perhaps  unlike  the 
majority  of  her  sex,  a  very  distinct  sense  of  humour ;  she  could  sing, 
for  music  and  in  simple  scheme,  quite  exquisitely ;  her  pathos  has 
never  been  surpassed,  except  in  the  great  single  strokes  of  Shake- 
speare and  a  very  few  other  Elizabethans.  But  her  most  characteristic 
strain  is  where  this  pathos  blends  with,  or  passes  into,  the  utterance 


CH.  IV      POETRY   SINCE  THE   MIDDLE   OF   THE   CENTURY       783 

of  religious  awe,  unstained  and  unweakened  by  any  craven  fear.  The 
great  devotional  poets  of  the  seventeenth  century,  Crashaw,  Vaughan, 
Herbert,  are  more  artificial  than  she  is  in  their  expression  of  this ; 
and  hardly  even  their  art,  certainly  not  the  art  of  the  last-named, 
strikes  out  rarer  poetic  flashes  and  echoes  than  those  that  we  find 
from  "  Sleep  at  Sea  "  to  "  Birds  of  Paradise."  ^ 

In  bulk  of  work,  however,  and  in  popular  (which  does  not  mean 
vulgar)  charm  no  writer  of  the  school  who  falls  within  our  limits  of 
discussion  can  approach  Mr.  William  Morris.  He  was  born  in 
1834,  the  son  of  a  wealthy  merchant,  and  was  educated  . 

at  Marlborough  and  Exeter  College,  Oxford.  He  did  '  '^™ 
not  take  up  any  profession,  though  later  he  founded  a  famous  shop 
or  school  of  decorative  art,  which  directly  or  indirectly  helped  to 
revolutionise  the  interior  of  English  houses.  It  was  in  1858  that 
the  once  neglected,  but  now  famous,  Defence  of  Guenevere  and  Other 
Poems  appeared,  a  book  almost  as  much  the  herald  of  the  second 
school  of  Victorian  poetry  as  Tennyson's  early  work  was  of  the  first. 
Nor  did  he,  perhaps,  ever  surpass  it  in  poetic  note,  though  he  improved 
very  much  upon  it  in  some  ways.  As  in  Christina  Rossetti's  first 
book  a  little  later,  the  quaintness  was  a  little  aggressive,  and.  unlike 
hers,  the  mediEevalism  was  more  aggressive  and  exclusive  still.  But 
the  charm  both  of  picture  and  music  was  astonishing,  and  after  forty 
years  "The  Blue  Closet,"  "The  Wind,"  and  other  pieces  remain 
alone,  in  a  poetic  country  neighbouring  and  friendly  to  the  domain 
of  the  Rossettis,  but  independent  of  it  —  a  country  lit  with  lunar  rain- 
bows and  ringing  with  fairy  song.  He  had  previously  written  both 
prose  and  verse  in  the  above-mentioned  Oxford  and  Cambridge 
Magazine.  Eight  years  later,  in  1866,  Mr.  Morris  addressed  a  larger 
public  (for  the  Defence  and  its  companions  could  perhaps  never  be 
enjoyed  by  any  sucli)  with  a  long  poem.  The  Life  and  Death  of  fason. 
The  subject  was  sufficiently  familiar,  the  tone,  though  still  archaic, 
made  less  extensive  demands  on  natural  or  acquired  sympathy,  and 
the  piece  was  couched  in  rhymed  heroics  of  a  new-old  pattern,  very 
much  enjambed  or  overlapped,  which  carries  the  reader  along  with  a 
singular  combination  of  smoothness  and  freedom  from  monotony, 
and  which,  being  quite  different  from  most  of  tlie  metrical  media 
recently  in  vogue,  had  the  attraction  of  freshness.  It  secured  at 
once  a  wider  audience  tlian  any  long  narrative  poem  had  liad  for 
many  years,  and  in  its  turn  prepared  the  public  for  the  poet's  next, 
and  most  ambitious,  performance,  which,  all  things  considered,  must, 
perhaps,  be  allowed  to  he  his  masterpiece.  This  was  The  I'.arthly 
Paradise,  which  appeared    in   four   volumes,  the  first   two   published 

lAn  early  poem,  but  not  printed  till  after  her  death. 


784  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

together,  between  1868  and  1870.  This  great  book  consists  of 
four-and-twenty  narratives,  twelve  of  Classical,  twelve  of  Romantic 
origin,  allotted  in  pairs  to  the  twelve  months,  introduced  by  a 
singularly  spirited  narrative  of  adventure,  and  set  in  a  frame  of 
equal  beauty.  The  metres  varied,  and  the  poet  showed  himself  an 
equal  master  of  the  couplet  just  described,  of  the  octosyllable,  and 
of  stanza-forms ;  nor,  perhaps,  have  any  verse-tales  since  the  very 
beginning  of  the  century  equalled  in  combined  merit  such  pieces  as 
"  The  Lovers  of  Gudrun,"  the  version  of  the  Perseus  story,  "  The 
Ring  given  to  Venus,"  and,  indeed,  the  majority  of  the  sections. 
"Love  is  Enough"  (1873)  was  less  interesting  in  subject,  and,  with 
charming  passages,  made  metrical  experiments  not  too  happy ;  while 
the  poet's  later  versions  of  the  yEneid  and  the  Odyssey  dissatisfied 
merely  classical  scholars  without  greatly  pleasing  those  who  can 
taste  romance.  But  in  1877  he  showed  that  his  muse  was  not  ex- 
hausted by  a  magnificent  version  of  the  legend  of  Sigurd  the  Volsiing, 
clothed  in  a  swinging  anapaestic  metre  on  which  he  had  stamped  his 
own  individuality,  and  admirably  suited  to  the  subject. 

But,  though  even  this  by  no  means  closed  his  issue  of  verse 
(for  he  afterwards  published  Poems  by  the  Way  (1891)  and  other 
volumes),  the  later  years  of  his  life  were  in  preference  given  up  to 
prose  romance.  He  had  early  practised  prose  translation,  rendering 
after  his  fashion,  in  company  with  a  northern  scholar,  the  Story  of 
Grettir  the  Strong  (1869),  The  Volsimga  Saga  (1870),  and  other 
Icelandic  work.  And  his  own  earliest  published  work  in  the  Oxford 
and  Cambridge  Magazine  had  been  an  original  romance.  The 
Hollow  Land,  which  he  never  reprinted.  But  in  his  last  decade  (he 
died  in  October  1896)  he  began  a  series  of  similar  things  —  The  House 
of  the  IVolfings  (1889),  The  Roots  of  the  Motmtains  (1890),  The 
Story  of  the  Glittering  Plain  (1891),  The  Wood  beyond  the  World 
(1894),  The  Well  at  the  World's  End  (1896),  The  Water  of  the 
Wondrous  Isles  (1897),  The  Sundering  Flood  (1898),^  in  which  the 
vague  romantic  charm  of  his  earlier  verse  was  revived  with  wonder- 
ful effect.  In  all  his  prose  work  he  used  a  dialect  which  may  be 
described  as  English  prose  of  the  fifteenth  century,  strongly  dashed 
with  Scandinavianisms — a  dialect  which,  like  Spenser's,  offended 
pedants  and  purists  as  "  no  language,"  but  which  was  exactly 
suited  for  his  purpose.  On  the  whole,  there  is  perhaps  no  poet  of 
the  century,  since  Scott,  who  has  given  such  a  volume  of  Romantic 
pleasure  to  his  readers  as  Mr.  Morris,  while  there  is  also  none  who 
at  his  own  best  is  his  superior  in  individuality  and  poignancy  of 
charm.      But  his  range  was  not  over-wide,  and  the  very  bulk  of  his 

1  Of  this  series  the  two  first  are  the  best  as  wholes ;  of  the  others,  The  Well  at 
the  World's  End  and  The  Sundering  Flood  contain  the  best  passages. 


CH.  IV     POETRY   SINCE  THE   MIDDLE  OF  THE  CENTURY         7S5 


production  prevented  it  from  being   always   concentrated,  or,  to  use 
an  old  but  excellent  phrase,  "in  beauty." 

The  life  of  Arthur  Edward  O'Shaughnessy  (1844-81)  was  short, 
and  his  period  of  poetical  production  was  still  shorter.  In  four 
years  he  published  three  volun^es  of  most  remarkable  verse  —  The 
Epic  of  Women  (1870),  Lays  of  France  (1872),  and 
Music  and  Moonlight  (1874).  But  he  did  not  follow  ^'.fej'.y^^" 
them  up ;  his  professional  work  lay  in  the  Natural 
History  Department  of  the  British  Museum,  and  the  posthumous  Songs 
of  a  Worker  contained  little  of  his  very  best,  much  of  it  being  transla- 
tion and  paraphrase,  as  the  Lays  of  Fra}ice,  an  adaptation  of  those 
of  Marie,  had  been  earlier.  The  tale  of  "  Colibri,"  his  only  attempt 
at  a  poem  of  length,  is  too  much  tinged  with  the  personal  sorrow 
which  beset  his  last  years,  and  partakes  too  much  of  the  unsubstantial 
remoteness  of  Shelley's  Alastor,  to  be  quite  a  success ;  and  these 
same  characteristics,  together  with  importunate  obtrusion  of  creeds 
or  disbeliefs  of  various  kinds,  mar  the  posthumous  volume,  which, 
however,  contains  some  exquisite  sonnets,  and  one  or  two  lyrics, 
"  Love,  on  your  grave  in  the  ground,"  ''  When  the  Rose  came,  I  loved 
the  Rose,"  and  others,  in  his  best  style.  But  this  style  is  chiefly 
found  in  The  Epic  of  Women  and  Music  and  Moonlight,  and  here 
O'Shaughnessy  has  a  quality  which  is  almost  all  his  own,  though  he 
owes  a  very  little  in  form  to  Poe,  a  little  more  in  thought  and  feeling 
to  the  French  -poet  Baudelaire,  and  perhaps  a  little  also  to  George 
Darley.  For  strange  and  sweet  music,  "  Exile,"  "  A  Neglected 
Heart,"  "Barcarolle,"  "The  Fountain  of  Tears,"  the  "ode"  of 
Music  and  Moonlight,  "  Once  in  a  hundred  years,"  "  Has  summer 
come  without  the  rose?"  and  others  stand  quite  by  themselves.  The 
late  Mr.  Palgrave,  who  discovered  O'Shaughnessy  in  time  to  insert 
some  of  his  work  in  the  second  series  of  the  Golden  Treasury,  justly 
applied  to  them  Sir  Henry  VVotton's  famous  phrase  of  ipsa  mollitit's ; 
but  they  have  more  than  mere  softness,  they  have  mystery  and  magic. 
It  is  possible  that  this  anthology  may  at  last  extend  the  enjoyment  of 
them  beyond  the  few  who  have  from  the  first  tasted  their  charm. 

A  not  much  longer  life,  even  greater  unhappiness  (in  this  case 
it  is  to  be  feared  by  his  own  fault),  and  far  more  unfavourable 
external  circumstances,  were  the  lot  of  James  Thomson  the  Second, 
who  was  born,  the  son  of  a  sailor,  at  Port  Glasgow  in  1834.  and  died 
in  London  after  breaking  a  blood-vessel  in  1S82.  He  was  educated 
at  the  Caledonian  Asylum,  and  became  an  army  schoolmaster;  Init 
was  dismissed  for  insubordinate  conduct,  and  after  a  wandering  life 
for  some  time,  turned  journalist,  and  was  this  —  as  far  as  he  had  any 
regular  occupation  —  till  his  death.  Thomson's  prose  work  which  has 
been  recovered  is  not  inconsiderable,  and  displays  undoubted  ability 
3E 


786  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

of  the  critical  kind,  marred  not  merely  by  crude  and  violent  views, 
and  a  sour  rusticity  of  temper,  but  by  the  kind  of  half-knowledge,  and 
the  conventional  priggishness,  which  are  apt  to  beset  self-educated  men. 
His  verse  is  very  unequal,  but  at  its  best  fully  earns  him  a  place  here. 
Its  capital  expression  in  bulk  is  the  almost  famous  City  of  Dreadfjd 
Night,,  which  first  appeared  in  a  freethought  newspaper,  the  Natiotial 
Refortner,  in  1874.  Just  before  his  death  this  was  published  as  the 
title-piece  of  a  volume,  and  another,  Vane's  Story,  followed,  with  post- 
humous pieces,  later.  He  is  in  much  need  of  selection,  which  would 
display  his  narrow  and  somewhat  sinister,  but  intense,  poetical  quality, 
at  present  too  much  lost  and  diluted  in  a  mass  of  inferior  work. 

Although,  among  dead  verse-writers  who  published  about  or  after 
1850.  there  are  not  a  few  of  interest,  perhaps  hardly  one  can  pretend 
to  a  substantive  place  here.  Coventry  Patmore  (1823-96),  after  being 
long  chiefly  known  by  The  Angel  in  the  House  (1854 
onwards),  a  domestic  love-history  of  great  beauty  in 
parts,  but  too  fluent,  and  sometimes  a  little  pathetic,  gave  stronger 
notes  in  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  life  with  The  Unknown  Eros 
(1877)  and  other  things.  Sir  Francis  Hastings  Doyle  (1810-88), 
Professor  of  Poetry  at  Oxford,  with  no  very  great  range  of  poetical 
power,  showed  himself,  when  touching  the  "heroic  lyre"  in  "The  Red 
Thread  of  Honour,"  "  The  Private  of  the  Buffs,"  and  other  pieces, 
the  equal  of  Drayton  and  Campbell  in  their  small  and  worthy  class. 
Lord  De  Tabley  (1835-95  ;  better  known,  if  known  at  all,  in  his 
earlier  years  as  Mr.  Leicester  Warren,  and  writing  under  the  name 
of  W.  P.  Lancaster)  came,  like  Patmore,  to  his  own  only  in  his  last 
years  with  two  volumes  of  Dramatic  and  Lyrical  Poems  (1893-95), 
but  had  in  much  earlier  work  shown  poetic  power  far  above  the 
average.  Those  others  in  whose  case  entire  omission  might  seem 
most  unjust  are  perhaps  Ebenezer  Jones  (1820-60),  whose  Studies 
of  Sensatioti  and  Event  (1843)  even  antedated  the 'Spasmodic  school 
generally,  but  is  an  outher  of  it ;  William  Johnson  or  Cory,  whose 
lonica  has  originality  and  classical  charm ;  Charles  Stuart  Calverley, 
whose  parodies  and  whimsicalities  generally  are  among  the  most 
amusing  of  the  century,  and  possess  that  touch  of  scholarship  which 
is  more  especially  needed  to  save  verse  of  this  kind  from  vulgarity 
and  to  give  it  permanence  ;  and  Charles  Lutwidge  Dodgson  (1832-98), 
a  learned  mathematician,  but  the  property  of  literature  in  virtue  of 
his  delightful  verse  and  prose  medleys,  all  published  as  "  by  Lewis 
Carroll"  —  Alice'' s  Adventures  in  Wonderland  (1866),  Through  the 
Looking-Glass  (1871),  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark  (1876),  etc.  The 
rest  must  be  silence. 


CHAPTER   V 

MISCELLANEOUS 

J.  S.  Mill  —  Mansel  —  John  Austin  —  Others  —  Newman  —  Borrow —  Others  — 
Science—  Darwin  — The  Vestiges—  Hugh  Miller —  Huxley 

The  extension  of  literary  treatment  to  subjects  which  had  previously 
received  little  or  nothing  of  it,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  contraction 
of  literary  effort  in  some  where  once  it  was  busy  and  almost  supreme, 
on  the  other,  have  been  noted  as  characteristic  of  modern  English 
writing.  And  both  result,  in  the  case  of  such  a  historical  account  as 
this,  in  the  necessity  of  a  sort  of  "  pool  "  for  the  reception  of  handlings  of 
new  or  old  subjects  which  have  scarcely  attained,  or  have  gradually  lost, 
the  proportions  requiring  separate  treatment  here.  Philosophy  and 
theology  belong  to  the  last  category  of  inclusion,  scholarship  and 
physical  science  to  the  first,  while  the  once  all-iinportant  name  of 
drama  must  have  been  included,  if  it  had  not  seemed  better  to  give 
it  no  grouped  treatment,  and  simply  to  mention  the  rather  rare 
examples  of  it  which  have  literary  interest  with  the  other  work  of 
their  writers. 

In  philosophical  writing  of  the  wide  and  ''  applied  "  kind  there 
have  been  five  writers  who  dominate  the  second  third  of  the  century, 
while  two  of  them  lived  nearly  to  its  close — the  younger  Mill,  his 
opponent  Dean  Mansel,  Austin,  Maine,  and  Stephen. 

John  Stuart  Mill,  the  son  of  James,  was  born  in  London  on  12th 

May    1806,  educated    according   to    his   father's    unnatural    fads,  and 

early   introduced    by   him    into    the   East    India   House.     But  official 

duties    were   to    him    merely   a   profitable   avocation :    his 

..,,.,-      ,  .'         ,    ,.,  „  J.  S.  Mill, 

vocation  was  entirely  philosophic  and   literary.      He  was 

for  some  time  editor  of  the  Loudon  and  Westminster  Rcvicxv,  and 

his  purely  literary  work  in  essay  is  not  despicable ;  but  logic,  ethics, 

and  political  discussion  in  the  philosophical  succession  of  Locke  and 

Hume,  with  a  strong  dash  of  French  ]iositivism,  were  what  attracted 

him    most.      In    1843  ^^  published    iiis   celebrated   System   of  Lope, 

Ratiocinative  (the  substitution  for  Deductive  is  important)  and  Indue- 

787 


788  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

tive ;  in  1848  his  scarcely  less  celebrated  Political  Economy  —  a  new 
outlier  of  philosophy  which,  from  the  time  of  its  English  father 
Adam  Smith  downwards,  has  contributed  much  more  than  a  respect- 
able share  of  English  philosophy  which  is  literature.  He  entered 
Parliament  in  1865,  and  was  a  conspicuous  though  amiable  failure 
there,  was  turned  out  in  1868,  and  died  five  years  later  at  Avignon. 
He  had  always  lived  much  in  France,  where  he  was  partly  educated, 
and  there  was  a  certain  French  strain,  as  well  as  a  feminine  one,  in 
his  style  and  thought.  His  minor  works,  some  of  them  not  so  very 
minor,  were  Liberty  (1859),  Dissertations  and  Discussions  (1859- 
75),  Utilitarianism  (1863),  a  book  on  Comte  (1865),  an  elabo- 
rate Examination  of  Sir  William  Hamilton'' s  Philosophy  (1865 ; 
much  of  this  was  an  excited  polemic  against  the  religious  philos- 
ophy of  Hamilton's  disciple  Mansel),  The  Subjection  of  Women 
(1869),  and  posthumously,  an  interesting  Autobiography  (1873-74). 
With  MilPs  philosophical  peculiarities  we  are  hardly  here  concerned, 
more  than  to  say  that  he  was  a  rigid  sensationalist  in  psychology, 
and  in  political  economy  and  politics  proper  a  believer  in 
"  Liberty,"  almost  to  the  full  anarchic  impossibilities  of  Godwin,  a 
Utilitarian  in  ethics,  and  an  "  Associationist "  everywhere.  His 
literary  exposition  of  these  tenets  deserves  all  but  the  highest  praise, 
and  with  a  more  inspiring  creed  would  probably  have  merited  the 
highest,  being  clear  without  shallowness,  popular  without  vulgarity, 
and  precise  without  any  indulgence  of  that  extravagantly  technical 
jargon  which  has  put  so  much  recent  philosophy  out  of  court  with 
literary  judgment. 

The  opponent  just  mentioned,  Henry  Longueville  Mansel  (1820- 
71),  a  much  younger  man  than  Mill,  died  before  him,  and  wrote 
very  much  less,  while  his  subjects  were,  almost  exclusively,  not  the 
exoteric  and  popular,  but  the  esoteric  and  technical 
departments  of  philosophy.  Yet  he  was  as  little  of  a 
"jargonist"  as  Mill  himself,  a  far  closer  and  deeper  thinker,  and  the 
master  of  a  style  which,  in  his  few  excursions  to  the  matter  of  the 
general  reader,  became  literary  in  the  finest  sense,  while  even  in  his 
more  abstract  writings  it  has  the  most  admirable  quality.  He  re- 
ceived his  education  at  Merchant  Taylors'  School  and  St.  John's 
College  at  Oxford,  became  a  Fellow  of  this  latter,  Bampton  Lecturer, 
and  first  Waynflete  Professor  of  Moral  and  Metaphysical  Philosophy 
in  the  University.  He  was  long  the  leader  of  the  Tory  party  in 
Oxford,  and  was  made  Dean  of  St.  Paul's  in  1868,  but  held  the  post 
only  a  short  time,  dying  suddenly  in  1871.  His  bookwork  is  not 
large:  a  volume  oi  Bampton  Lectures  (1857),  which  were  violently 
attacked  by  freethinkers  and  others  for  their  so-called  Occamism  (or 
Occamism  turned  upside  down)   on  the  relations  of  the  Deity  to  the 


CHAP.  V  MISCELLANEOUS  789 

moral  standard,  but  which  stand  almost  alone  as  examples  of  really 
philosophical  theology  in  our  time ;  a  dissertation  on  Metaphysics 
(i860);  and  Prolegomena  Logica  (1851),  his  chief  original  contri- 
bution to  philosophy ;  besides  some  not  individually  bulky  Lectures, 
Letters,  etc.  It  is  said  that  he  cannot  be  found  in  German 
dictionaries  of  philosophy,  which  would  seem  to  be  so  much  the 
worse  for  those  repositories  of  learning.  After  his  death  a  volume, 
interesting  but  very  partially  representative  of  his  powers,  was  pub- 
lished, containing  a  reprint  of  an  extraordinarily  brilliant  University 
"  skit '  in  verse  called  Phrontisterion,  and  some  Quarterly  essays ; 
with  another  volume  on  The  Gnostic  Heresies  (1875).  As  a  man  of 
letters  he  may  be  more  than  content  with  the  exact  and  generous 
encomium  of  Mr.  Pater  (a  critic  as  competent  in  the  particular  matter 
as  alien  from  the  Dean  in  general  tone  of  thought  and  choice  of 
subjects)  that  Mansel's  works  "illustrate  the  literary  beauty  that 
there  may  be  in  conciseness,  and  with  obvious  repression  or  economy 
of  a  fine  rhetorical  gift."  And  it  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  that 
such  rhetorical  gift  (which  has  not  been  scanty)  as  has  existed  in  our 
century  has  too  often  not  been  repressed  or  economised. 

Austin,  Maine,  and  Stephen  earned  their  chief  reputation  by 
devoting  themselves  to  the  philosophic  handling  of  law  —  a  subject 
which  Bentham  has  at  least  the  credit  of  rescuing  from  the  mere 
"  text-and-margent "  dealing  of  too  many  early  Englisli'  ,  ,     '      . 

■  ,         •        /  ox  ij     John  Austin. 

writers  on  it.  Austin  (i  790-1 859)  was  a  man  old 
enough  to  have  appeared  in  the  previous  Book,  and  his  great  work, 
The  Province  of  Jurisprudence  Determined,  appeared  as  early  as 
1 83 1.  But  his  lectures  were  not  published  till  after  his  death. 
More  philosophical  and  more  literary  than  Bentham,  Austin  had  a 
harder  and  stronger  intellect  than  MilPs,  and  is  perhaps,  on  tlie 
whole,  the  greatest  product  of  Utilitarianism.  His  clearness  is  partly 
the  result  of — is  certainly  accompanied  by  —  limitations;  and  like 
all  his  school  he  has  a  not  quite  intelligent  intolerance  of  the  inex- 
plicable. But  he  was  a  great  mental  gymnast  and  gymnasiarch, 
and  his  style  agrees  with  his  gifts. 

Maine  and  Steplicn,  a  younger  pair,  belong  distinctly  to  the  later 
half  of  the  century.  Both  depended  very  much,  though  by  no  means 
in  matter  of  direct  pupilage,  on  Austin,  and  both  exhibit  philosophy 
as  it  busies  itself  chiefly  with  politics  or  the  political  ^^^^^ 
sciences,  Henry  James  Sumner  Maine,  born  in  1822, 
was  educated  at  Christ's  Hosi)ital  and  at  Pembroke  College,  Cam- 
bridge, whence  he  passed  to  Trinity  Hall,  of  which  he  became  at 
first  Fellow  and  afterwards  Master  from  1877  til!  liis  death  in  1888. 
He  was  made  Professor  of  Civil  Law  at  five-aiul-twcnty,  and  soon 
after  Reader,  at  Lincoln's    Inn;    in    1862   he   became   Legal   Member 


790  VICTORIAN    LITERATURE  book  XI 

of  Council  in  India.  He  returned  to  a  place  in  the  Indian  Council 
at  home,  and  to  the  Professorship  of  Jurisprudence  at  Oxford.  He 
was  a  rather  copious  contributor  to  the  newspaper  press,  but  his 
connection  with  literature  depends  mainly  on  four  works  of  great 
importance  and  admirable  style  —  Ancient  Laiv,  his  masterpiece 
(1861),  Village  Communities  (1871),  Early  Law  and  Custom  (1883), 
and  Popular  Government  (1885). 

His  successor  on  the  Indian  Council,  Sir  James  Fitzjames 
Stephen,  was  seven  years  younger,  and  survived  Maine  rather  less  than 
the  same  term.  He  was  son  of  another  Sir  James  Stephen,  a  very 
considerable  person  of  his  day  as  an  Edinburgh  reviewer,  an  official 
in  the  Colonial  Office,  Professor  of  Modern  History  at  Cambridge, 
and  author  of  divers  books,  the  chief  being  Essays  in  Ecclesiastical 
History.  The  younger  Sir  James  was  called  to  the  Bar  in  1854, 
and  died,  shortly  after  resigning  a  judgeship,  forty  years  later.  He 
was  at  Eton  for  a  time,  then  at  King's  College,  London,  and  finished 
his  education  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  His  main  subject  was 
that  of  his  profession,  and  his  treatise  on  the  Criminal  Law  is  a 
standard  book,  but  he  wrote  much  in  theology,  in  which  his  thought 
inclined  to  the  negative;  history,  Indian  and  other;  and  miscellaneous 
literature.  His  best  literary  mark,  both  in  thought  and  style,  was 
perhaps  made  in  Liberty,  Equality,  and  Eraternity  (1873). 

Theology  itself  has  contributed  even  less  than  philosophy  to  the 
permanent  literary  production  of  the  century,  and  most  of  what  it 
has  given  of  this  kind  is  due  to  the  Oxford  Movement.  This  not 
merely  produced  the  massive  scholarship  and  striking,  if  rugged, 
style  of  its  great  and  never  lost  leader  Pusey  (1806-82),  the 
exquisite  Christian  verse  of  Keble  (1792-1866),  the  admirable 
literary  balance  and  precision  of  Dean  Church  (1815-90),  but 
was  responsible,  as  matter  of  reaction  and  revulsion,  besides  the 
already  mentioned  Froude,  for  the  strange,  unattractive,  but  intensely 
characteristic  work  of  Mark  Pattison  (1813-89),  Fellow  and  latterly 
Rector  of  Lincoln  College,  Oxford,  who  inadequately  represented 
his  great  learning  in  humanist  and  Renaissance  literature  by  studies 
oi  Casaubon  (1875)  and  Scaliger,  wrote  a  great  little  book  on  Milton 
(1879),  contributed  to  the  once  famous  Essays  and  Reviews  (i860), 
and  left  an  autobiography  showing  with  admirable  literary  finish,  but 
with  somewhat  hideous  veracity,  the  trials  of  a  wounded  soul,  incapa- 
ble of  earthly  medication  and  rejecting  heavenly. 

But  the  literary  glory  of  the  last  two-thirds  of  the  century  in 
English  theology  was  the  other,  the  lost  leader  of  the  Tractarian 
movement,  John  Henry  Newman,  who  is  ranked  by  some  with,  and 
by  most  competent  judges  not  far  below,  the  greatest  masters  of 
English  prose,  and  who  had  no  small  skill  in  verse,  as  is  shown  by 


CHAP.  V  MISCELLANEOUS  791 

the  Dream  of  Gerontius  and  many  hymns  and  poems,  of  which  the 
chief  is  the  famous  "Lead,  Kindly  Light."  Newman  was  born  in  the 
year  1801,  and  in  London,  of  an  East-Anglian  family. 
He  was  educated  at  a  private  school,  and  went  to  Trinity 
College,  Oxford,  early.  He  was  not  at  first  very  successful,  but 
obtained  an  Oriel  Fellowship  in  1823,  whereby,  at  the  age  of  five- 
and-twenty,  he  became  Vicar  of  St.  Mary's,  the  University  church,  an 
appointment  of  no  pecuniary  value,  but  as  a  vantage-point  the  equal 
at  least  of  any  cure  in  England.  For  some  twenty  years  Newman 
delivered  from  this  pulpit  sermons  unlike  anything  else  of  their  kind  ; 
and  he  also  took  all  but,  or  altogether,  the  greatest  part,  certainly 
the  greatest  literary  part,  in  the  polemic  of  the  Oxford  Movement. 
His  journey  to  the  Mediterranean  in  1832-33,  and  his  resignation  of 
St.  Mary's  shortly  before  he  left  the  Church  of  England,  were  the 
most  important  events  in  his  career,  which  lasted  longer  after  this 
event  than  before  it.  He  wrote  much  during  his  nearly  fifty  years 
of  connection  with  the  Roman  Church,  in  which  he  rose  to  be  Cardinal, 
but,  except  the  Apologia  of  1864,  in  which  he  eagerly  availed  himself 
of  Kingsley's  awkward  attack,  not  much  of  the  first  importance.  He 
died  nth  August  1890. 

Newman's  work  is  exceedingly  voluminous,  and  hardly  even  the 
briefest  analysis  of  it  can  be  attempted  here.  The  Plain  atid  Paro- 
chial Sermons  and  the  Apologia  would  suffice  for  an  appreciation  of 
his  style,  though  nothing  that  he  wrote  in  prose  or  verse  can  be  called 
superfluous.  In  the  main  he  is  a  representative  of  that  perfected 
plain  Georgian  style  whicli  has  been  more  than  once  indicated  as 
the  best,  for  all  purposes  in  English.  It  is  in  him  refined  still  further 
by  an  extra  dose  of  classical  and  academic  correctness,  flavoured 
with  quaint  though  never  over-mannered  turns  of  phrase,  and  shot  in 
every  direction  with  a  quintessential  individuality,  rarely  attempting 
(though  never  failing  when  it  does  attempt)  the  purely  rhetorical,  but 
instinct  with  a  strange  quiver  of  religious  and  poetical  spirit. 

The  theological  school  formally  opposed  to  Tractarianism  was 
not  distinguished  by  literary  merit ;  but  it  so  happens  that  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  literary  figures  of  the  century,  and  one  who  as  in 
the  strictest  sense  miscellaneous  and  nondescript,  has  the  best  right 
here,  was  violently  anti-Tractarian,  and  indeed  wrote  one  of  his  few 
books,  and  great  part  of  another,  almost  directly  against  it.  Tliis 
was    Geor<ie    Borrow,    a   novelist,   whose    novels   are,    in 

,.     ,  ,  .  ,  .  .         ■  ,  Rorrow. 

fact,  little  or  nothmg  more   than  very  miagmative   auto- 
biographies—  which    description    might  also    be   given  to  almost  the 
whole  of  his  work,      liorrow,  the   son  of  an  officer   in  the  army,  was 
born   in    Norfolk    in    1803,   and    died    in    the   same    county    in    1881. 
After  some  curious  experiences  in  quest  of  literary  work,  he  became 


792  VICTORIAN    MTKRATURE  book  Xt 


an  agent  of  llu-  I'liMc  Sociiiy,  and  li.ivcllcd  niu(  li  in  Spain  in  the 
exciting  early  days  dl'  the  reign  of  Queen  Is.ilx  I  II  I'liese  travels 
snpplied  Iiiin  with  tlie  materials  of  his  two  fnst  hooks  Ihc  (H/'sics 
in  Spain  (1S40)  and  f'/ic  Ihblc  in  Spain  (184.3),  the  latter  one  of 
the  most  brilliant  and  original  books  of  travel  ever  written.  In 
Lavcni^ro  (1851)  and  Tlw  Romany  Rye  (1857)  he  wove  his  earlier 
advcntnres  in  l'',ngland  itself,  and  espeei;dly  his  knowledge"  of  gipsy 
life,  with  many  other  str.mds,  of  whieli  the  above-n. lined  ,inti  I'nsey- 
ism  was  the  chief,  into  a  singnlar  fal)ric,  very  delightlul  at  its  best  to  , 
those  who  can  taste  it;  while  the  later  //VA/  Walts  is  again  avoweil 
travel.  These  are  all  his  pnblished  original  books;  but  he  also  wrote 
a  vast  mass  of  translation,  philological  work,  etc.,  oidy  a  very  small 
part  of  which  ever  got  into  piinl.  I'.oirow  was  one  of  Ihc  nmst 
nnre,is()n,d)le  i>f  men,  .ind  the  eccc  iitiicity  of  his  genins  no  doubt  had 
something  of  atfert.ilion  in  it.  Hiil  it  was  genins  at  least  ,is  undoubted 
as  that  of  any  one  nii-ntioncd  m  this  chapter,  .ind  Ihe  (l.ivour  of  his 
manner  and  style  is  as  intense  as  il  is  imi(|ne. 

Close  to  most  of  the  names  mentioned  in  this  chapter,  and  in 
others  of  this  Hook,  come  yet  other  names  which  may  seem  to  demand 
as.sociation  with  them:  jowell  by  r.ittison;  Professors  'I".  II.  (.leen 
and  VV.dl.ice  among  tiie  philosophers;  .Seeley  among  the 
historians;  Walter  Hagehot  ( i<Sj6  "]■])  a  man  of  singular 
intelligence  both  in  literature  and  politics;  John  Forstcr  (1813-76) 
—  a  l)um])tions  person,  but  a  useful  scholar—  ;ind  Di.  lolin  Urown 
(1810-82),  the  most  Cioldsmithian  of  recent  vviilcis,  .imong  the 
essayists;  Kichard  Jefferies  (184S-87),  the  greatest  mimite  describer 
of  English  country  life  since  White  of  .Sclbonic,  cilhci  by  himself  or 
with  the  •' |)ictoriaIs  "  like  Kuskin  and  I'aler.  \\\\\.  we  nnist  pass  them 
by,  as  less  eminent  and  re|)resentative  than  others,  and  ("d  nilh  a  few 
.specialists  in  branches  less  literary  as  a  rule. 

The  production    of  physical  science,  as  might    be    expected,  has 

been    very    large,    but    from    the    increase    of   technical  and   sjiecialist 

character  seldom   literary.      Yet   it    has  eidisfed   sotne  jx-rsons  of  real 

liter, ny   talent,   and    one    or    two  of   something    not    unlike 
Scienre.  .      -^        ,,,,  ,   .  .        .      r    .1  1  1      11  .• 

genms.       I  he  most  nnpoilanl  ol    these  heyond  all  (juestion 

were  Charles  Darwiti  and  Thomas  Huxley,  to  whom,  as  an  examjile  of 

popular  science,  we  may  add  Hugh  Miller. 

Charles    Robnl    D.nwin,  grandson    ol    the    .mllioi    of   ihc    /lo/anir 

Gait/rn,   was    born    at    .Shrewsbury    in     iSoij,   and    edni  aled    there,   at 

JOdinburgh,  and  at  Christ's  College,  Cambridge.      One  of  the  (  hances 

which    oidy    come    to    nicii    .il    once    great    .ind    (oiliin.ile, 

but   of  which   oidy  men   al    oik c  gicit   and  foilimate  take 

full  advantage,  made    him    naturalist    to    II. M.S.    /irat^/c,  during    her 

scientific   criii.sc   to    the    South   Seas  between    1831    and    r836,  under 


t-u,\r.  V  Misril  1  AMOrS 


the  comiu;\n«l  of  Cipt.iin,  .illoiw.Mtls  A(1n\5n»l.  Ki(,-iov.  Oi\  lus  ivtmn 
boiuc.  havinj;  considciablc  moans  .\ud  wo  xwvA  o(  .\  pixitcssion,  ho 
jfiivo  himsolt"  up  cutiix^ly  to  cxpoiiMunt,  thouj;hl,  ami  litoiarv  exposi- 
tion o(  l\is  viows  in  rogaul  to  bioloi^v,  ospooiallv  in  ii'i;,»iil  tv>  tho 
lamons  thootios  ot*  Selootion  ami  l".voUi(ion  wilh  \vluil\  lus  i\amo  is 
oonnootod.  ri\o  Orixtti  >^f'  S/>ftii\\\  his  most  tamons  book,  appoatoil 
in  185V).  ami  was  Iv^llowcd  In  otiiois.  Oi\  smh  views  historical 
litriaiv  iiitioism  has  no  opinions:  it  Kioks  at  their  authors,  iVonj 
lloiavlitns  to  Parwiu.  with  .\\\  equal  e\e,  knowiui;  that  thov  liaw  u.  and 
chain),  and  itiilate.  ai\d  I'all.  .\\\d  pass  away,  rotainin:>i  little  hut 
historical  interest  in  themselves,  unless  they  happen  to  have  soui;ht 
and  ohtaii\ed  the  aid  of  literature  itsell  in  theii  expiessiiuu  Parwii; 
seenis  to  have  son-^ht  little,  hut  he  obtained  somethini;  —  ai\  absolute 
cleaitiess.  a  kind  ot  competency  and  snlhciemv  lot  his  own  needs, 
which  can  never  pass  unnoticed,  and  with  then\  an  imimation  o\ 
liteiary  pvnvor  iu  reserve,  which  cvuild  have  been  displayovl  it  occasivui 
had  served. 

A  less  scientilic.  but  n\oiX'  definitely  literary,  anticipation  o\  the 
l'"vi>lution  iheorv,  the  / VaY/^v.v  ,<f'  (>>*.///('«.  which  continued  to  be 
anonvmo\is  lor  some  time,  but  was  known  lo  be  the  wmk  ot  Robert 
V'hambers,  a  well  known  I'dinbui^h  iniblisluM.  h.ul 
appeared  in  \^.\.\,  and  had  been  oppiiseil  bv  man\. 
includini;  .u\  interestiuii;  sell  made  man  ol  science  and  letters.  llni;h 
Miller  ot   I'liunartv.  who.  boi  n  seven   ve.irs  bi-toie    Paiwin,    bei;.»n    lile 

as  a  stone-mason,  became  a    journalist,    and    died    b\    his 

1  I     •         ...  II-         "I'j      i>    J      .■         ■  ,  ..       \    11  null  Miller, 

own    hand    m   i.Sq(>.        I  us     ( ',./    A*./    .s.;//./,v.'.'///-    1^1.^41  ) 

unites    scientitic    \alne    with    popul.ir    .i|>pe.d    .ind    lilei.ir\    miMit    in   .1 

very  unnsii.d  w.u.  .uid  ahutvst  .is   much  m,i\  be  s.iid  ol   the  lest   ot   his 

mimiMous  wiilini;s    ^especi.illv   .l/r  .V, //c'.'/.v  .;//,/  S,  /t,'i'/>fi>r\fi> s,   iS^jV 

wliere  their  m.ittiM  .idmits  ol   really  literarv   treatment.     There  c.in  be 

nothing  luore  hopelesslv  unliter.irv  Ih.m  lo  nnderv.due  1  lugh  Miller. 

Hut  the  ure.Uest  man  ol  si  ieme  Iroin  Ihe  point  ol  view  ol  lileialnie 

duiimjtbe  cenlurv       .i  m.in  who  must   h.ue   been  lemaik.ible  in  an\ 

literarv  prose  exercise   to  which   he    h.ul  given   himsell,  and    ol  whose 

perl'orm.mces  it  e.in  onlv  be  regrelted   th.it   tliev  too  olten 

III  I  1       .-"        I   •  II-  lluvlrv. 

had  Ihe  two  most  epnemer.il  »>l  sunjects  plwsu.u  scieme 
and  anti  theological  inilemic  —  tor  iheir  themes,  was  Ihom.is  llemy 
Huxley,  born  at  l-'aling  in  iSii;,  lie  entered  the  n.ivv  .is  a  doctor, 
and  visited  the  South  Seas,  but  he  did  not  lind  the  .Admiralty  sym- 
l^.itlietic,  and  lell  the  service,  tlunigh  he  held  m.my  public  appoint- 
ments l.Uei .  Mis  sliictlv  scientilic  woik  w.is  ot  a  mote  speci.il 
char.ict(M  th.m  IVn  win's.  Hut  he  used  his  C(»\siderable  enltme  .iiid 
his  undoubted  liter.uv  genius  in  a  lopious  and  rather  too  .iggiessive 
abuml.ince  ot  lectuK-s,  leviews.  ess.ivs,  bio^;iaphics,  mostly  detcndinj; 


794  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book  xi 

science  by  assuming  the  offensive,  but  always  curiously  alive,  full  of 
inspiration  from  the  very  sources  —  pure  philosophy,  pure  theology, 
pure  literature  —  which  he  would  have  had  men  leave  for  others,  and 
displaying  a  vivid  and  forcible  style,  only  deficient  in  the  one  grace 
of  urbanity.  If  the  good  points  of  Huxley  and  those  of  Matthew 
Arnold  could  have  been  combined,  and  their  weak,  points  eliminated, 
the  best  literary  manner  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  one  of  the 
best  of  all  times,  would  have  resulted. 

Even  shorter  and  more  eclectic  notice  must  suffice  for  the  more 
noticeable  names  of  the  department  between  science  and  literature, 
that  of  philological  study  in  ancient  and  modern  languages,  which 
does  not  disregard  literature  altogether.  This  combination  has  been 
too  much  forgotten,  yet  some  names  of  those  who  have  not  forgotten  it 
emerge.  The  revived  interest  in  old  English  literature  as  literature 
bore  its  fniit  also  in  the  study  of  English  language,  and  of  all  the  formal 
parts  of  English  rhetoric  and  poetry.  Some  linguistic  scholars  have 
been  noted  above,  as  has  the  most  important  in  the  other  class,  the 
author  of  the  one  important  book  which  exists  on  English  Prosody, 
Dr.  Edwin  Guest. 

In  the  classics  themselves  not  a  little  good  work  has  been  done. 
The  most  accomplished  scholar,  in  the  strict  technical  modern  sense, 
who  did  not  let  slip  his  grasp  of  literature,  was  probably  H.  A.  J. 
Munro  of  Cambridge,  who  produced  an  epoch-making  edition  of 
Lucretius ;  the  most  literary  exponents  and  professors  of  classical 
literature,  who  were  also  scholars,  John  Conington  of  Oxford  and 
W.  Y.  Sellar  of  Edinburgh,  the  former  famous  for  his  edition  of 
Virgil,  the  latter  for  his  series  of  books  on  the  Roman  Poets  of  the 
Republic  and  the  Early  Empire.  But  the  work  of  scholars  in  this 
kind  must  always  be  more  ministerial  than  creative.  They  efface 
themselves  in  introducing  others. 


CONCLUSION 

The  peculiarities  of  the  period  immediately  noticed  in  the  preced- 
ing Book  resemble  those  of  the  earlier  part  of  the  century  in  defying 
single  or  simple  characterisation.  Owing  partly  to  the  wide  expatia- 
tion  of  literature  in  respect  of  subject,  partly  to  the  increasing  rejec- 
tion of  narrow  or  identical  regulations  as  to  form,  the  product  is  —  at 
any  rate  when  seen  so  close  —  a  little  chaotic ;  and  it  would  be  a 
proof  rather  of  rashness  than  of  prescience  to  undertake  to  say  how 
the  firm  perspective  of  the  past  will  represent  it  to  the  future. 

Something,  however,  we  can  see  and  say.  In  poetry,  that 
reliance  on  the  combined  appeal  of  poetic  expression  to  eye  and 
ear  by  extremely  elaborate  and  vivid  description  and  colouring,  by 
cunningly  adjusted  symphony  of  letter  and  syllable,  which  in  th^  first 
half  disengaged  itself  from  the  turmoil  of  the  Romantic  revolt,  has 
been  more  and  more  the  special  method  of  the  second ;  and  though 
the  Pre-Raphaelite  school,  which  expressed  this  most  fully,  is  probably 
past  its  prime,  no  other  has  really  taken  its  place,  and  no  poet  of 
anything  like  commanding  originality  has  appeared  for  many  years. 
New  singers  are  more  and  more  echoes  —  sometimes  direct,  sometimes 
blended.  We  have  our  Crashaw  and  our  Akenside ;  we  have  even 
resurrections  of  voices  so  recent,  and  themselves  so  little  perfected,  as 
those  of  the  Spasmodics.  But  there  is  no  sign  yet  of  a  Tennyson  or 
a  Browning,  even  of  a  Morris  or  a  Rossetti.  Meanwhile.  Tennvson 
himself  has  given  to  the  century  an  example  of  a  poet  permitted  by 
fortune  to  develop  himself,  using  the  permission  as  perhaps  only 
two  poets  before  him  (Chaucer  and  Drydcn)  had  done,  and  leaving 
a  life-work  which,  if  it  come  short  of  Chaucer  in  originality  and 
freshness,  of  Dryden  in  strength,  possesses  its  own  superiorities  over 
both.  And  Browning  has  left  us  a  figure  unique,  interesting  in  its 
very  faults,  Wordsworthian  in  the  difference  between  its  best  poetry 
and  its  worst,  antl  at  tiie  opposite  i)ole  from  Wordsworth's  in  its 
restless  energy  and  all-attempting  variations. 

In  the  matter  of  prose,  the  still  further  development  of  the  novel, 
and  in  the  wide  sense  of  the  essay,  has  been  the  main  feature ;  but 

795 


796  VICTORIAN   LITERATURE  book 

the  form  of  prose,  not  a  little  affected  by  this  very  fact,  has  given  us  a 
somewhat  more  definite  phenomenon  —  one  fit  to  be  classed  with  the 
greater  phases  of  style  during  the  history  itself  as  a  whole.  The 
revolt  from  plainness  which  has  been  sketched  in  connection  with  the 
names  of  Landor  in  one  direction,  of  De  Qiiincey  and  Wilson  in 
another,  of  Carlyle  in  a  third,  has  never  exactly  subsided,  even  into  a 
Provisional  Constitution.  But  it  has  passed  through  at  least  two 
well-marked  phases,  corresponding  to  the  second  and  last  thirds  of 
the  century  respectively.  In  the  middle  period,  though  prose  of  the 
very  greatest  was  produced  by  Carlyle  himself  in  the  more  revolu- 
tionary, by  Newman  in  the  more  academic  varieties,  and  by  Froude 
in  a  style  between  them,  the  general  tendency  of  writing  was  to  a 
looseness  and  slipshodness,  not  indeed  quite  reaching  the  state 
of  things  which  has  been  noticed  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  but,  in  the  different  circumstances,  not  wholly  dissimilar. 
Then,  between  i860  and  1870,  but  not  much  before  the  later  date, 
there  set  in  a  reaction,  not  towards  a  plain  style,  but  towards  a  sort 
of  New  Euphuism,  very  punctilious  of  detail,  elaborately  yellow- 
stockinged  and  cross-gartered,  tremblingly  alive  to  the  least  shadow 
of  the  obvious,  irrevocably  determined  that  none  of  its  guests  should 
take  down  to  the  banquet  of  words  a  partner  in  whose  company  it 
had  ever  found  itself  before.  Sparely  practised  at  first,  this  manner 
became  common  about  the  end  of  the  eighties,  and  since  the  death  of 
two  of  the  chief  practitioners,  Mr.  Pater  and  Mr.  Stevenson  (who 
raised  it  from  a  mannerism  into  a  style),  it  has  been  held  rather 
disgraceful  not  to  follow  it.  Meanwhile  it  is  quite  the  most  distinct 
literary  feature  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  century,  and  one  of  the  few 
such  features  which  the  century  itself  presents,  comparable  to  those  of 
the  centuries  before  it. 

As  we  survey  these  centuries  at  the  end  of  the  strange  Herculean 
task  of  sketching  the  literature  of  a  thousand  years  in  less  than  as 
many  pages,  we  need  attempt  no  Pisgah-sight  forward.  But  the 
route  behind  us  is,  it  may  be  hoped,  fairly  clear.  All  those  who 
possess  or  claim  the  right  to  be  guides  in  the  journey  will  not 
agree  with  this  particular  road-book ;  there  must  be  differences  on 
small  points,  and  there  may  be  differences,  not  unwarranted, 
even  on  some  great  ones.  But,  as  it  has  been  less  the  object  to 
air  crotchets  than  to  write  with  what  has  been  called  a  "  reasoned 
orthodoxy,"  or  with  heresies  repressed  except  where  honour  and 
conscience  require  protest,  such  differences  may  perhaps  be  made 
matter  of  agreement,  of  compromise,  at  least  of  suspended  discussion. 
Those  who  —  and  this  is  the  main  purpose  of  the  volume  —  use  it  to 
supply  the  necessary  minutiae  of  useful  information  in  guiding  them- 


XI  CONCLUSION  797 

selves  or  others  through  the  history  of  which  it  is  a  mere  epiiome, 
may  often  find  the  opinions  here  expressed  differing  from  other 
things  that  have  been  written  about  the  books ;  but  they  will,  it  is 
hoped,  less  often  find  difference  with  the  books  themselves.  It  is 
these  books,  and  not  the  theories  about  them  or  the  gossip  about 
their  authors,  to  which  I  have  striven  here  to  serve  as  usher,  to  make 
access  to  them  a  little  easier,  comprehension  of  them  in  the  initial 
stages  a  little  less  arduous.  To  "do  justice,"  in  the  common  phrase, 
to  such  a  theme  is  impossible ;  the  biggest  book  in  tlie  language, 
and  the  greatest  genius  among  its  writers,  could  hardly  do  that  to 
English  Literature.  But  even  by  as  much  as  this  is  impossible,  by 
so  much  is  it  the  more  to  be  wished  that  every  one  should  be  helped 
and  encouraged  to  acquaint  himself  in  his  measure  with  the  subject 
—  to  gain  some  knowledge,  as  far  as  concerns  his  own  nation  and 
language,  of  the  grace  and  the  glory  of  the  written  word  that  conquers 
Time. 


INDEX 


•#*  Itt  order  not  unduly  to  swell  this  index,  entries  are  confined  to  those  passages 
which  contain  substantive  reference  to,  and  not  mere  citation  of,  tLe  persons, 
books,  or  matters  indicated.  The  dates  here  have  been  adjusted  to  those  in 
The  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  so  far  as  that  useful  publication  has 
appeared.  Variation  in  the  text  is  not  accidental,  but  kept  to  show  that 
authorities  disagree.  When  it  extends  to  one  year  only,  the  difference  be- 
tween new  and  old  style,  as  to  the  beginning  of  the  year,  will  often  account 
for  it. 


ABBEY  WALK,  The,  185 
ABC,  Chaucer's,  122 
Absalom  and  Achitophel,  474  sq. 
Abuses  Stript  and  Whipt,  362 
Adam  Bede,  752 
Adam  Blair,  688 
"Adam  FitzAdam,"  621 
Addison,  Joseph  (1672-1719),  533-9 
Adonais,  676 
Adventurer ,  The,  620 
Adventures  of  a  Guinea,  The,  609 
Adventures  of  an  Atom,  605 
Aeneid,  Douglas's,  188,  191-2 

Phaer's,  251 

Stanyhuist's,  251  note 
Affectionate  Shepherd,  The,  '2r]b 
Against  the  Scots,  169 
Aglaura,  436 
Ainsworth,  William  Harrison (1805-82), 

685 
Aitken,  Mr.  J.  A.,  534  note,  546  note 
Akenside,  Mark  (1721-70),  579-80 
Alastor,  670 
Alba,  278 

Albertus  Wallenstein,  438 
Albion  and  Albanius,  505  note 
Albion's  England,  2:7^ 
Alboin,  2 

Alchemist,  The,  334 
Alcibiades,  500 
Ale  ilia,  278 
Alciphron,  545 

Alexander,  Sir  William.     See  Stirling 
Alexander  and  Dindimus,  a8  note 


Alfred,  King  (849-901),  works  of,  21-25, 

28  note 
Alfred,  Proverbs  of,  59 
Alice  in  Wonderland,  786 
Alisaunder,  King,  89 
Alison,  66  sq. 
Allegro,  L,  394 
All  for  Love,  497-8 
Alliteration,  3,  12,  36,  45,  102  sq. 
Alma,  557 

Almoran  and  Hamet,  609 
Alton  Locke,  754 
Amelia,  602  sq. 
Amis  and  Amiloun,  99 
Amoretti,  Spenser's,  268 
Amory,  Thomas  (1691  ?-i788),  609 
Amusements,  Serious  and  Comical,  526 
Analogy,  Butler's,  542 
Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  The,  378-80 
Anatomy  of  the  World,  The,  -^S-j 
Ancient   Mariner,    The    Rime    of  the, 

653  sq. 
Ancren  Riwle,  The,  53,  69,  143 
Andreas,  St.,  14 
Andrewes,  Bishop  Lancelot  (1555-1626), 

383-4 
Andromeda.  Kingsley's,  753-4 
Andromeda  Liber  at  a.  356 
Angel  in  the  House,  The,  786 
Anima  IWtae.  654  note 
Annual  Register,   The,  628 
Annus  Mirabilis,  474 
Anstey,  Christopher  (1724-1805),  596 
Anti-Jacobin,  The,  596  and  note 


799 


Soo 


A   SHORT   HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE 


Antiquary,    The   (play),   438;    (novel), 

679 -f?- 

Antonio  and  Mellida,  343 

Antony  and.  Cleopatra,  325 

Apollonius  of  Tyre,  28  note 

Apollyonists,  The,  360 

Apology  for  Poetrie,  233 

Appius  and  Virginia,  "  R.  B.'s,"  231 
Webster's,  346 

Appieton  House,  426,  564 

Arbuthnot,  John  (1667-1735),  541 

Arcades,  the,  394 

Arcadia,  The,  264 

Arden  of  Fever  sham,  329 

Areopagitica,  447-8 

"Areopagus,"  the  Leicester  House,  260 

Argument  against  Abolishing  Christi- 
anity, 531 

Armstrong,  John  (1709-79),  579 

Arnold,  Matthew  (1822-88),  766-9, 
774-6 

Arnold,  Thomas  (1795-1842),  710 

Arraignment  of  Paris,  284,  289 

Ars  Sciendi  Mori,  162 

Arthour  and  Merlin,  90 

Arthur,  King,  and  the  Arthurian  Le- 
gend, 42  sq. 

Art  of  Preserving  Health,  579 

Ascham,  Roger  (1515-68),  237-41,  295 

Ashby,  George  (15th  cent,),  165 

Astrcea,  354 

Astrma  Redux,  473 

Astrolabe,  Treatise  of  the,  144-5 

Astrophel  and  Stella,  262 

As  You  Like  It,  325 

Atheists  Tragedy,  The,  349 

Athenian  Mercury,  etc.,  527  and  note 

Atterbury,  Francis  (1662- 1732),  541-2 

Attila,  2 

Aubrey,  John  (1624-97),  523 

Auchinleck  MS.,  the,  84  note 

Audelay,  John  (i4th-i5th  cent.),  163 

Aitgustine,  St.,  Soliloquies  of,  21  note 

Aurengzebe,  474,  498 

Aurora  Leigh,  737 

Austen,  Jane  (1775-1817),  681-3 

Austin,  John  (1790-1859)1  789 

Authorised  Version,  the,  380-1 

Autobiography,  Gibbon's,  626 

Avisa,  Wilioughby's,  277 

Awntyrs  of  Arthur,  The,  105 

Aye?ibite  of  Inwyt,   The,  69 


Ayton,  Sir  Robert  (1570-1638),  461-2 
Aytoun,  William  Edmonstoune  (1813- 
65).  739 

BACON,  Francis  (1561-1626),  369-73 
Bage,  Robert  (172S-1801),  612 
Bagehot,  Walter  (1826-77),  792 
Buillie,  Joanna  (1762-1851),  641 
Bale,  Bishop  John  (1495-1563),  227  and 

note 
Ballades,  Cinquante,  138  note 
Ballad  of  Good  Counsel,  182 
Ballads,  Tennyson's  (1880),  732 
Ballads,  the,  200-204,  43^.  S^o 
Bampton  Lectures  ( Manse! 's),  788 
Barbour,  John  (13167-95),  171-3 
Bar  Chester  Towers,  751 
Barclay,  Alexander  (1475  7-1552) ,  166-7 
Barham,    Richard  Harris    (1788-1845), 

739 
Barnard,  Lady  Anne  (1750-1825),  593-4 
Barnes,  Barnabe  (1569-1609),  277 
Barnes,  William  (1800-86),  719-20 
Barnfield,  Richard  ( 1574-1627 j,  276 
Barons'  Wars,  The,  352 
Barrow,  Isaac  (1630-77),  444-5 
Barry  Cornwall.    See  Procter,  B.  W. 
Bartholomew  Fair,  335 
Barton,  Bernard  (1784-1849),  716 
Basse,  William  (         ?-i653  ?),  362-3 
Battle  of  Alcazar,  289 
Battle  of  Maldo7i,  The,  17 
Battle  of  the  Books,  The,  530 
Baxter,  Richard  (1615-gi),  445 
Bayly,  Thomas  Haynes  (1797-1839)1717 
Beaconsfield,    Benjamin    Disraeli,   Vis- 
count (1804-81),  685-6 
Beattie,  James  (1735-1803),  585-6 
Beaumont,    Francis    (1584-1616),    and 

Fletcher,  John  (1575-1625),  336-40 
Beaumont,  Sir  John  (1583-1627),  355 
Beaumont,  Joseph  (1616-99),  4^9 
Beaux-Stratagem,  The,  495 
Beckford,  William  (1759-1844),  610-11 
Beddoes,   Thomas   Lovell    (1803-49), 

722-3 
Bede,  Alfred's,  24 

Bede,  the  Venerable  (673-735),  11,  24 
Bee,  The,  618 

Beggar's  Opera,  The,  505  note,  559  sq. 
Behn,  Afra  (1640-89),  480-1,  489,  517 
Bellamira,  489 


INDEX 


Soi 


Bells  and  Pomegranates ,  733 

Bentham,  Jeremy  (1748-1832),  712 

Bentley,  Richard  (1662-1742),  540 

Beowulf,  3-7,  8,  10 

Beppo,  667 

Berkeley,   Bishop   George  (1685-1753), 

544-6 
Berners,  John    Bourchier,  Lord  (1467- 

1533).  198-9 
Beryn,  Tale  of,  118 

Bestiary,  the  M.  E.,  57,  58 
Bevis  of  Hampton,  94 
Biograpltia  Literaria,  654  sq. 
Blackmore,  Sir  Richard   (1650  ?-i729), 

555 
Blackstone,  Sir  William  (1723-80),  632 
Blackwood's  Magazirte ,  695  sq. 
Blair,  Hugh   (1718-1800),  581  note,  650 

note 
Blair,  Robert  (1699-1746),  572 
Blake,  William  (1757-1827),  591-2 
Bloomfield,  Robert  (1766-1823),  717 
Bludy  Serk.  The,  185 
Boadicea,  588-90 
Boethius,  Alfred's,  21-23 

Chaucer's,  144 
Boileau,  153 

Bokenam,  Osbern  (15th  cent.).  162-3 
Bold  Stroke  for  a  Wife,  A,  496 
Bolingbroke,  Henry  St.  John,  Viscount 

(i678-i75i),542 
Bon  Gaultier  Ballads,  The,  739 
Book  of  Snobs,  The,  744 
Book  of  the  Duchess,  The,  122 
Book  of  the  Howlat,  175 
Borrow,  George  (1803-81),  791 
Boswell,  James  (1740-95),  648 
Bosworth  Field,  355 
Botanic  Garden,  The,  597 
Bouge  of  Court,  The,  169 
Bourchier,  John.     See  Lord  Berners 
Bovvlby  Cliff,  4  note 
Bowles,  William  (1762-1850),  595 
Boyle,  Robert  (1627-gi),  522-3 
Bradshaw,  Mr.  H.,  118 
Braithwaite,      Richard       (1588  ?-i673), 

355-6 
Breton,  Nicholas  (1545-1626),  355 
Britain's  Ida,  267,  337,  358 
Britannia  s  I'astorals,  361 
Broken  Heart,   The,  433 
Brome,  Alexander  (1620-66),  428 

3P 


Brome,  Richard  (         ?-i652  ?),  437 
Bronte,  Anne  (1820-49),  747-8 
Bronte,  Charlotte  (1816-55),  747-9 
Bronte.  Emily  (1818-48),  747-8 
Brooke,  Henry  (1703-83),  610 
Brooke,  Lord.     See  Greviile,  F. 
Brooke,    Mr.   Stopford,  i  note,  16,  657 

note 
Brougham,    Henry,   Lord    (1778-1868), 

693 
Brown,  Tom  (1663-1704),  526-7,  600 
Browne,  Isaac  Hawkins  (1705-60),  596 

note 
Browne,  Sir  Thomas  (1605-82),  449-52 
Browne,  Willi'am  (1591-1643),  360-i 
Browning,  Elizabeth    Barrett  (1806-61), 

736-8 
Browning,  Robert   (1812-89),  637,  733-6 
Bruce,  Michael  (1746-67),  594 
Brunanbjtrgh  Poem,  The,  17 
Brus,  The,  \T2.-'3, 
Brut,  Layamon's,  48  sq. 
Buchanan,  George  (1506-1582),  465 
Buckhurst,  Lord.     See  Sackville 
Buckle,     Henry     Thomas     (1821-62), 

763-4 
Bulwer.     See  Lytton 
Bunyan,    John    (1628-88),  81,  136  note, 

165.  513-17 
Burgh,   Benedict    and    Thomas    (15th 

cent.),  163 
Burke,  Edmund  (1729-97),  628-31 
Burnet,  Gilbert  (1643-1715),  523 
Burnet,  Thomas  (1635  ?-i7i5),  517-18 
Burney,  Frances  (1752-1840),  612 
Burning  Babe,  The,  276 
Burns,  Robert  (1759-96),  592-5 
Burton,  Robert  (1577-1640),  377-80 
Bury  Fair,  337,  488 
Busybody,   The,  496 

Butler,  Bishop  Joseph  (1692-1752),  543 
Butler,  Samuel  (1612-80),  170,477-9 
Byrhtnolh,   The  Death  of,  17 
Byrom,  John  (1692-1763),  577 
Byron,    George   Cjordon    Byron,    Lord 

(1788-1824),  666-9 

CADENl'S  AND  VANESSA,  530 

Credmon,  10,  11  sq.,  24 

Caleb   ll'illiams,  6^.\ 

Calendar,  'The  Shepherd's,  266-7 

Caligula,  499 


8o2 


A   SHORT   HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE 


Calls  to,  499 

Calverley,  Charles  Stuart  (1831-84),  786 

Cambyses,  231 

Camden,  William  (1551-1623),  301 

Campaign,  The,  536 

Campbell,    Thomas    (1777-1844),    258, 
430.  675-6 

Campden,  Hugh  (15th  cent.),  163 

Campion,   Thomas  (  ?-i6i9),  272, 

277  note,  357-8 

Canning,  George  (1770-1827),  596  and 
note 

Canterbury  Tales,  The,  127  sq. 

Capell,   Edward    (1713-81),    his  Prolu- 
sions, 201,  354  note 

Capgrave,  John  (1393-1464),  208 

Carew,  Thomas  (1598  ?-i639  ?),  419-21 

Carey,  Henry  (         ?-i743).  556 

Carey,  Patrick  {c.  165 1),  425 

Carlyle,    Thomas    ( 1795-188 1),    705-6, 
758-62 

Caroline  poetry,  character  and  distribu- 
tion of,  391  sq. 

Carols,  202  sq. 

"  Carroll,  Lewis."     See  Dodgson 

Cartwright,  William  (1611-43),  422,  438 

Cary,  Henry  (1772-1844),  717 

Castara,  422 

Castaway,  The,  588-9 

Castle  0/  Indolence,   The,  571 

Castle  of  Love,  The,  Berners's,  198 
GrostSte's,  72,  198 

Castle  of  Otranto,  The,  610,  645-6 

Castle  of  Perseverance,  The,  223 

Catiline,  335 

Cato,  537 

Cat's  Pilgrimage,  The,  766  note 

Cavendish,  George  (1500-61?),  235 

Caxton,  William  (14227-91  ?),  196,  199, 
208-9 

Cecilia,  612 

Centlivre,  Mrs.  (16807-1722),  496 

Chamceleon,  465 

Chamberlayne,  William  (1619-89),  430-1 

Chambers,  Mr.  E.  K.,  417 

Chambers,  Robert  (1802-71),  793 

Champion,  The,  601  sq. 

Changeling,   The,  345 

ChaTtson  de  Roland,  6 

Chapman,  George  (1559  7-1634  ?),  342, 

356-7 
Character,  the,  375  sq.,  453 


Characteristics,  Shaftesbury's,  543-4 
Character  of  a  Trimmer,  ^w 
Charlemagne  Romances,  English,  101 
Chatterton,  Thomas  (1752-70),  585-6 
Chaucer,    Geoffrey    (1340  7-1400),    22, 
40,  68,  69,   75,    82,  83,  107  note,  110, 
116-30,  142-5,  and  Book  HI.  passim, 

152-4 
Chaumpaigne,  Cecilia  de,  115 
Cheke,  Sir  John  (1514-57),  236-7 
Cherry  and  the  Slae,  The,  459-61 
Chesterfield,  Philip  Dormer  Stanhope, 

Earl  of  (1694-1773),  621,  642-5 
Chester  Plays,   The,  'i'2.\  sq. 
Chevy  Chase,  201 
Child,  Professor,  204  note 
Childe  Harold,  667  sq. 
Chillingworth,  William  (1602-44),  44^ 
Chloris,  278 
Chochilaicus,  3 

Choice  Collection,  Watson's,  580 
Chrestien  de  Troyes,  44 
Christ,  10  note  sq.,  13 
Chrtstabel,  57,  75,  89,  654  sq. 
Christ  and  Satan,  10 
Christian  Morals,  452 
Christmas  Eve  and  Easter  Day,  734 
"  Christopher  North,"  695-7 
Christ's  Kirk  on  the  Green,  181 
Christ's  Victory,  359 
Chronicle,  the  Anglo-Saxon,  17,  18,  19, 

24-26 
Chronicles  of  Carlingford,  756 
Chrysal,  609 

Churchill,  Charles  (1731-64),  584 
Churchyard,  Thomas  (1520  7-1604),  252 
Cibber,  Colley  (1671-1757),  494,  496 
Citizen  and  Uplandishman,   The,  167 
Citizen  of  the  World,   The,  618  sq. 
City  Madam,  The,  433 
City  of  Dreadful  Night,  The,  786 
Civil  Wars,  History  of  the,  353 
Clare,  John  (1793-1864),  717 
Clarendon,     Edward     Hyde,    Elarl    of 

(1608-74),  452-3 
Clarissa,  599  sq. 

Clarke,  Samuel  (1675-1729),  542 
"  Classical  "  metres,  271-2 
Cleanness,  78,  79 
Cleomenes,  498 

Cleveland,  John  (1613-58),  424-5 
Cloister  and  the  Hearth,  The,  750 


INDEX 


803 


Clough,  Arthur  Hugh  (1819-61),  777-8 
Cobbett,  William  (1762-1835),  705 
Cock  Lane  Ghost,  The,  584 
Caelia,  277 
Coelica,  274-5 

Cokain,  Sir  Aston  (1608-84),  438 
Coleridge,  Hartley  (1796-1849),  705,720 
Coleridge,   Samuel   T.  (1772-1834),  57, 

83.  653-7 
Colin  Clout,  Skelton's,  170 
Collier,  Jeremy  (1650-1726),  496,  526 
Collins,  Charles  Alston  (1828-73),  755 
Collins,  Mr.  Churton,  348  note,  456  note 
Collins,  Wiikie  (1824-89),  755 
Collins,  William  (1721-59),  573-5 
Colman,  George,  the  Elder   (1732-94), 

621,  639 
Colman,    George,   the  Younger  (1762- 

1836),  639  and  note 
Colonna,  Guido,  124 
Comedy  of  Errors,   The,  321 
Complaint,  Lyndsay's,  178 
Complaint,  The,  Young's,  561 
Complaint  of  Buckingham,  229,  257-9 
Complaint  of  Pity,  122-3 
Complaint  of  Rosamond,  353 
Complaint  of  Scotland,  lyi,  464-5 
Complaints  of  Afar s  and  Venus,  122 
Complete  Angler,  The,  456 
Comus,  43.  57,  394-5 
Confederacy,  The,  494 
Confessio  Amantis,  139-40 
Confessions  of  an  English  Opium- Eater, 

703,  706 
Congreve,  William   (1670-1729),  492-3, 

505.  555-6 
Connoisseur,  The,  621 
Conquest  of  Granada,  The,  497 
Conscious  Lovers,  The,  534-5 
Consnlidator,  The,  547 
Constable,  Henry  (i562?-i6i3?),  277-8 
Constant  Couple,  The,  495 
Constanlia  and  Philetus,  404 
Contention  of  Ajax  and  I  'lysses.  The,  435 
Cooper's  Hill,  405-6 
Corbet,  Richard  (1582-1635),  422 
Coriolanus,  325 
Cory.     See  Johnson 
Cotton,  Charles  (1630-87),  428 
Country   Wife,   The,  490-1 
Courthopc,  Mr.,  189  note,  549  note 
Court  of  Love,  The,  119 


Court  of  Venus,  The,  459 
Coventry,  Francis  (         ?-i759),  609 
Coventry  Plays,  The,  221  sq. 
Coverdale,  Miles  (1488-1568),  213 
Cowley,     Abraham     (1618-67),    402-5, 

507-8 
Cowley,  Mrs. (Hannah  Parkhurst)  (1743- 

1809),  639 
Cowper,  William  (1731-1800),  588-90 
Crabbe,  George  (1754-1832),  590-1 
Craik,  Sir  Henry,  528  tiote 
Cranford,  749-50 

Cranmer,  Thomas  (1489-1556),  213-14 
Crashaw,  Richard  (16137-49),  412-14 
Crazy  Tales,  596  note 
Creation,  555 
Cressid(a).      See    Chaucer,     Dryden, 

Henryson,  Shakespeare,  Troilus 
Crimean   War,  The,  763 
Critic,  The,  640-1 
Crowne,  John  (i64o?-i703?),  499 
Crown  of  Laurel,  The,  168-9 
Cruise  upon   Wheels,  A,  755 
Cuckoo  and  the  Nightingale,    The,   119 

note 
"Cuckoo  Song,"  etc.,  66 
Cudworth,  Ralph  (1617-88),  446 
Cumberland,  Richard  (1732-1811),  621, 

639 
Cupid  and  Psyche,  Marmion's,  438 
"  Currer,   Ellis,  and  Acton  Bell."     See 

Bronte 
Cursor  Afundi,  The,  71-3,  84  note,  93 
Cymbeline,  328 

"  Cyneheard  and  Cynewulf,"  20 
Cynewulf,  the  poet,  11  sq. 
Cynthia's  Revels,  333 
Cypress  Grove,  The,  463 

DAME  SIRIZ,  61  note 

Damon  and  Pythias,  231 

Dance  in  the  Queen's  Chamber,  187 

Dance  of  the  Sez'en  Deadly  Sins,  187 

Daniel,  Samuel  (1562-1019),  277,  352-3 

Daniel  Deronda,  752 

Darkness,  667  sq. 

Darley,  George  (1795-1846),  721-2 

Danvin,  Charles  Robert  (1809-82),  792-3 

Darwin,  Erasmus  (1731-1802),  597 

Davcnani,  Sir  William   (1606-68),  429, 

430,  437.  485  note 
Davenport,  Robert  (         ?-         ?),  438 


8o4 


A   SHORT  HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE 


David  and  Bctksabe,  289 

David  Copperfield,  740  sq. 

Davideis,  The,  403-4  [355 

Davies,  John,  of  Hereford  (1565-1618), 

Davies,  Sir  John  (i569?-i626j,  345 

Davy,  Adam  (14th  cent.),  76 

Day,  John  (         ?-        ?),  341,  348 

Death's  yest  Book,  722 

Decasyllable,  the,  58 

Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire, 

The,  625-7 
Defence  of  Guenevere,  The,  783. 
Defence  of  Poesy,  Sidney's,  261  sq. 
Defence  of  Poetry,  Shelley's,  671 
Defence  of  Rhyme,  Daniel's,  353 
Defoe,  Daniel  (1659-1731),  546-8 
DeguiUeville,  Guillaume  de,  136  note 
Dekker,  Thomas  (      ?-      ?),  341,  343-4 
Delia,  277 

"  Delia  Cruscans,"  the,  597 
"  Democritus  Junior,"  378 
Denham,  Sir  John  (1615-69),  405-6 
Denis  Duval,  The,  745 
De  Nugis  Curialium,  43 
Deo?-,   The  Complaint  of,  7 
Deploration  of  Queen  Magdalene,  179 
De     Quincey,     Thomas     (1785-1859), 

•702-4 
De  Regimine  Principum,  161 
Deserted  Village,  The,  617  sq. 
Destruction  of  Troy,  The,  106-7 
De  Tabley,  Lord  (1835-95),  786 
Devil  is  an  Ass,  The,  335 
Devil's  Law  Case,   The,  yj^ 
Dialogues  on  Medals,  536-7 
Diana,  orj-j 

Dickens,  Charles  (1812-70),  740-3 
Dictionary,  Johnson's,  614  sq. 
Diella,  278 

Digby  Mysteries,  The,  ■zi\  sq. 
"  Dirce,"  673 

Directions  to  Servants,  532 
Dirge  ofi  Edward  IV.,  169 
Discoveries,  Ben  Jonson's,  374 
Disobedient  Child,  The,  226 
Dispensary,  The,  555 
Divine  Legation  of  Moses,  The,  632 
Dobell,  Sydney  (1824-74),  777 
Dobson,  Mr.  Austin,  534  note,  558  note 
Doctor,  The,  707 
Dodgson,  Charles  Lutwidge  (1832-98), 

786 


Dodsley's  Miscellany ,  58'2  and  note 

Don  Carlos,  500 

Don  yuan,  667  sq. 

Donne,  John  (i573?-i63i),  279,  365-8, 

385-6 
Don  Sebastian,  498 
Dorset,  ist  and  6th  Earls  of.     See  Sack- 

ville 
"  Dotages,"  Jonson's,  335 
Double  Dealer,  The,  492-3 
Douglas,  637 

Douglas,  Gawain  (i474?-i522),  188-92 
Dowden,  Professor,  66i  tiote 
Do-well,  Do-bet,  and  Do-best,  135  sq. 
Doyle,  Sir  Francis  Hastings  (1810-88), 

786 
Dratnatic  Poesy,  Essay  of,  508-9 
Dramatis  Personce,  734 
Drant,  Thomas  {d.  1578?),  271 
Drapier's  Letters,  The,  532 
Drayton,    Michael    (i563?-i63i),    277, 

350-2 
Dream,  Byron's,  667  sq. 

Lyndsay's,  178 
Dream  of  the  Rood,  The,  10  sq. 
"  Drolleries,"  431 
Drumjner,  The,  537 
Drummond,      William       (1585 -1649), 

331-2,  463-4 
Dryden,    John    (1631-1700),    83,    152, 

472-7,    485-6,    506-9,    524,    528,    555, 

564-6,  580,  651 
Duchess  of  Malfy,  The,  348 
Duke  of  Guise,  The,  498,  502 
Dunbar,  William  (i465?-i53o?),  185-8 
Dunciad,  The,  550  sq. 
Dunton,  John  (1659-1733),  527 
D'Urfey,   Tom    (1653-1723),  580-1  and 

note 
Dyer,  Sir  Edward  (d.  1607),  272 
Dyer,  John  (i700?-i758),  572 
Dykes-Campbell,  Mr.,  667  7iote 

EARLE,    Professor,  1   tiote,   19,  20,  28 

note,  152 
Earl  of  Toulouse,  The,  gj 
Earthly  Paradise,  The,  783-4 
Eastward  Ho  I  342 
Ecclesiastical  Polity,  299,  300 
Edgeworth,  Maria  (1767-1849),  683-4 
Edinburgh  Review,  The,  691-4 
Edward  /.,  289 


INDEX 


805 


Edward  II.,  292-3 

Edward  III.,  329 

Edwards,  Richard  (i6th  cent.),  231,250 

"  E.  K.,"  266 

Eleanor   Rumm'mg,    The    Tunning    of, 
169 

Elene,  St.,  14 

Elfric  (loth-iith  cent.),  27 

"Eliot,  George."     See  Evans,  M.  A. 

Elliott,  Ebenezer  (1781-1849),  717 

Ellis,  George  (1753-1815),  66,  89  note, 
596  and  note 

Elphin,  The  Misfortunes  of,  688-9 

Elton,  Mr.  Oliver,  350 

Elyot,  Sir  Thomas  (i490?-iS46),  234-5 

Emari,  96 

Emma,  682 

Etnpedocles  on  Etna,  776 

Empress  of  Morocco,  The,  499 

Endymion,  Lord  Beaconsfield's,  686 
Keats's,  672 
Lyly's,  283 

England's  Helicon,  250  note,  279 

England's  Heroical  Epistles,  352 

English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers, 
667 

English  Rogue,  The,  517 

Enoch  Arden,  731 

Enquirer,  The,  635 

Enquiry    Concerning    Human     Under- 
standing, 623 

Enquiry  into  the  Present  State  of  Polite 
Learning  in  Europe,  617-18 

Enquiry  into  the  Principles  of  Morals, 
623 

Eothen,  763 

Epic  of  Women,  The,  785 

Epicurean,  The,  674,  686 

Epistles,  Pope's,  550  sq. 

Epistle  to  Curio,  579-80 

Epithalamium,  Spenser's,  268 

Epsom  Wells,  488 

Erceldoune,  Thomas  of  (13th  cent.),  171 

Esmond,  745 

Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy,  508-9 

Essay  on  Criticism,  550  sq. 

Essay  on  Man,  550  sq. 

Essay  on  Projects,  547 

Essay   on   the   Human    Understanding, 

Essays,  Moral  and  Political,  623 
Essays  in  Criticism,  -jfrj  sq. 


Essays  of  Elia,  700 

Etherege,  Sir  George  (1635 ?-9i?),  484, 

486-7 
Euphues  and  Euphuism,  240,  295-9 
Evans,  Mary  Ann  (Mrs.  Cross,  "  George 

Eliot")  (1819-80),  751 
Evelina,  612 

Evelyn,  John  (1620-1706),  518-19 
Every  Man  in  [and  out  of]  his  Humour, 

331-3 
Evidences,  Paley's,  633 
Examiner,  The,  Swift's,  529 

Leigh  Hunt's,  700 
Example  of  Virtue,  The,  165 
Excursion,  The,  659  sq. 
Exeter  Book,   The,  2,  10  and  note 
Exodus,  A.  S.  and  M.  E.     See  Genesis 
Experience   and  a    Courtier,   Dialogue 

between,  177 

FABLE  OF  THE  BEES,  The,  544 
Fables,  Dryden's,  473  sq. 

Gay's,  560 

Henryson's,  184 
Fabyan,  Robert  (late  15th  cent.),  208 
Faerie  Queene,   The,  267-70 
Fairfax,  Edward  (         ?-i635),  357 
Fair  Quarrel,  A,  345 
Faithful  Shepherdess,  The,  340 
Falconer,  William  (1732-69),  -83 
Farquhar,  George  (1678-1707),  494-5 
Fatal  Curiosity,  638 
Fatal  Marriage,  The,  505 
Fates  of  the  Apostles,  The,  14 
F"elltham,  Owen  (i6o2?-68?),  455 
P'erdinand,  Count  Fathom,  605  Sij. 
Ferguson,  Sir  Samuel  (1810-86),  739 
Fergusson,  Robert  (1750-74),  594 
Ferrex  and  Porrex,  229 
F'errier,  Susan  (1782-1854),  684 
Fidelia,  ■^61 
Fides sa,  278 

Fielding,  Henry  (1707-54),  601-5 
Fig  for  Moinus,  A,  279 
Finchalc,  Gocfric  of  (12th  cent.),  40  note 
Finnshurg,  The  Fight  at,  \  note,  7,  17 
First  Blast  of  the  Trumpet,   The,  465 
Fisher,  John  (I459?-I553),  210-n 
FitzGerald,  Edward  (1809-83),  736-7 
Five    Hundred    Points   of    Good   Hus- 
bandry, 253 
Flaming  Heart,  The,  414 


8o6 


A   SHORT   HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE 


Flatman,  Thomas  (1637-88),  425,  479 
Flecknoe,  Richard  (        ?-i678),  425 
Fletcher,  Andrew   (of  Saltoun)    (1655- 

1716),  523 
Fletcher,  Giles,  Elder  (1549-1611),  277 
Fletcher,   Giles,   Younger    (1588-1623), 

359-60 
Fletcher,  John  (1579-1625),  336-40 
Fletcher,  Phineas  (1582-1650?),  359-60 
Florence  of  Rome,  96 
Florio,  John  (1553-1625),  302 
Flower  and  the  Leaf,  The,  119 
"  Flytings,"  175,  178,  187,  461 
Fool  of  Quality,  The,  609-10 
Fool's  Tragedy,   The,  722 
Ford,  John  (        ?-        ?),  433-4 
Fortescue,  Sir  John  (i394?-i476?),  208 
Four  Ele?nents,   The,  224 
Four  Hymns,  Spenser's,  268 
Four  Letters  (Spenser's  and  Harvey's), 

271,  306 
Four  PP,  The,  224-5 
Fox,  George  (1624-91),  522 
Francis,  Sir  Philip  (1740-1818),  647 
Eraser,  Professor  Campbell,  523  note 
Fraser's  Magazine,  698  sq. 
Fraunce,  Abraham  (i587?-i633),  272-3 
Frederick  the  Great,  Carlyle's,  760 
Freeman,  Edward  Augustus  (1823-92), 

764 
French  Revolution,  The,  760 
Frere,  John  Hookham  (1769-1846),  596 

and  note,  667 
Friars  of  Berwick,  The,  186-7 
Friend,   The,  655-6 
Friendship's  Garland,  767-8 
Froissart,  Lord  Berners's,  198-9 
Froude,     James     Anthony     (1818-94), 

765-6 
Fudge  Family,  The,  674 
Fuller,  Thomas  (1608-61),  441-3 
Funeral,  The,  534 
Furnivall,  Dr.,  65  7iote,  161  notes,  194 

GALT,  John  (1779-1 839),  684-5 
Gamely n.  Tale  of,  118,  325 
Game  of  Chess,  A,  345 
Gammer  Gurton's  Needle,  228-9 
Garden  of  Cyrus,  The,  451-2 
"  Garlands,"  431 

Garmond  of  Good  Ladies,  The,  185 
Garth  Sir  Samuel  (1661-1719),  555 


Gascoigne,     George     (15257-77),    233, 

254-6 
Gascoigne,  Thomas  (1403-58),  117  note, 

206  note 
Gaskell,    Mrs.    (Elizabeth    Stevenson) 

(1810-65),  749-50 
Gau,  John  (i6th  cent.),  464  note 
Gawain    and   the    Green    Knight,    78, 

103-4 
Gay,  John  (1685-1732),  558-60 
Gebir,  673 
Genesis  and  Exodus,  the  Caedmonian, 

II.  13 

Genesis  and  Exodus,  the  Middle-Eng- 
lish, 56,  57 
Gentleman  Dancing  Master,  The,  490 
Gentle  Shepherd,  The,  593 
Geoffrey,  Gaimar,  43 
Geoffrey  Hamlyn,  755 
Geoffrey   of   Monmouth    (12th    cent.) 

42  sq. 
George  Barnwell,  638 
Gibbon,  Edward  (1737-94),  625-7 
Gifford  Humphrey  (i6th  cent.),  276 
Gifford,  William  (1756-1826),  596 
Gildas,  42 

Gilpin,  William  (1724-1804),  648 
Glanvill,  Joseph  (1636-80),  518 
Glapthorne,  Henry  (         ?-        ?),438 
Gloucester,  Robert  of  (13th  cent.), 63-65 
Glover,  Richard  (1712-85),  578,  637 
Goblin  Market,  782 
Goblins,  The,  436 
Godolphin,  Sidney  (1610-43),  4^7 
Godric  of  Finchale  (12th  cent.),  40  note 
Godwin,     William     (1756-1836),     612, 

634-5 
Golagros  and  Gawane,  175,  195 
Golden  Grove,  The,  440 
Golden  Targe,  The,  187 
Golden  Treasury,  The,  785 
Golding,  Arthur  (i536?-i6o5?),  251 
Goldsmith,    Oliver    (1728-74),    114  and 

note,  613,  617-20,  623,  639 
"  Golias,"  44 
Gollancz,   Mr.,    i,   2  note,    10  note,  78 

note 
Gondibert,  429-30 

Good-natured  Man,  The,  618  sq.,  639 
Googe,  Barnabe  (1540-94),  254 
Gorboduc,  229 
Gore,  Mrs.  (1799-1861),  690 


INDEX 


807 


Gorgeous  Gallery  of  Gallant  Inventions, 

The,  250 
Gosse,  Mr.  Edmund,  575  note,  722  note 
Gosson,  Stephen  (1555-1624),  232  note, 

305 
Governance  of  England,  208 

Governour,  The  235 

Gower,  John  (i32S?-i4o8),  138-42 

Grace  Abounding,  514 

Grave,  The,  Blair's,  572 

Grave  Poem,  The,  17,  39 

Gray   Thomas  (1716-71),  575 

Great  Rebellion,  History  of  the,  453 

Green,  John  Richard  (1837-83),  764-5 

Green,  Matthew  (1696-1737),  572 

Greene,  Robert  (15607-92),  285-6,  290, 

305 
Gregory,  St.,  Alfred's  Version,  24.  25 
Gregory,  St.,  his  Dialogues,  26  note 
Grendel,  5 
Grettir  the  Strong,  4 
Greville,   Fulke,    Lord    Brooke    (1554- 

1628),  274-5 
Grimald,  Nicholas  (1519-62?),  248-9 
Groat 's-worth  of  Wit,  285 
Grongar  Hill,  564,  572 
Grosart,  Dr.,  Books  V.,  VI.,  and  VII. 

notes  passim 
Grote,  George  (1794-1871),  710-11 
Grove,  Matthew  (i6th  cent.),  276 
Gryll  Grange,  688-9 
Gude  and  Godlie  Ballates,  The,  458-9 
Guest,    Edwin    (1800-80),    his    English 

Rhythms,  17  note,  36 
Guevara,  198 

Guilpin,  Edward  (/.  1598),  279 
Guthlac,  St.,  14 
Guy  Mannering,  624 
Guy  of  War^uick,  94,  95 

HABINGTON,     William      (1605-54), 

421-2 
Hake,  Thomas  Gordon  (1809-94),  739 
Hakluyl,  Richard  (1552  ?-i6i6),  381 
Hales,  John  (1584-1656),  445 
Halifax,    George    Savilc,    Marquess   of 

(1633-95),  510-11 
Hall,  Bishop  Joseph  (1574-1656),  384-5 
Hallam,  Henry  (1777-1859),  708-9 
Halliwell,  J.  O.,   100  note,  148  note,  158 

note 
Hamlet,  326,  327 


Hampole,  Richard  Rolle  of  (14th  cent.), 

59.  62,  73-76 
Handling  Sin,  70 
Hannah,  John  (1818-88),  464 
Harrington,  James  (1611-77),  457 
Har(r)ington,    Sir    John    (1561-1612), 

457  note 
Harrowing  of  Hell,    The,  155  note,  220 

note 
Harry,  Blind  ("Henry  the  Minstrel") 

(15th  cent.),  173-5 
Harvey,  Gabriel  (1545-1630),  271 
Havelok  the  Dane,  83-87 
Hawes,  Stephen  (         ?-i523  ?),  163-6 
Hawker,    Robert    Stephen    (1803-75), 

719-20 
Hawkesworth,  John  (1715-73),  609,  620 
Hayley,  William  (1745-1820),  597 
Hayward,  Sir  John  (1564-1627),  381 
Haywood,  Eliza  (1693  7-1756),  599 
Hazlitt,  Mr.  W.  C,  Books  IV.,  V..  and 

VI.  notes  passim 
Hazlitt,  William  (1778-1830),  701-2 
Head,  Richard  (1637  7-i686),  517 
Heber,  Reginald  (1783-1826),  717 
Hecatompathia,  The,  ■zy^ 
Heliconia,  250  note,  252  note 
Hemans,      Mrs.      (Felicia      Dorothea 

Browne)  (1793-1835),  717 
Hendying,  Proverbs  of,  59 
Henry  IV.,   V.,   VI.,   VIII.,  322-3,  328 
Henryson,  Robert  (15th  cent.),  182-5 
Heorof,  3  sq. 
Heorrenda,  7 
Herbert,   Edward,   Lord,  of  Cherbury 

(1583-1648),  456-7 
Herbert,    George    (1593-1633),   414-16, 

446 
Hereward  the  Wake,  755 
Hermanric,  2 
Hermit,   'The,  562 
Hero  and  I.eander,  290 
Heroes  and  Hero-  Worship,  760 
Heroic  Stanzas,  473 
Herrick,  Robert  (1591-1674),  418-19 
Hisperidrs,  418-19 

Hcywood,  Jasper  (1535-98),  225,  251 
Heywood,  John  (1497  7-1580?),  225 
Heywood,  Thomas  (         7-1650  7),  341, 

346 
Higdcn,  Ralph  (I3th-i4th  cent.),  147-8 
Hind  and  the  Panther,   The,  473  sq. 


8o8 


A   SHORT   HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE 


Historia  Britonum,  42 

Historia  Trojana,  124 

History  of  England,  Daniel's,  353 

History  of  Latin  Christianity,  710 

Hoadly,  Benjamin  (1676-1761),  542 

Hobbes,  Thomas  (1588-1679),  453-5 

Hogg,  James  (1770-1835).  684,  687,698, 

715-16 
Holcroft,  Thomas  (1745-1809),  612 
Holinshed,  Raphael  (         ?-i58o),  241 

note 
Holland,  Philemon  (1552-1637),  302 
Holland,  Sir  Richard  (15th  cent.),  175 
Holy  Dying,  440 
Holy  Grail,  Lonelich's,  194-5 
Holy  Living,  440 
Holy   War,  The,  514-15 
Home,  John  (1722-1808),  637 
Homer,  Chapman's,  356-7 
Hobbes's,  454 
Pope's,  550  sq. 
Honest  Whore,  The,  344 
Hood,  Thomas  (1799-1845),  718 
Hook,  Theodore  (1788-1841),  690 
Hooker,  Richard  (1554-1600),  299,  300, 

506-7 
Horatian  Ode,  A,  426 
Horn,  Ki?ig  (or  Horn,  Child) ,  87,  88 
Home,  Richard  Hengist  (1803-84),  721 
Horstmann,    Dr.,  64   7iote,   69   note,  74 

note,  262  note  • 

Houghton,  Richard  Monckton  Milnes, 

Lord  (1809-85),  739 
Howell,  James  (c.  1594-1666),  455-6 
Howell,  Thomas  (i6th  cent.),  215-16 
Howlat,  Book  of  the,  175 
Hrothgar,  3  sq. 
"  Huchowne,"  102-3  ^'^^^ 
Hudibras,  478-9 
Hume,  David  (171 1-76),  622-4 
Humorous  Lieutenant,  The,  340 
"  Humour  "  and  "  humours,"  332 
Humphrey  Clinker,  605  sq. 
Hunferth,  6 
Hunt,    Leigh    (1784-1859),   671,   700-1, 

715-16 
Hunting  of  the  Hare,  The,  99 
Huo7i  of  Bordeaux,  198-9 
Hurd,  Bishop  Richard  (1720-1808),  650 

note 
Husband's  Message.  The,  xj 
Huxley,  Thomas  Henry  (1825-95),  793-4 


Hydriotaphia,\^\,  468 
Hygelac,  3  sq. 
Hymen  s  Triumph,  353 
Hymn  to  Contentment,  562 
Hymn  to  the  Pillory,  547 
Hypatia,  754 

IDEA,  351 

Idylls  of  the  King,  The,  730  sq. 

Imaginary  Conversations,  704-5 

Imaginary  Portraits,  'j'j-3,  note 

"  Imagination,"  eighteenth-century  idea 

of,  565 
Inchbald,  Mrs.  (1753-1821),  612 
Indian  Emperor,  The,  ^gy  . 
Induction,  Sackville's,  229,  257-9 
Inheritance,  The,  684 
In  Memoriam,  709,  730  sq. 
Inner  Temple  Masque,  The,  361 
Instructions,  Gascoigne's,  255 
lonica,  786 
Ipomydon,  98,  99 
Irene,  615,  637 
Irish  Melodies,  674 
It  is  Never  too  Late  to  Mend,  750 

JACK  JUGGLER,  226 

Jack  Wilton,  305 

James,  G.  P.  R.  (1801-60),  685 

James  L  of  England  (1566-1625),  466 

James  I.  of  Scotland  (1394-1437),  iSo  2 

Jane  Eyre,  748 

Jefferies,  Richard  (1848-87),  792 

Jeffrey,  Francis  (1773-1850),  692-3 

Jeronimo,  290 

Jests  of  George  Peele,  285 

Jew  of  Malta,  The,  292 

John  Bull,  History  of,  541 

John.  Buncle,  609-10 

Johnson  (or  Cory),  William  (1823-92), 

786 
Johnson,    Samuel    (1709-84),  411,  449, 

476,  504-5,  539,  555,  566,  574,  600,604, 

613-17,  637,  648-52 
Johnstone,  Charles  (1719  ?-i8oo  ?),  609 
Jonathan   Wild,  602  sq. 
Jones,  Ebenezer  (1820-60),  786 
Jonson,  Ben   (1573-1637),  331-6,  363-5, 

373-5 
Joseph  Andrews,  602  sq. 

Joseph  of  Arimathca,  105-6 

Joseph  of  Exeter,  40 


INDEX 


809 


"Journal  to  Stella,  531 

Journey  from  this  World  to  the  Next, 

602  sq. 
Journey  to  the  Western  Islands,  615  sq. 
Jovial  Crew,  The,  437 
Judith,  10,  13 
Juliana,  St.,  14 
Jiilius  Casar,  325 
Junian  MS.,  10 
"  Junius,"  646-8 
Jure  Divino,  547 
Jusserand,  M.,  138  note,  181  note 

KEATS,  John  (1795-1821),  671-3 
Kehama,  The  Curse  of,  662-3 
Kennedy,  Walter  (1460  7-1508  ?),  175 
Ker,  Professor,  464 

Ker,  Robert,  Earl  of  Ancrum,  466  note 
King,  Bishop  Henry  (1592-1669),  426-7 
King  Alisaunder,  89 
King  and  No  King,  A,  338,  340 
King  Arthur,  Dryden's,  505  fiote 
King  Athelstone,  100 
King  Edward  and  the  Shepherd,  100 
King  Hart,  190-1 
King  Horn,  87,  88 
King  John,  Bale's,  227 
Shakespeare's,  322 
King  John  and  Matilda,  438 
Kinglake,  Alexander  (1809-91),  762-3 
King  Lear,  43,  326-7 
King  of  Tars,  The,  96 
Kingsley,  Charles  (1819-75),  753-5 
Kingsley,  George  (1827-92),  755  note 
Kingsley,  Henry  (1830-76),  755 
King's  Quair,  The,  180-2 
Knolles,  Richard  (1550-1610),  301 
Knowles,  James  Sheridan  (1784-1862), 

721  note 
Knox,  John  (1505-72),  465 
Kolhing,  Dr.  Eugen,  88 
Kubla  Khan,  657 
Kyd,  Thomas  (i6th  cent.),  286,  290 

LA  BELLE  DAME  SANS  MERCI, 

672-3 
Lady  of  May,  The,  261  and  note 
Lady  of  I'lcasure,  The,  435 
Laing,  David,  96  note 
Lalla  Rookh,  The,  674 
Lamb,  Charles  (1775-1834),  699,  700 
Lament  for  the  Makers,  175,  188 


Lancashire  Witches,  The,  488 
Lancelot  of  the  Laik,  194 
Landon,  L.  E.     See  L.  E.  L. 
Landor,    Walter    Savage    (1775-1864), 

673-4.  704-S 
Langhorne,  John  (1735-79).  587 
Langland  or  Langley,  W.  (14th  cent.), 

131-8,  165 
Langtoft,  Peter  {d.  1307  ?),  65 
Last  Day,  The,  560 
Latimer,  Hugh  (1485-1555),  212-13 
Latter-Day  Pamphlets,  760 
Laura,  288 

Layamon  (f.  1200),  18,  43,  48  sq.,  50 
Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,   The,  663  sq. 
Lays  of  Ancient  Rome,  719 
Lear,  King,  326-7 
Lee,  Nathaniel  ( 1653  7-92) ,  502-4 
Lee,  Mr.  S.  L.,  198  note,  199 
Le  Fraine,  98 

Legend  of  Good  Wometi,  The,  125-6 
Legends  of  Saints,  Bokenam's,  162 
Leighton,  Archbishop  Robert  (1611-84), 

446 
"L.  E.  L."  =  Landon,  Letitia  Elizabeth 

(1802-38),  717-18 
Leland,  John  (1506-52),  235-6 
Leofric,  Bishop,  2 
L'Estrange,     Sir    Roger     (1616-1704), 

525-6 
Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord,  A,  629  sq. 
Letters,  Ascham's,  238-9 

Chesterfield's,  642  sq. 

Howell's,  455-6 

Lady  Mary's,  642  sq. 

of  Junius,  646-8 

Paston,  238  note 

Walpole's,  642  sq. 
Letters  on   Chivalry  and  Romance,  650 

note 
Lever,  Charles  (1806-72),  689' 
Leviathan,  454 
Lewis,    Matthew   Gregory  (1775-1818), 

611 
Libertine,  The,  488 
Liberty,  Thomson's,  569 
Libert}'  of  Prophesying,  The,  440 
Liber  Veritatuin,  117  note,  206  note 
Licia,  277 

Life  and  Death  of  Jason,  The,  783 
Life  Drama,  A,  777 
Life  of  liyron,  674 


Sio 


A   SHORT   HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE 


Life  of  yohnson,  648 

Life  of  Napoleon,  680 

Life  of  Schiller,  759,  762 

Life  of  Scott,  697-8 

Life  of  Sterling,  760 

Light  of  Nature  Pursued,  The,  634 

Lillo,  George  (1693-1739) ,  638 

Lingard,  John  (1771-1851),  708 

"  Little,  Thomas,"  674 

Little  Dorrit,  740  sq. 

Lives  of  Saints,  A.S.,  Bk.  \.  passim 

Barbour's  (?),  172 

Bokenam's,  162 

M.E.,  64,65 
Lives  of  the  Poets,  Johnson's,  615  sq. 
V Locke,  John  (1632-1704),  523-5        [778 
Locker- Lampson,  Frederick  (1821-95), 
Lockhart,    John    Gibson    (1794-1854), 

688,  696-8 
Lodge,  Thomas  (i558?-i625),  279,  287, 

290,  305 
Logan,  John  (1748-88),  594 
London,  Johnson's,  614 
London  Lickpetiny,  160 
London  Lyrics,  778 
London  Magazine,  The,  695  sq. 
Lonelich,  Henry  (15th  cent.),  194-5 
Looker-On,  The,  621 
Lounger,  The,  621 
Love  and  a  Bottle,  495 
Love  for  Love,  493 
Love  in  a  Tub,  484  sq. 
Love  in  a  Wood,  490 
Lovelace,  Richard  (1618-58),  424 
Lover's  Melancholy,  The,  434 
Love  Rune,  The,  60  note,  66  note 
Love's  Labour's  Lost,  321 
Love's  Last  Shift,  494 
Love's  Victories,  430 
Lushington,  Professor,  672 
Lybeaus  Desconus,  96 
Lycidas,  394-6 

Lydgate,  John  (I370?-I45i?),  158-60 
Lying  Lover,  The,  535 
Lyly,  John  (i554?-i6o6?),  282-4,  288-9, 

295-9.  321  [176-9 

Lyndsay,  Sir  David  (1490  ?-i555  ?),  119, 
Lyrical  Ballads,  the,  653 
Lytton,  Edward  George  Bulwer,  Lord 

(1803-73),  686-7,  721  "note 
Lytton,  Edward  Robert,  Earl  of  (1831- 

9^).  778 


MACAULAY,      Thomas      Babington 

(1800-59).  712-14,  719 
Alacbeth,  326-7 
MacFlecknoe,  475  sq. 
Mackenzie,  Henry  (1745-1831),  611-12, 

621 
Mackenzie,  Sir  George  (1636-91),  523 
Mackintosh,    Sir    James    (1765-1832), 

708,  711-12 
Madden,  Sir  Frederic  (1801-73), 49  wo/^, 

65  note 
Maginn,  William  (1793-1842),  698-9 
Maiden  Queen,  The,  497 
Maid's  Metamorphosis,  The,  284  note 
Maid's  Tragedy,  The,  338-40 
Maine,  Sir  Henry  James  Sumner  (1822- 

88),  789-90 
Mair  or  Major,  John  (15th  cent.),  174 
Malcontent,  The,  343 
Maldon,  The  Battle  of,  17 
Male  Regie  de  T.  Occleve,  La,  161 
Mallet   or   Malloch,  David  (17057-65), 

578,  637 
Malory,  Sir  Thomas  (15th  cent.),  195-7 
Mandeville,  Bernard  de  (1670-1733),  544 
Mandeville,  Sir  John  (14th  cent.),  148-51 
Manley,  Mrs.  (1672  7-1724),  599 
Manning,  Robert   (i3th-i4th  cent.),  65 

and  note,  87  and  note 
Man  of  Mode,  The,  487 
Mansel,  Henry  Longueville  (1820-71), 

788-9 
Mansfield  Park,  682-3 
Map  or  Mapes,  Walter,  43,  50 
Margaret,  Saint,  80  note 
Marlowe,   Christopher    (1564-93),   286, 

291-3,  321 
Marmion,  176,  664  sq. 
Marmion,  Shakerley  (1603-39),  438 
Marprelate,  Martin,  280,  304 
Marriage  of  Wit  and  Science,  226 
Marryat,  Captain  Frederick  (1792-1848), 

689 
Marston,  John  (1575  ?-i634),his  satires, 

279;  his  plays,  343 
Martianus  Capella,  158 
Marvell,  Andrew  (1621-78),  425-6,  481, 

522 
Mary  Barton,  749-50 
Mason,  William  (1724-97),  583,  637 
Masques,  Ben  Jonson's,  335-6 
Massinger,  Philip  (1583-1640)1  432-3 


INDEX 


8ii 


Maturin,  Charles   Robert    (1782-1824), 

690 
Maud,  12,  731 

May,  Thomas  (1595-1650),  438 
Mayne,  Jasper  (1604-72), 438 
Mayor  of  Queenborough,  The,  345 
Measure  for  Measure,  321,  323,  325 
Medal,  The,  474 
Medal  of  John  Bayes,  The,  487 
Melibee,  Tale  of,  143-4,  245 
Memoirs  of  a  Lady  of  Quality,  609 
Men  and  Women,  734 
Meredith,  Mr.  George,  756 
"  Meredith,  Owen,"  778 
Meres   Francis  (1565-1647),  284 
Merlin,  Lonehch's,  194 
Merlin,  the  prose,  90 
Merry,  Robert  (1755-98),  597 
"  Merry   sang  the   monks   of  Ely,"  40 

note 
Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  The,  323-4 
"  Metaphysicals,"  the,  411  sq. 
Michel  of  Northgate,Dan(i4th cent.), 69 
Mickle,  William  Julius  (1735-88)   587 
Microcosmus,  438 

Middleton,  Conyers  (1683-1750),  540-1 
Middleton,  Thomas  (i570?-i627),  341, 

345 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  A,  322 

Mill,  James  (1773-1836),  711 
Mill,  John  Stuart  (1806-73),  787-8 
Miller,  Hugh  (1802-56),  793 
Milman,  Henry  Hart  (1791-1868),  710 
Milnes,  R.  M.     See  Houghton,  Lord 
Milton,  John  (1608-74),  392-402,  447-8 
Minot,  Laurence  (14th  cent.),  76-78 
Minstrel,  The,  585-6 
Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish  Border,  664  sq. 
Mirror,  The,  621 

Mirror  for  Magistrates,  The,  2C,6  sq. 
Miscellanies,  Elizabethan,  248  sq. 
Miscellanies,    mid-seventeenth-century, 

431 
Misfortunes  of  Arthur,  The,  232 
Mitford,  William  (1744-1827),  708 
Mithridates,  502-4 
Modern  I'ainters,  769  sq. 
Modest  Proposal,  A,  532 
Monarchical  Tragedies,  Stirling's,  462 
Monarchic,  The,  Lyndsay's,  177 
Monarchy,  Grcville's,  274 
Monks  and  the  Giants,  The,  596  note 


Monmouth,    Geoffrey    of  (12th   cent.), 

^2sq. 
Montagu,   Lady   Mary  Wortley  (1689- 

1762),  598,  600 
Montgomerie,  Alexander  (15567-1610?), 

459-61 
Montgomery,  James  (1771-1854),  716 
Montgomery,  Robert  (1807-55),  716 
Montrose,  James  Graham,  Marquis  of 

(1612-50),  464 
Moore,  Edward  (1712-57),  621 
Moore,  John  (1719-1802),  612 
Moore,  Thomas  (1779-1852),  674-5 
Moralities,  222  sq. 
Moral  Ode,  The,  54 
More,  Hannah  (1745-1833),  612 
More,  Henry  (1614-87),  429 
More,  Sir  Thomas  (1478-1535),  211-12 
Morley,    Professor  H.,  i   note,  39  note, 

40  tiote,  164,  219,  375  note 
Morris,  Dr.  R.,  55  and  Book  U.  notes 

passim 
Morris,  William  (1834-96),  783-5 
Morte  d' Arthur e,  the  alliterative,  106 
the  fifteenth-century  rhymed,  194 
Malory's,  196-7 
Tennyson's,  729  sq. 
Mortimer iados,  352 
Mother  Hubbard's  Tale,  268 
Mourning  Bride,  The,  492  sq. 
Mr.  Badman,  Life  and  Death  of,  515 
Mrs.  Perkins's  Ball,  744 
Mrs.  Veal,  Kelation  of,  547 
Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  324-5 
Mulberry  Garden,  The,  489 
Mulcaster,  Richard  (15307-1611),  301 
Mulgrave,  John,  Sheffield,  Earl  of  (and 

Duke    of    Buckinghamshire)     (1649- 

1721),  482 
Munday,  Anthony  (1553-1633),  284  and 

note 
Muses'  Library,  The,  581 
Music  and  Moonlight,  785 
Mysteries  of  Udolpho,  The,  678 
Afystcrious  Mother,  The,  645-6 

NABBF-S,  Thomas  (1605?-         ?),  437-8 
"  Namliy-Pamby,"  556 
Napier,  Sir  William  (1785-1860),  708 
Nash,  Thomas    (1567-1601),   287,    290, 

305 
Nassinglon,  William  of  (15th  cent.),  163 


8l2 


A   SHORT   HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE 


Nennius  (yf.  796  ?),  42 

Nepenthe,  'jo.'Z 

Nero,  502 

New  Arabian  Nights,  756-7 

New  Bath  Guide,  The,  596  note 

Newcomes,  The,  745 

Newman,  Cardinal  John  Henry  (1801- 

90),  790-1 
New  Way  to  Pay  Old  Debts,  A,  433 
Nibeltmgen  Lied,  6,  7 
Nice  Wanton,  The,  226 
Nicholas  de   Guildford    (13th   cent.), 

60 
Nicholson,  Mr.  E.  B.,  148  note 
Night-Piece  on  Death,  562 
Night-  'Thoughts,  560-1 
Noble  Numbers,  418,  419 
Nodes  Ambrosianae,  696 
Nocturnal  Reverie,  A,  562-3 
North,  Roger  (1653-1734),  522  . 
North,  Sir  Thomas  (i535?-i6oi?),  302 
Northanger  Abbey.  682-3 
Northern  Lass    The,  437 
Nosce  Teipszim,  354 
Nut-browne  Mayde,  The,  201-2 
Nytnphidia,  352 

OAK  AND  THE  BRERE,  The,  57 

Observer,  The,  621 

Occleve,  Thomas  (i370?-i45o?),  161-2 

Oceana,  Froude's,  766 
Harrington's,  457 

Octovian  Imperator,  99,  193 

Ode  071  a  Grecian  Urti,  (yj<2. 

Ode  on  Intimations  of  Immortality,  659 
sq. 

Ode  on  the  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton, 731 

Ode  on  the  Nativity,  394 

Ode  to  Duty,  660 

Odes,  Akenside's,  579 
Collins's,  574 
Young's,  561 

CEdipus,  498,  502 

Old  Bachelor,  The,  492 

Old  Ballads  (1723),  580 
Evans's,  587  note 

Old  English  Baron,  The,  610 

Old  Fortunatus ,  344 

Oldham,  John  (1653-83),  481-2 

Old  Wives'  Tale,  289 

Oldys,  William  (1696-1761),  581 


Oliphant,     Mrs.     (Margaret    Oliphant 

Wilson)  (1828-97),  755-6 
Oliver  Cromjuell,  Letters  and  Speeches 

of,  760 
Olor  Iscanus,  416 
Omar  Khayyam,  357,  737 
Opera,  note -on,  505 
Orchestra,  354 
Ordinary,  The,  438 
Orfeo  and  Heurodis,  96  note 
Orion,  721 

Orison  of  our  Lady,  The,  58 
Orm  or  Ormin,  {fl.  1200),  51  sq. 
Ormuluni,  The,  51  sq. 
Oroonoko,  505 
Orosius,  Alfred's,  23 
Orphan,  The,  500-2 

Orpheus  and  Eurydice,  Henryson's,  183 
O'Shaughnessy,  Arthur  Edward  (1844- 

81),  78s 
Ossian,  581  and  tiote 
Othello,  326-7 
Othere,  23 

Otway,  Thomas  (1651-85),  500-2 
Overbury,  Sir  T.  (1581-1613),  375-7 
"  Owen  Meredith,"  778 
Owl  and  the  Nightingale,  The,  60 
Oxford  atid  Cainbridge  Magazine,  The, 

780,  783 

PAGAN,  Isabel  (1740-1821),  593-4        ' 

Paine,  Thomas  (1737-1809),  634 

Palace  of  Pleasure,  253 

Paley,  William  (1743-1805),  633 

Palgrave,  Sir  Francis  (1788-1861),  708 

Palice  of  Honour,  The,  190 

Paltock,  Robert  (1697-1767),  610 

Pamela,  599  sq. 

Panther,  The,  14 

Paracelsus,  733 

Paradise  Lost,  398 

Paradise  of  Dainty  Devices,  The,  250 

Paradise  Regained,  398 

Pardoner  and  Tapster,  The,  118 

Paris  Sketch  Book,  The,  744 

Parliametit  of  Bees,  The,'i^Z 

Parliame7it  of  Fowls,  The,  123 

Parnell,  Thomas  (1679-1718),  561-2 

Parsoti's  Tale,  The,  144 

Parthenpphil  and  Parthenophe,  277 

Past  and  Present,  760 

Pastime  of  Pleasure,  The,  164-5 


INDEX 


813 


Paston  Letters,  The,  238  note 

Pastoral  Ballad,  A,  573 

Pastoral  Care,  The,  24 

Pastorals,  Pope's,  550  sq. 

Patchwork,  778 

Pater,  Walter  Horatio  (1839-94),  772-3 

Paternoster,  A.S.,  28 

M.E.,  55 
Patience,  78,  79 
Patient  Grissel,  344 
Patmore,  Coventry  (1823-96),  786 
Pattison,  Mark  (1813-84),  790 
Pauline,  733 
Pause,  law  of,  47 
Peacock,    Thomas    Love    (1785-1866), 

688-9 
Pearl,  The,  78-81 

Pearson,  Bishop  John  (1613-86),  445 
Pecock,  Reginald  (1395-1460),  205-8 
Peebles  to  the  Play,  181 
Peele,  George  (i558?-97?),  284-5,  288- 

90,  321 
Pelham,  686 

Pendennis,  The  History  of,  745 
Penseroso,  11,  394 

Pepys,  Samuel  (1633-1703),  519-22 
Percy,  Thomas  (1729-1811),  580-1 
Percy,  William  (1575-1648),  277 
Percy  Folio,  the,  201  sq. 
Peregrine  Pickle,  605  sq. 
Pericles,  28  7iote,  327-8 
Perkin  Warbeck,  434 
Persuasion,  682-3 
Peter  W ilk  ins,  610 
Petition,  "  Bagsche's,"  179 
Phaer,  Thomas  (d.  1560),  251  sq. 
Phalaris,  Dissertation  on,  540 
Pharonnida,  430-1 
Pharsalia,  Roscoe's,  504-5 
Philarete,  362 
philaster,  338-9 

Philips,  Ambrose  (1675  7-1749),  55^ 
Philips,  John  (1676-1709),  556 
Philip  Sparrow,  The  Book  of,  170 
Philip  van  Artevelde,  720 
Phillis,  orji 
Phoenix,  The,  14 
Phrontisterion,  789 
Pickwick  Papers,  The,  741  sq. 
Picturesque  Tours,  648 
Piers  Plowman,  132-8 
Piers  Plowman's  Creed,  132  note 


Pilgrim's  Progress,  The,  513-17 
"  Pindar,  Peter,"  596 
Pindarics,  Cowley's,  404-5 
Dryden's,  476 
Sayers's,  etc.,  596 
Pipe  of  Tobacco,  A,  596  note 
Piscatory  Eclogues,  360 
Pistyl  of  Susan,  the,  107-8 
Plain  Dealer,  The,  490-1 
Plays  on  the  Passions,  641 
Pleasures  of  Hope,  The,  67  <, 
Pleasures  of  Imagination,  579 
Pleasures  of  Afet?tory,  715 
Plowman,  Piers,  132-8 
Plowman's  Tale,  118 
Poema  del  Cid,  6 
Poema  Morale,  54 
Poems  by  Two  Brothers,  727 
Poetaster,  The,  333 

Poetical  Justice,  634-5  [^79 

Poetical  Rhapsody,  Davison's,  250  note. 
Poetical  Sketches,  591-2 
Polite  Conversation,  532 
Polyolbion,  The,  351 
Pomfret,  Thomas  (1667-1702),  482 
Poiiipey  the  Little,  6og 
Poore,  Richard  (d.  1237),  53  note 
Pope,   Alexander   (1688-1744),    549-54, 

564-6 
Popish  Kingdom,  The,  254  riote 
Porter,   Anna   Maria    (1780-1832)    and 

Jane  (1776-1850),  678  and  note' 
Posie  of  Gillyfloivers,  276 
Praed,  Winthrop  Mackworth  (1802-39), 

718-19 
Prelude,   The,  659  sq. 
Pre-Raphaelite  School,  The,  778-9 
Prick  of  Conscience,  The,  75 
Pride  and  Prejudice,  682-3 
Princess,  The,  730 
Prior,  Matthew  (1664-1721),  556-8 
Procter,  Bryan  Waller  (1787-1874),  717 
Progress  of  the  Soul,  The,  367 
Prologue  and  Epilogue,  The,  498-9 
Prologues,  G.  Douglas's,  192 
Prolusions,  Capell's,  201 
Prometheus  Unbound,  670 
Proverbial  Philosophy,  739 
Proverbs  of  Alficd,  25,  59 
Proverbs  of  Hendyng,  59 
Province  of  Jurisprudence  Determined, 
The,  789 


8i4 


A   SHORT   HISTORY  OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE 


Provoked  \  I  'i/e,  The,  494 

Psalms,  Versions  of  the  —  A.S.  18;  M.E. 

69,  70 
Pseudodoxia  Epidemica,  449-51 
Purchas,  Samuel  (i575?-i626),  381 
Purple  Island,  The,  360 
Pusey,  Edward  Bouverie  (1800-82),  790 
Puttenham,  George  (i6th  cent.),  306 
Pygmalion' s  Image,  279 

QUARLES,  Francis  (1592-1644),  428 
Quarterly  Review,  The,  662,  694-5 
Queen  Annelida,  123 
Queen  Mab,  669  sq. 
Queen  Magdalene,  Deploration  of,  179 
Queen  Margaret,  The  Miseries  (^i  352 
Quevedo's    Visiotis,     L'Estrange's,    525 
tiote 

RADCLIFFE,  Mrs.  (1764-1822),  611 
Rae,  Mr.  W.  Fraser,  647  note 
Raleigh,  Mr.  W.  A.,  ^gSnote 
Raleigh,  Sir  Walter  (i552?-i6i8),  300 
Ralph  Roister  Doister,  228 
Rambler,  The,  614  sq. 
Ramsay,  Allan  (1686-1758),  580,  593 
Randolph,  Thomas  (1605-35),  421,  436 
Rape  of  Lucrece,  The,  318,  319 
Rape  of  the  Lock,  The,  550  sq.,  730 
Rasselas,   615  sq. 
Rauf  Coilyear,  195 
Ravinshoe,  755 

Reade,  Charles  (1814-84),  750 
Recreations  of  Christopher  North,  696 
Recruiting  Officer,  The,  495 
Reeve,  Clara  (1729-1807),  610 
Reflections   on   the    Fretich   Revolution, 

628  sq. 
Reginald  Dalton,  688 
Rehearsal,  The,  491,  497,  641 
Relapse,  The,  494 
Religio  Laid,  474 
Religio  Medici,  449-50 
Religious  Musings,  655 
Reliquiae  Antiquae,  114  notes 
Reliquies,  Percy's,  573,  580-1 
Remarks  on  Italy,  536-7 
Renaissance,  Studies  in  the,  -j-ji 
Renaissance    in    Italy,    History   of  the, 

772 
Repressor,  Pecock's,  205-8 
Resolves,  Felltham's,  455 


Retaliation,  619 

Return  from  Parnassus,  The,  281  note 

Revenge,  The,  560,  637 

Revenger  s  Tragedy,  The,  349 

Review,  Defoe's,  547 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua  (1723-92), 632, 771 

"Rhetoric,"  158,  and  Book  IV. passim 

Rhetoric,  Art  of ,  Wilson's,  237 

"  Rhyme,"  18,  45  twte,   49,  58 

Rhyming  Poem,  The,  18 

Richard  Cceur  de  Lion,  90-92 

Richardson,   Samuel    (1689-1761),  598- 

601 
Richard  the  Redeless,  137  7iote 
Ring  and  the  Book,  The,  734 
Ritson,  Joseph  (1752-1803),  82  note,  158 

note,  166  note 
Rival  Ladies,  The,  497 
Rival  Queens,  The,  502 
Rivals,  The,  640-1 
Robene  and  Makyjte,  184-5 
Robert  Manning  (or  of  Brunne)  (13th- 

14th  cent.),  65  sq.,  70,  87  and  note 
Robert  of  Gloucester  (13th  cent.),  63  sq. 
Robertson,  William  (1721-93),  624 
Robinson  Crusoe,  547-8 
Rochester,  John  Wilmot,  Earl  of  (1648- 

80),  480-1 
Roderick  Random,  605  sq. 
Rogers,  Samuel  (1763-1855),  715 
Rolland,  John  {fl.  1560),  459 
Rolle,  R.     See  Hampole 
Rolliad,  The,  596 
Romances,     Collections     of,     82    note, 

102-3  note 
English  Charlemagne,  loi 
Minor  prose,  199  note 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  321 
Rosalynde,  325 
Rosamond,  537 
Rosciad,   The,  584 
Roscoe,  William  (1753-1831),  708 
Roscommon,  W.  Dillon,  Earl  of  (1633- 

85).  482 
Rose,  Romance  or  Romaunt  of  the,  or 

Roman  de  la,  119  sq..  Books  IIL  and 

W  .passim 
Rose  and  the  Ring,  The,  745 
"  Rose  Aylmer,"  673 
Rossetti,  Christina  Georgina  (1830-94), 

779-83  [83 

Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel  (1828-82),  779- 


INDEX 


815 


Roundabout  Papers,  The,  745 
Rover,  The,  Mrs.  Behn's,  489 
Rovers,  The,  Canning's,  641 
Rowe,  Nicholas  (1674-1718),  504-5 
Rowlands,  Samuel  (i57o?-i630?),  355 
Rowley,  William  (i585?-i642?),  349 
Rowley  poems,  the,  585-6 
Ruin,  The,  15,  16 
Rule  a  Wife  and  Have  a  Wife,  340 
Rural  Sports,  559 

Ruskin,  Mr.  John  {b.  1819),  769-72 
Ruthwell  Cross,  the,  11  and  note 

SACKVILLE,  Charles,  Earl  of  Dorset 

(1638-1706),  479-80 
Sackville,    Thomas,     Earl    of    Dorset 

(i536?-i6o8),  256 
Sad  Shepherd,  The,  335 
Sainte-More,  Benoit  de,  124 
St.  Ives,  757 

Saint's  Tragedy,  The,  753 
Salmacis  and  Hermaphroditus,  337 
Samson  Agonistes,  398 
Sandys,  George  (1578-1644),   409  and 

note 
Sartor  Resartus,  686,  706,  759  sq. 
Satire  of  the  Three  Estates,  177-8 
Satiromastix,  344 

Savage,  Richard  (1697-1743),  577-8 
Sawles  Warde,  56 
Sayers,  Frank  (1763-1817),  596 
Scholar  Gipsy,  The,  35 
School  for  Scandal,  The,  640-1 
Schoolmaster,  The,  239-40 
Schoolmistress,  The,  573 
School  of  Abuse,  The,  232 
Scornful  Lady,   The,  340 
Scot,  Reginald  (i538?-99),  357 
Scott,  Alexander  (i525?-84?),  459-60 
Scott,  Michael  (1789-1835),  689-90 
Scott,  Sir  Waher   (1771-1832),  57,  84 

note,  91,  663-6,  677-81,  694 
Scourge  of  Villainy,  279 
Scud6ry,  Madeleine  de,  484 
Seafarer,  The,  16 
Seasons,  The,  567  sq. 
Second  Shepherds'  Play,  The,  217 
Scdley,  Sir  Charles  (i639?-i70i),  480-1, 

489 
Sejanus,  334 

Selborne,  Natural  History  of,  648 
Selden,  John  (1584-1654),  380 


Sempills,  the,  458 

Seneca,   the    tragedian,    and    Senecan 

plays,  251,  288 
Sense  and  Sensibility,  682-3 
Sentimental  Journey,  A,  607  sq. 
Sermons,  importance  of,  382-3 
Settle,  Elkanah  (1648-1724) ,  499,  500 
Seven  Deadly  Sins,  The,  187 
Seven  Sages,  The,  92,  93 

Rolland's,  459 
Shadow  of  Night,  The,  356 
Shadwell,  Charles  {fl..  1718-20),  639 
Shadwell,  Thomas  (1642-92),  487-8 
Shaftesbury,  Anthony    Ashley   Cooper, 

Earl  of  (1671-1713),  337 
Shakespeare,  William  (1564-1616),  313- 

29 
Sharpe,  C.  K.  94  note 
Shaw,  Quentin  (15th  cent.),  175 
Shelley,     Percy     Bysshe     (1792-1822), 

669-71 
Shenstone,  William  (1714-63),  572-3 
Shepherd's  Calendar,    The,   57,    61,   132 

note,  266-j 
Shepherd's  Hunting,  The,  362 
Shepherd's  Pipe,  The,  361 
Shepherd's  Week,  The,  559 
Sherburne,    Sir    Edward    (1618-1702), 

427 
Sheridan,  Richard  Brinsley  (1751-1816), 

639-41 
She  Stoops  to  Conquer,  618  sq.,  639 
She  would  if  She  could,  487 
Ship  of  Fools,  The,  167 
Shirley,  James    (1596-1666),   223   note, 

435-6 
Shoemaker's  Holiday,  The,  344 
Shortest  Way  with  the  Dissenters,  546 
Short  Studies,  765-6 
Short  View,  Collier's,  526  sq. 
Sidney,  Algernon  (1622-82),  522 
Sidney,  Sir  Philip  (1554-86),  233,  260-4 
Siege  of  Rhodes,  The,  485  note 
Sievers,  Dr.,  3  note 
Sigurd  the  Volsung,  63,  784 
Silent  Woman,  The,  334 
Silex  Scintillans ,  416-17 
Sir  Amadas,  99,  101 
Sir  Beaumains,  98,  196 
Sir  Charles  Grandison,  599  sq. 
Sir  Cleges,  98 
Sir  Clyomon  and  Sir  Clamydes,  289 


8i6 


A   SHORT   HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE 


Sir  Courtly  Nice,  499 

Sir  Degore,  100 

Sir  Degravant,  100 

Sir  Eger,  Sir  Grime,  etc.,  203 

Sir  Eglamour ,  100 

Sir  Ferumbras.  loi 

Sir  Fopling  Flutter,  487 

Sir  Generydes  193 

Sir  Harry  Wildair,  495 

Sir  Isumbras,  100 

Sir  Launfal,  194 

Sir  Orpheo,  96 

Sir  Percevale,  100 

Sir  Thopas,  68,  82,  83 

Sir  Tria^nour ,  100 

&>  Tristrem,  84-86 

&>  William  Wallace,  174-5 

•S/rw.  545 

Sisters,  The,  609 

Skeat,  Professor,  Bks.  II.  and  III.  notes 

passim,  118 
Skelton,     John     (i46o?-i529),    167-70, 

479 
Skialetheia,  279 

Smart,  Christopher  (1722-71),  582-3 
Smith,  Adam  (1723-90),  633-4 
Smith,  Alexander  (1830-67),  777 
Smith,  Sydney  (1771-1845),  693-4 
Smollett,     Tobias     George     (1721-71), 

605-7,  625 
Snob,  The,  743 
Solotnon,  Prior's,  557 
Solomon  and  Saturnus,  18  note,  28  tiote 
Sommer,  Dr.,  261  note 
Songs    of  bmocence    and   Experience, 

S9I-2 
Song  to  David,  The,  582-3 
Sonnets,  244  sq.,  262-3,  276-8 

Milton's,  397-8 

Shakespeare's,  319-20 

Wordsworth's,  661 
Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese ,  738 
Sophonisba,  Lee's,  502 

Marston's,  343 
Sordello,  733 
Soul  to  the  Body,  The,  14 
South,  Robert  (1634-1716),  443-4 
Southerne,  Thomas  (1660-1746)    504-5 
Southey,   Robert  (1774-1843),  210  note, 

661-3,  694,  706-7 
Southwell,  Robert  (i56i?-95),  276 
Spanish  Gipsy,  The,  345 


Spanish  Tragedy,  The,  290 

Speak  Parrot,  169 

Specimetis  of  the  British  Poets,  675 

Spectator,  The  (1711-14),  537  sg. 

speculum  Aleditantis ,  138 

Spenser,  Edmund    (i552?-99),  57,    81, 

132  note,  165,  264-70 
Spenser  Redivivus,  571  note 
Spleen,  The,  572 
Splendid  Shilling,  The,  556 
Sprat,  Thomas  (1635-1713),  507,  512 
Squire  Meldrum,  177 
Squire  of  Alsatia,  The,  488 
Squire  of  Low  Degree,  The,  97,  98 
Stanley,  Thomas  (1625-78),  427 
Staple  of  News,  The,  335 
State  of  Innocence,  The,  498 
State  Poems,  The,  482  note 
Steele,  Sir   Richard   (1672-1729),  533-9 
Steel  Glass,  the,  256 
Stephen,  Sir  James  Fitzjames  (1829-94), 

790 
Sterne,  Laurence  (1713-68),  607-9 
Stevenson,   John    Hall    (1718-85),   596 

note 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis  Balfour  (1850- 

94).  756-7 
Still,  John  (i543?-i6o8),  228-9 
Stirling,   William    Alexander,    Earl    of 

(15677-1640),  462-3 
Strafford,  733 
Strayed  Reveller,  The,  775 
Strode,  Ralph  (14th  cent.),  142  note 
Studies  of  Sensation  and  Event,  786 
Sublime  and  Beautiful,  The,  628 
Suckling,  Sir  John  (i6o9?-i642),  422-3, 

436 
Sullen  Lovers,  The,  488 
Sumer  is  icumen  in,  40  note,  66 
Surrey,  Henry  Howard,  Earl  of  (1517?- 

47),  243  sq. 
Susan,  The  Pistyl  of,  107-8 
Sweet,  Mr.,  19,  20 
Swift,    Jonathan    (1667-1745),    528-33, 

564-6 
Swinburne,  Mr.,  76 
Syllabic  equivalence,  46 
Sylvester,  Joshua  (1563-1618),  353-4 
Sylvia,  771 
Symonds,  John  Addington    (1840-93), 

772 


INDEX 


817 


TABLE   TALK,  Selden's.  380 

Tale  of  a  Tub,  A,  528  sq. 

Talfourd,   Sir    Thomas    Noon    (1795- 

1854),  721  note 
Tamburlaine,  291,  292 
Tancred  and  Gismund,  231 
Tassso,  Fairfax's,  357 
Tatler,  The  (1709-11),  530  sq. 
Taylor,  Sir  Henry  (1800-86),  720-1 
Taylor,  Bishop  Jeremy  (1613-67),  439- 

41 
Taylor,  John,  "the  Water  Poet"  (1580- 

1653).  355 
Tears  of  Fancy,  The,  273 
Tempest,  The,  328-9 

Temple,  Sir  William  (1628-99),  S09-10 
Temple,  The,  415 
Ten   Brink,    Professor,   his    History,   i 

note,  39  tiote,  54 
Tender  Husband,  The,  535 
Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord  (1809-92),  727- 

32 
Tennyson,  Charles  (1808-79),  727  f'ote 
Tennyson,     Frederick    (1807-98),    727 

note 
Testament  and  Complaint  of  Creseide, 

183-4 
Testament  and  Complaint  ofthe  Papyngo, 

178 
Testament  of  Love,  The,  145  note 
Thackeray,  William  Makepeace  (181 1- 

63),  604,  743-7 
Thalaba,  662-3 

Theatre  of  Voluptuous  Worldlings,  264 
Theobald,  Lewis  (         ?-i744),  649 
Theoria  Sacra,  518 
Theory  of  the  Moral  Sentiment,  633 
Thersites,  225 
Thirlwall,  Bishop  Connop  (1797-1875), 

710-11 
Thistle  and  the  Rose,  The,  187 
"Thomas  the  Rhymer,"  84 
Thomson,  James   (ist)   (1700-48),  567- 

71,  637 
Thomson,  James  (2nd)  (1834-82), 785-6 
Thorkelin,  G.  J.,  4 
Thornton  MS.,  100  sq. 
Thorpe,  B.,  2  note,  17  notes 
Thoughts  on  Man,  635 
Thoughts   on    the    Present  Discontents, 

628  sq. 
"  Three  Trees,  Story  of  the,"  71,  72 

3« 


Tickell,  Thomas  (1676-1740),  556 
Tillotson,  John  (1630-94),  507,  510 
Tintern  Abbey,  659  sq. 
'  Tis  Pity  she's  a  Whore,  433 
Tom  Jones,  602  sq, 
Tom  Thumb,  485,  601 
Torrent  of  Portugal,  193 
Tottel's  Afiscellany,  248-50 
Toulmin-Smith,  Miss  L.,  221 
Tournament  of  Tottenham,  99,  100 
Tourneur,    Cyril  (  ?-  ?),    279, 

341.  349 
Towneley  Plays,  The,  221  sq. 
Toxophilus,  239 

Transformed  Metamorphosis,  The,  279 
Traveller,  The,  617  sq. 
Treasure  Islarid,  757 
Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  623 
Trench,  Archbishop  Richard  Chenevix 

(1807-86),  739 
Trevisa,  John  of  (  7-1413),  147-8 

Tripartite  Chronicle,  The,  138  note,  139 
Tristram  Shandy,  (xyj  sq. 
Trivia,  559 

Trivial  Poems  and  Triolets,  425 
Troilus    and     Cressid,   Chaucer's,    124 

Dryden's,  498 
Trollope,  Anthony  (1815-82),  750-1 
True-Born  Englishman,  The,  547 
Tucker,  Abraham  (1705-74),  334 
Tundale,  Visions  of,  199  note 
Tapper,  Martin  Farquhar  (1810-89), 23, 

739 
Turberville,  George  (15307-90?),  253-4 

Turner,  Sharon  (1768-1847),  708 

Tusser,  Thomas  (i5i5?-8o),  253 

Twa    Mary  it    Wemen    and    the    Wedo, 
The,  128,  186-7 

Twelfth  Night,  324 

Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  322-3 

Two  Noble  Kinsmen,  The,  329 

Twopenny  Postbag,  J  he,  (yj^. 

Two  Years  Ago,  755 

Tyndale,  Matthew  (14857-1536),  212-13 

Tyrannic  Love,  497 

Tyrwhitt,  Thomas  (1730-86),  118 

UDALL,  Nicholas  (15167-56),  228 

Universal  Passion,  The,  560 

I'm  Kurial,  451 

Urquharl,  Sir   Thomas  (1605-60),  464 

I'sk,   Thomas  (14th  cent.),  I45  »'"'' 


8i8 


A   SHORT   HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE 


Ussher,  James  (1581-1656),  384 
Utopia,  211 

VALERIUS,  688 

Vanbrugh,     Sir     John      (i666?-i726), 

493-4 

Vanity  Fair,  744-5 

Vanity  of  Human    Wishes,     The,   557, 
614  sq. 

Vathek,  610-11 

Vaughan,  Henry  (1622-95),  4^6 

Venice  Preserved,  497,  500-2 

Venus  and  Adonis,  317-18 

Vercelli  Book,  The,  10  sq. 
Vere,  Sir  Aubrey  de  (1788-1846),  717 
Vernon  MS.,  105-7 

Vestiges  of  Creation,  The,  793 

Vicar  of  Wakefield,  The,  618  sq. 
"  Vice,"  the,  of  early  plays,  226  note 

Village,  The,  591 
Villon,  F.,  153 

Vindication  of  Natural  Society,  A,  628 
sq. 

Virgide?niarum ,  279 

Virgin  Martyr,  The,  433 

Vision  of  Judgment,  A,  Byron's  663 
Southey's,  663 

Visions  of  Tundale,  199  note 

Vita  Gildae,  42  and  note 

Vittoria  Corombona,  347 

Volpone,  334 

Vox  and  the  Wolf,  The,  61  note 

Vox  Clainantis,  138 

Vulgar  Errors,  450-1 

WAGE,  43 

Wakefield  Plays,  The,  221  sq, 
Waldhere,  7 

Wallace,  Sir  William,  174-5 
Waller,  Edmund  (1605-87),  406-8 
Walpole,  Horace  (1717-97),  610,  621 
Walsh,  William  (1663-1708),  482 
Walter,  Archdeacon  of  Oxford,  42 
Walton,  Izaak  (1593-1683),  456 
Wanderer,   The,  A.S.,  16 

Savage's,  578 
Warburton,     Bishop     William     (1698- 

1779).  632-3 
Ward,  Dr.  A.  W.,  549  note 
Ward,  Mr.  Humphry,  582 
Warner,  William  (i558?-i6o9),  275 
War-songs,  Campbell's,  676 


Warton,  Joseph  (1722-1800),  583 
Warton,     Thomas     (1728-90),     583-4; 

his    History   of  Poetry,   39   7iote,  584 

and  note 
Water  Babies,  The,  755 
Watson,  Thomas  (1557-92),  273 
Waverley   and    The    Waverley   Novels, 

678-81 
Way  of  the  World,  The,  493 
Wealth  of  Nations,  The,  633 
Webbe,    William     (i6th    cent.),    271, 

306 
Weber,  Henry,  82  note  and  sq. 
Webster,  John  (         ?-        ?),  341,  346-& 
Wedderburns  of  Dundee,  the,  458,  465 

note 
Weeper,  The,  414 
Weir  of  Hermistoti,  757 
Werfrith,  Bishop  (9th  cent.),  28  note 
Westward  Ho  I  754-5 
Whale,  The,  14 
What  You  Will,  343 
Whetstone,  George  (        ?-        ?),  252-3 
"  Whistlecraft,"  596  note 
White,  Gilbert  (1720-93),  648 
White,  Henry  Kirke  (1785-1806),  716 
White  Devil,  The,  347 
Why  come  ye  not  to  Court,  170 
Widsith,  1-3 

Wife's  Complaint,  The,  17 
Wild  Gallant,  The,  484  sq. 
Wild,  Robert  (17th  cent.),  425 
Wilkins,  Bishop  John  (1614-72),  446 
William  of  Paler ne,  105 
William  of  Shoreham,  70,  71 
Williams,  Sir  Charles  Hanbury  (1709- 

S9),V)^note,  621 
Willoughby's  Avisa,  itj 
Wilson,  John   (dramatist)  (i622?-90?), 

484  note 
Wilson,   John    (essayist,    etc.)     (1785- 

1854).  695-7 
Wilson,  Sir  Thomas  (        ?-i58i),  237 
Winchelsea,  Anrre  Finch,  Countess  of 

( 1660-1720) ,  562-3 
Windsor  Forest,  550  sq. 
Wine,  559 
Winter,  ^(yj  sq. 
Winter's  Tale,  A,  328 
Winzet,  Ninian  (1518-92),  466 
Wishes  to  his  Supposed  Mistress,  414 
Witch,  The,  345 


INDEX 


819 


WitcA  of  Atlas,  The,  670 
Wither,  George  (1588-1667).  361-2 
Wolcot,  John  (1738-1819),  596  and  note 
Woman  in  the  Moon,  The,  284 
Woman  Killed  with  Kindness,  A,  346 
Women  beware  Women,  345 
Wood,  Anthony  (1632-95),  525 
Wordsworth,  William   (1770-1850),  553 

note,  562,  657-61 
World,  The,  6201 
Wortley   Montagu,  Lady  Mary   (1689- 

1762),  642-4 
Wotton,  Sir  Henry  (1568-1639),  381 
Wright,  Thomas  (1810-77),  44  note,  53 

note,  60  note,  66 
Wulfstan,  Bishop  (nth  cent.),  28 
Wulfstan,  explorer,  23 


Wyatt,  Sir  Thomas  (1503-42),  243  sq. 
Wycherley,  William  (i64o?-i7i5),  489- 

91 
Wyclif,  John  ( 13207-1384) ,  145-7 
Wyntoun,   Andrew    (i35o?-i42o?),  102 

note,  173 

YARDLEY  OAK,  589 

Yeast,  754 

York  Plays,  The,  221  sq. 

Yorkshire  Tragedy,  The,  329 

Yoimg,  Edward  (1681-1765),  560-1,  637 

Ywain  and  Gawain,  95,  96 

7.ELUCO,  6ia 
Zepheria,  2rjj  and  note 
Zupitza,  Dr.,  94  note 


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From  Tottel's  Miscellany  to  Spenser. 
Early  Elizabethan  Prose. 
The  First  Dramatic  Period. 
"  The  Faerie  Queene,"  and  its  Group. 
The    Second    Dramatic    Period  —  Shake- 
speare. 
Later  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  Prose. 
The  Third  Dramatic  Period. 


The  School  of  Spenser  and  the  Tribe  of 

Ben. 
Milton,     Taylor,      Clarendon,     Browne, 

Hobbes. 
Caroline  Poetry. 
The  Fourth  Dramatic  Period. 
Minor  Caroline  Prose;, 


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A  HISTORY  OF 

EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE. 

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Poetry  after  the  Restoration. 

Drama  after  the  Restoration. 

Prose  after  the  Restoration. 

Pope. 

Swift  and  the  Deists. 

Defoe  and  the  Essayists. 


The  Dawn  of  Naturalism  in  Poetry. 

The  Novelists. 

Johnson  and  the  Philosophers. 

The  Poets  of  the  Decadence. 

The  Prose  of  Decadence. 

Conclusion —  Bibliography  —  Index, 


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THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY. 


A  HISTORY  OF 

NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE. 

By   GEORGE   SAINTSBURY. 

i2mo.      Student's  Edition,   $1.50. 

Uniform  with  "  A  History  of  Elizabethan  Literature,"  by  the  same  author,  and  with 
"  A  History  of  Eighteenth  Century  Literature,"  by  Edmund  Gosse. 


COMMENT. 

"  A  work  at  once  succinct,  comprehensive,  and  authoritative  on  the  literature  of  thi 
last  hundred  years  would,  it  is  plain,  be  an  invaluable  boon  to  students.  Such  a  boon 
Prof  George  Saintsbury  has  endeavoured  to  provide  in  'A  History  of  Nineteenth  Century 
Literature,  1780-1795.'  But  at  once  the  most  valuable  and  the  least  valuable  portion  of 
the  book  is  the  conclusion.  The  summary  of  what  was  done  during  the  first  seventy 
years  of  the  century  is  masterly,  and  is  in  itself  sufficient  to  give  the  student  his  cue."^ 
The  Publishers'  Circular,  London. 

"  I  have  examined  with  interest  and  pleasure  Saintsbury's  '  History  of  English  Litera- 
ture of  the  Nineteenth  Century.'  It  is  certainly  a  work  of  rare  merit  upon  this  period  of 
literature."  —  O.  S.  Moles,  Instructor  in  English  Literature,  Denver  High  School, 
Denver,  Col. 

"  Such  a  book  has  long  been  needed,  and  no  man  could  attempt  the  task  of  writing  it 
with  more  hope  of  success  than  Mr.  Saintsbury.  The  new  volume  seems  to  follow  a 
middle  path  between  a  philosophical  criticism  and  a  general  sketch,  and  will  therefore  be 
of  great  value  to  students."  —  JosiAH  H.  Penniman,  instructor  in  English,  University 
0/  Pennsylvania. 

"  I  have  read  portions  of  the  book  with  intense  interest,  and  I  think  it  is  superior  to 
the  same  author's'  Elizabethan  Literature."  I  have  told  my  class  in  Nineteenth  Century 
Prose  that  this  is  the  very  best  handbook  they  can  procure.  The  book  should  also  find 
great  favour  with  general  readers."  —  Prof.  T.  F.  M.  Huntington,  Lake  Forest 
College,  III. 

"  His  characterizations  are  ever  fresh  and  exact  and  felicitous.  There  was  great  need 
of  a  work  covering  the  whole  century.  That  need  is  now  supplied,  and  Mr.  Saintsbury 
dominates  the  field." — Pkof.  J.  Russell  YIaves,  Smarthmore  College,  Pa. 

"  If  it  had  arrived  a  little  sooner,  I  could  have  used  it  in  a  class :  ...  but  as  they  were 
already  supplied,  I  must  wait  until  next  session  to  k'vc  our  men  the  benefit  of  judicious 
and  comprehensive  criticism  presented  in  admirable  style."  —  Prof.  Thomas  Hums, 
University  of  North  Carolina. 

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SAINTSBURY'S  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  LITERATURE. 

"  I  should  say  that  it  is  most  admirably  done  and  that  it  will  be  an  indispensable  tool  for 
the  worker  not  only  in  literature  but  in  nineteenth  century  thought  from  the  philosophical 
standpoint.  It  seems  to  me  that  there  is  no  more  effective  way  of  studying  the  character- 
istic thought  of  a  period  than  through  its  literature,  and  this  book  of  Saintsbury's  will  be, 
as  I  have  said,  an  indispensable  auxiliary  in  such  study." — Pres.  Nathaniel  Butler, 
Colby  University,  Waterville ,  Maine, 

"  The  rapid  examination  that  I  have  given  it,  since  it  reached  me,  gives  evidence  oi 
its  possessing  some  of  Mr.  Saintsbury's  most  striking  peculiarities;  and,  considering  the 
mass  of  material  from  which  was  to  be  constructed  a  volume  of  moderate  size,  it  is  plain 
that  the  success  achieved  deserves  great  praise.  I  shall  call  the  attention  of  my  classes 
to  it,  confident  that  acquaintance  with  it  will  greatly  stimulate  their  interest  in  the  litera- 
ture of  the  period  discussed."  —  Pres.  Charles  Manly,  D.D.,  Furman  University, 
Greenville,  S,  C. 

"  I  have  been  reading  and  re-reading  it  with  genuine  enjoyment  and  warm  admiration. 
He  has  accomplished  a  very  difficult  undertaking  with  tact,  discretion,  and  remarkable 
ability.  Skilled  workmanship  was  expected,  and  he  has  successfully  combined  it  with 
right  perspective,  critical  insight,  and  sympathetic  handling.  I  have  already  called  the 
attention  of  my  class  to  this  book,  and  in  the  future  I  shall  find  occasion  for  frequent  use 
of  it."  —  W.  M.  Baskerville,  Vanderbilt  University,  Tenn. 

"  I  have  not  seen  a  text-book  on  Literature  for  some  time  that  pleases  me  so  well; 
and,  certainly,  such  a  treatment  of  nineteenth  century  literature  problems  as  Mr.  Saints- 
bury  has  given  us  has  been  for  these  past  years  much  needed. 

"  I  admire  the  spirit  in  which  he  treats  of  living  authors,  and  the  masterly  handling 
of  his  superabundant  material  evincing  such  good  judgment  and  power  of  generalization." 
—  Prof.  L.  L.  Rice,  Cumberland  University,  Lebanon,  Tenn. 

"  I  shall  only  need  call  the  attention  of  the  students  to  it ;  the  book  commends  itself, 
and  will  be  used  in  our  work  on  this  century." —  Prof.  Elmer  E.  Wentworth,  Vassar 
College,  Neiu  York. 

"  I  have  been  waiting  for  it  some  time.  From  what  I  have  already  read  of  it,  it  seems 
the  excellent  book  which  we  might  expect  from  so  eminent  a  critic  as  Dr.  Saintsbury.  I 
shall  recommend  it  to  my  class  now  pursuing  the  subject."  —  Prof.  Felix  E.  Schelling, 
University  of  Pennsylvania. 

"  It  is  an  attractive  book,  and  I  shall  probably  use  it  in  class  another  year."  —  Prof. 
J.  Raymond  Brackett,  University  of  Colorado. 

"  It  is,  of  course,  thoroughly  valuable  and  important.  I  have  recommended  it  to  my 
students."  —  Wilfrid  W.  Cressy,  Associate  Professor  of  English,  Oberlin  College. 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY, 

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CHICAGO:    ROOM   23,    AUDITORIUM. 

SAN   FRANCISCO:    327-331   SANSOME   STREET. 

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